Dear P,

I never said donor funding is not useful! There are clearly many useful areas
for donor-funded projects that succeed. However, let me put it differently:

If I am an entrepreneur or company I will offer my customers a service they a)
need and b) are willing to pay for. As a consquence, if the services are useless
nobody will buy and if they are too expensive nobody will pay. Hence, the
entrepreneur or company will either adapt his product or lower the price. If
not, he will go bankrupt...

In the case of the Grameen Village Phone project the rural poor were willing to
pay a certain price for access to communication for various reasons.

Now, in many donor-funded projects these incentives are just inexistent... That
is simply a fact. There is little reason to a) automatically adapt the service
to the needs of the "customer" and b) do it at reasonable cost (i.e. price)...

Following from this I conclude: Donor-funded ICT4D projects should only
concentrate on areas where market mechanisms don't play and where there is
little opportunity to build on a sense of entrepreneurship and ownership.

Cheers,
Alex

PS: I am by far not a market fundamentalist, but I have simply seen too many
projects fail because the underlying incentives were not there... Donor-funding
too often comes down to a sort of central planning that cracks under bureaucracy
or fancy, detached policy-makers...

----Message d'origine----
>A: bytesforall_readers@yahoogroups.com
>De: pallavi raina <pallaviraina@...>
>Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 11:47:37 -0800 (PST)
>Sujet: Re: [bytesforall_readers] Re: Important Notice to All Readers (Pls.
provide inpu
>
>
>
>I have to disagree about the comment on donor funding.
>Agreed that the projects don't work, but that's not
>entirely simply because they were funded by some
>donors. It can be due to a zillion reasons or
>combination of reasons. Or it could just be because it
>was a stupid project. :). So you can't just flat out
>say that donor funded projects fail. A lot of
>projects fail for a lot of reasons, and a lot of those
>self sustaining projects started out with donor
>funding. And sustainability includes more things than
>finance, gang. Let's keep that in mind.
>
>Thanks,
>p
>--- Alexander Osterwalder
><alexander.osterwalder@...> wrote:
>
>>
>> Dear Lutfor,
>>
>> I don't think we should be so categoric about
>> financing. It is simply not true that the so-called
>> "poor" are not willing or able to pay for access to
>> useful Information and Communication Technologies.
>> You are certainly familiar with the Grameen Village
>> Phone project founded by Iqbal Quadir. In this model
>> the "poor" share mobile phone access that are
>> provided without any donor funding.
>>
>> By no means I want to say there is no reason, need
>> or space for financing ICT4D project, however we
>> should bear in mind that donor funding often results
>> in distorted projects that are not useful to the
>> community. In general I think we should be more
>> innovative about financing approaches. There are
>> many projects out there that are self-sustaining, we
>> ought to learn from them more often!
>>
>> I guess an interesting topic for WSIS could be:
>> sharing sustainable models for ICT4D financing...
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Alex
>>
>>
>> ----Message d'origine----
>> >A: bytesforall_readers@yahoogroups.com
>> >De: "lutfor_zaman" <lutfor_zaman@...>
>> >Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2005 15:05:27 -0000
>> >Sujet: [bytesforall_readers] Re: Important Notice
>> to All Readers (Pls. provide inputs)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >Dear Moderator,
>> >
>> >My issue of observation is on financing ICT4D
>> issues (Scope for
>> >Regional Cooperation). Since ICT4D covers a wide
>> range of areas
>> >starting from planning to developing models,
>> capacity building and
>> >executing, it is important that financial resources
>> are made to be
>> >available particularly to those that are targetted
>> to rural
>> >development. One of the important partners to rural
>> development
>> >could be social cooperatives. Financial resources
>> can be allocated
>> >in order to train the existing cooperatives or to
>> encourage the
>> >small farmers or groups to come into cooperatives
>> and to help them
>> >overcoming some of the important and primary
>> barriers such as,
>> >preserving their crops, transporting their
>> goods/resources to urban
>> >market, letting them know about the market prices,
>> using of modern
>> >technologies etc. Working in an extreme poverty
>> condition can not
>> >bring an immediate sustainable model as barriers
>> are many folded and
>> >an inflow of financial resources is required in
>> order to get the
>> >model right in track and to make it sustainable in
>> the long run. I
>> >think important challenge would be to link this
>> financial issues
>> >with the question of planning and areas of
>> intervention. WSIS should
>> >provide a guideline on this. Will it?
>> >
>> >Best wishes,
>> >
>> >Lutfor Zaman
>> >
>> >
>> >> We have an important announcement for all of you.
>>
>> >>
>> >> Bytes for All being closely involved with WSIS
>> Regional (South
>> >> Asian) Consultation Meeting that is happening in
>> Dhaka from the
>> >5th
>> >> till the 7th of January 2005 is seeking URGENT
>> inputs, experiences
>> >> or concerns from its readers forum to this
>> consultation meeting.
>> >for All
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >Yahoo! Groups Links
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>> --------------------------------------------
>> Alexander Osterwalder, Ph.D.
>> Humanist, Globalist, Technologist and
>> Business Modeller
>> University of Lausanne
>> http://www.hec.unil.ch/aosterwa
>> --------------------------------------------
>> http://businessmodels.blogspot.com/
>> http://devco21.blogspot.com/
>> --------------------------------------------
>> skype: alex_osterwalder
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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