5 predictions and 3 hopes for 2014

I have high hopes for this year.  All the attention about innovation in development has helped spurred a lot of learning.  In addition, increasing wealth in many developing countries has created a strong middle class with money to spend. Businesses are gearing up to meet the need.  Growing entrepreneurship and business outside of Europe and America is also bringing cool new ideas to the center stage.  The "West" is in no position to scoff, with the economies in their current state, and as they look with curiosity and hope abroad.  Here’s some of the exciting advancements that I predict we’ll see:

1. More blurring of the supposedly separate categories of impact investing, social enterprise, and business as usual. There’s been a lot of excitement about the idea of double bottom lines, social return on investment, and other concepts that blend profit with other types of externalities.  I would argue that at the end of the day, if one creates jobs, brings money into a local economy, and contributes to productivity, they’ve done a good thing.  Their intentions are less important than the impact.  I’m skeptical of fair trade and all the copycat “feel good” signals, which I’ll get into in a later post.

2. Shift from ICT4D initiatives insistent on figuring out how to get basic nokia phones to do complex things (often poorly) using sms to a focus on smart phones.You can buy a Chinese-made smart phone for just $60 in Dhaka. And they are selling like candy.  One development initiative has over a thousand workers doing data collection on androids in rural Bangladesh.  Most of the action is young people hungry to connect: India alone has 81 million people on facebook, and most of them use a phone as their entry point to the web.  Given the incredible increases in functionality and possibility, those focused on using technology in development can begin to envision a time when one can assume that all staff, community health workers, and even clients have access to a smart phone.  One reason this is particularly exciting is that you can use images instead of letters, which is great for populations with low literacy and countries like Bangladesh where the Roman alphabet is not used in the mother tongue.

Watch this amazing google ad about “connecting”, South Asia style for a hint of how much commitment there is to getting the subcontinent online.

3. As Americans bemoan the need to be “mindful” and “look up” (from one’s device), in development there will be a parallel return to “slow” and “low-tech” innovations. In 2013 there was so much hope (and hype) that new technologies and innovations were really going to change the world.  Despite the shiny new tools, even in 2013 Atul Gawande concluded that “People talking to people is the only way things change.”   Certainly new platforms for dialog and discussion are extremely important—in 2014, it would be a bit crazy to imagine a social movement operating without tapping into facebook, twitter, etc.  But the truth is that change, either at the behavioral or societal level takes significant work to lay the ground, long before one can begin to imagine that they will see the results.  We will see more appreciation and investments in old-school strategies like social workers going door to door, neighborhood meetings, community organizing.   They are often marginalized because they are slow; they take on sticky, entrenched problems that won’t change overnight.  Development thinking, in its rush to get results, lost track of the basics.

"Revolutions are often seen as spontaneous. It looks like people just went into the street. But it's the result of months or years of preparation. It is very boring until you reach a certain point, where you can organize mass demonstrations or strikes. If it is carefully planned, by the time they start, everything is over in a matter of weeks," said Ivan Marovic, a former trainer on non-violent resistance. So if we start next year, we’ll only have to wait……

4. Moving beyond the North-South divide, and seeing regional clusters gain strength. Developed and developing. East and West. Global North and South. Hans Rosling nicely illustrated the many problems with trying to squeeze the world into these boxes.  The spreading of the spheres of power withing global development strains these terms even more.  Hubs of entrepreneurship are springing up—Singapore, Bangalore, and Nairobi are just a few examples.  The Middle East players, like the rising Qatar Foundation, will bring a very different ideology to the table.  More diversity or what some would call competition among donors could be advantageous for non-profit organizations, who will potentially be able to select donors more aligned or committed to their greater goals.  And, increase the overall appetite for risk within the field.

5. Booming online markets for urban centers in Africa and South Asia, which potentially will transform the use of digital financial services (like mobile money).  My fiancée bought a car and a couch off of the local version of Craig’s list.  Online options for food delivery have taken off (Gourmet chef makes one tasty burger).  Soon I’ll be buying bus tickets and movie tickets online.  Right now “cash on delivery” is by far the most popular payment method, but as consumers grow more trusting and inclined towards online shopping and interaction, that norm will change and the world of possibilities online will boom.  What will this shift mean for credit card companies and mobile money providers?  We will see.  Hungrynaki.com, for example, accepts both.

3 things I’m hoping that we get over:

• The “give cash to poor people overseas directly” fad (more on that soon)
• The words “leverage” and the increasingly popular “amplify”
• The deference to design thinking, especially "human-centered design"