Technologies ‘to aid the poor’ [BBC]
The best way to help developing nations is to recognise that development is “of the people, by the people and for the people”, says a Bangladeshi entrepreneur.
Iqbal Quadir, Grameen Phone founder in Bangladesh, told experts gathered for TEDGlobal in Oxford that aid strategies for the last 60 years had failed because they benefited authorities over the people themselves.
Technologies such as mobiles empowered people because they connected them. This, he said fuelled productivity much more than the top-down aid approach.
