During the Emerging Technology panel moderated by Guy Kawasaki I was impressed by KickStart. Their comments and insights were grounded and informed. They are looking at all the angles, at all the information out there, they have clearly seen the good and the bad and are working to take the good and leave the bad. One of the things that has always bothered me about technology aimed at helping the bottom of the pyramid is that they lack basic infrastructure, and because of this lack often either don’t have the resources to access the technology that is being touted as their latest salvation or they don’t understand how it helps them with their basic fundamental needs. What good is a laptop when you don’t have access to the internet? More fundamentally, what good is a laptop when you don’t have food, or water? If it were me that laptop would equal $$$. Not only do solutions aimed at helping need to address the actual needs to the recipient, the recipient of these well intentioned helping hands needs to understand what the technology is for and want to solve that problem too… and if the solution solves a problem they want to solve too… suddenly you have something that is successful. There is no real need to give a handout to a hardworking person. Affordable solutions to real problems are needed though. Kickstart is actually doing that.
On their website they list their five step process to solving poverty:
I wish them tremendous success with their project. The tools they create can truly provide the African farmer with a bit of technology that will help them feed their families and increase their income. Let’s hope that they can successfully launch them and succeed in getting local populations to adopt these tools.
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