LEVERAGING DEVELOPMENT WITH TECHNOLOGY AND MICROFINANCE

The poor are typically isolated, lacking opportunities and being deprived of necessary developmental assets such as proper communication and networking. Network theories may thus act as an original starting point for interpreting issues of poverty, which can be alleviated by combining basic technology with affordable funding programs such as microcredit. Value-adding technology, levered by microfinance, may then be sequentially added to the development paradigm. To the extent that technology and microfinance can be suitably combined, they may lever scalable productivity, in a way similar to Metcalfe’s exponential upsides for networking organizations. This may happen for instance with M-banking, within a ‘digital culture’ environment, and with viral social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, or Mobile Apps.