The international development model has changed. Global threats are a substantial threat to world economies. Locally networked approaches mitigate such threats and lower global risks.

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A Paradigm Shift for
Engineering
USING KNOWLEDGE ECONOMICS TO TACKLE POVERTY

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Lynn Ilon, Ph.D.
BAYOOM HUB LYNNILON@BAYOOMHUB.COM HTTP://LYNNILON.COM

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Can knowledge economics provide a way
for engineers to tackle poverty?
Answer:
Only if:
• there is a real-world context that engineers can work with, and
• the structure is founded in something sustainable, and
• there is an identifiable way for funding the work.
….. Ok… stick with me

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knowledge-based enterprises start small
…and the examples are all around us

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In July 2010,
Uber began its
service in San
Francisco as
Ubercab with
only 10 drivers

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In 2007, the two roommates
living in San Francisco
couldn't afford to pay rent.
They decided to turn their
apartment into an area that
could fit three air
mattresses. Along with the
mattress and a night's sleep
came the promise of a
breakfast too.

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Twitter is the brainchild of programmers
who worked at the podcasting company
Odeo Inc. in San Francisco. They were
looking for a way to send text on their
cellphones. On March 21, 2006, Jack
Dorsey sent the first tweet: "just setting
up my twttr.“ Dom Sagolla , replied: "Oh,
this is going to be addictive.” They liked it
so much, they started a new company.

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The Grameen Bank began in 1976 as a research project by
Professor Muhammad Yunus, Head of the Rural Economics
Program at the University of Chittagong. He wanted to
examine the possibility of designing a credit delivery system
targeted at the rural poor. Today, Grameen bank loans about
USD 285 million per month. Their rate of repayment is
99.25%.

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Ushahidi, which translates to “testimony”
in Swahili, was developed to map reports
of violence in Kenya after the post-
election violence in 2008. It has been
instrumental in creating the Kenyan tech
ecosystem, known as the Silicon
Savannah, and its employees have gone
on to found iHub, Akirachix, and BRCK.
The Ushahidi platform is often used for
crisis response, human rights reporting,
and election monitoring. The Ushahidi
platform has been deployed over
125,000 times in over 160 countries.

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what do these knowledge-based enterprises
have in common?

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What do these knowledge-based
companies have in common?
Things that are obvious
◦ They started with a real-world problem that is a need of
communities.
◦ They start small– not a large, industrial enterprise.
◦ They do not own their physical resource.
◦ Their primary resource is the knowledge they glean from their
users.
◦ They are organized as a network.

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Some examples I know of…
• Kenya… M-Pesa.. Way to get small amounts of money transferred
among people
• Ethiopia … Coffee exchange… technology network provided rural
coffee growers a link to central coffee exchange market to sell their
raw coffee beans
• Grameen cell networks: provided rural women with cell phones
they could lend to villagers to make calls for small price
Any common engineering needs to rural or urban SA communities? Water? Solar power?
Transport into the urban core?

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What do these knowledge-based
companies have in common?
Things that are hidden
•They build their strength from AI – learning from the
underlying data.
•They build new innovative, creative work environments so
their workers can invent new ways to innovate using the
networks and information.
•Expanding the network (more communities; maybe into
new countries) is the source of their strength.

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Begin with the community
• Start with one or a few communities and work with communities
to determine their needs if one hasn’t been previous identified.
• If you know of a COMMON need among many communities, then start there – Ubercab. Start small and get the
problems worked out
• If you don’t know of a common need, start with one community and work with them. You can build engineering
projects one community at a time by being an engineering group that works flexibilibly with communities and
“plugs in” the right engineering team as needed - Ushahidi style.
• The communities OWN the project – even if it is a physical
resource.
• Your ownership is the data that is hidden – underneath the engineering component. How does the process
work with the community? What makes it work? Your goal is to know how to extend your network

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Focus on the network
•Design the network and the information that you will
glean over time from the project.
• Over time the network can become digital… but it can begin with notes
taken from human meetings… a kind of hybrid that is transposed into
digital form.
• Find the patterns of what works…. Who, what, when, where, why?
• Transfer what you learned from the patterns to the next few
communities

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Can knowledge economics provide a way
for engineers to tackle poverty?
√there is a real-world context that engineers can
work with
start small, build networks, learn from the data
• the structure is founded in something sustainable, and
• there is an identifiable way for funding the work.

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Community stability and sustainability
creates global value

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By far, the biggest costs to the global world
will come from globally linked issues
Cost of migrants and refugees
• By the end of 2017, asylum seekers will cost Germany €50 billion
(Telegraph, The, 2016)
• At the end of 2018, there are 68.5 million forcibly displaced people
worldwide. (Refugees, 2018)
Refugees, U. N. H. C. for. (2018, November). Figures at a Glance. Retrieved March 13, 2019, from https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html
Telegraph, The. (2016, February 2). Migrant crisis to cost Germany €50 billion by 2017. The Telegraph. Retrieved from
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/12135244/Migrant-crisis-to-cost-Germany-50-billion-by-2017.html

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By far, the biggest costs to the global world
will come from globally linked issues
Cost of global disease:
• The 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak cost $3.6 billion to control (Center for Disease
Control, 2015). Economic ripple effects are estimated to be nearly $32 billion (The
World Bank, 2014)
• Zika cost the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean nearly $18 billion. (Henry
Kaiser Family Foundation, 2017)
Center for Disease Control. (2015). Cost of the Ebola Epidemic. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/pdf/impact-ebola-economy.pdf
Henry Kaiser Family Foundation. (2017, April 7). Zika To Cost Latin American, Caribbean Region Up To $18B From 2015-2017, With Poorer Nations Hit Hardest, UNDP/IFRC Report Shows. Retrieved March 13, 2019,
from https://www.kff.org/news-summary/zika-to-cost-latin-american-caribbean-region-up-to-18b-from-2015-2017-with-poorer-nations-hit-hardest-undpifrc-report-shows/
The World Bank. (2014, October 8). The Economic Impact of the 2014 Ebola Epidemic: Short and Medium Term Estimates for West Africa. Retrieved March 13, 2019, from
http://www.worldbank.org/en/region/afr/publication/the-economic-impact-of-the-2014-ebola-epidemic-short-and-medium-term-estimates-for-west-africa

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By far, the biggest costs to the global world
will come from globally linked issues
Cost of climate change:
• By 2050, it is estimated that climate change will be the cause of 140 million internal migrants – 86
million within Africa, 40 million with South Asia and 17 million within Latin America. The costs will be
in deceased crop productivity, shortage of water and rising sea levels. (The World Bank, 2018).
• The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification says that 12 million hectares of arable land,
enough to grow 20 tonnes of grain, are lost to drought and desertification annually, while 1.5 billion
people are affected in over 100 countries (Bafana, 2017).
Bafana, B. (2017, June 15). The High Price of Desertification: 23 Hectares of Land a Minute - World. Retrieved March 13, 2019, from
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/high-price-desertification-23-hectares-land-minute
The World Bank. (2018, March 19). Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration [Infographic]. Retrieved March 13, 2019, from
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/03/19/groundswell---preparing-for-internal-climate-migration

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In the 1990s, Korea began to lay fiber throughout the country.
Today, 100 percent of all households in Korea are connected.
Here’s the connectivity by age
Falcon, E. (2020, March 16). Why Is South Korea a Global Broadband Leader? Electronic Frontier Foundation.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/why-south-korea-global-broadband-leader; Ramirez, E. (2017, January 31). Nearly
100% Of Households In South Korea Now Have Internet Access, Thanks To Seniors. Forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/elaineramirez/2017/01/31/nearly-100-of-households-in-south-korea-now-have-internet-
access-thanks-to-seniors/

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Wealthy countries have the infrastructure and information networks to mitigate global threats relatively
quickly. Korea was hit with a global virus in 2017 – MERS and eliminated it within months while other
countries are still trying to completely eliminate it.
Oh, M., Park, W. B.,
Park, S.-W., Choe, P.
G., Bang, J. H., Song,
K.-H., … Kim, N. J.
(2018). Middle East
respiratory
syndrome: what we
learned from the
2015 outbreak in the
Republic of Korea.
The Korean Journal
of Internal Medicine,
33(2), 233–246.
https://doi.org/10.39
04/kjim.2018.031

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Thus, there is a new logic to funding emerging
Individual governments
Old Logic
Projects
Political Influence/
Economic Ties
Regional, global and
multilateral entities
Globally linked issues
Mitigation of huge threats
to markets, governments
and human security
New Logic
Source of funding
Focus of funding
Purpose of funding

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World Economic Forum: Risk Report 2019:
Failure of climate change mitigation and
adaptation
Failure of national governance
Large-scale involuntary migration
Profound social instability
Unemployment and underemployment
Adverse consequences of technological
advances

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Can knowledge economics provide a way
for engineers to tackle poverty?
• there is a real-world context that engineers can work with
√ the structure is founded in something sustainable
The linked global world has a set of big problems and it needs
your networked communities stabilized as part of the solution
• there is an identifiable way for funding the work.

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The new source of funding
SOCIAL IMPACT FUNDING

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When Mohammad Yusuf first approached the World Bank to fund his idea for
Grameen Bank, they turned him down. Only when he showed success, did they come
to him to offer to fund him… then he turned them down. Today, Grameen Foundation
is estimated to be worth $1.6 billion with annual revenue of $160 million – still
giving out small loans to the poorest of the poor.
When Ushahidi began, they laid out a platform for Kenyans to report violence at
polling places in a perceived corrupt election using their cell phones. Mostly
volunteers mapped the reports so people could see what was happening throughout
the country. Today, Ushahidi’s software is used throughout the world to map crisis
situations – notably used to map resources and problems during the Haiti earthquake.
The volunteers have formed several business and innovations.
Funders have learned their lessons… The new funding….
Supports innovations ON THE GROUND which are designed to solve local
problems at the community level AND ARE NETWORKED. They strengthen
communities (which solve larger global problems) , can be sustainable, and
may end up making profits.

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There’s a logic to this development
•It began with venture capital
• Now its social impact funding
• Some social impact funding comes from the big philanthropic funders
like Gates Foundation
• Some social impact funding comes from investors who are beginning to
recognize that projects that begin as something designed to help
communities often end up making a lot of money
• But like the venture before it for knowledge-based companies, they need
to build the network first, and then they see the returns… maybe ten
years later

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https://www.globalinnovationexchange.org/browse/funding

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https://www.globalinnovationexchange.org/browse/funding

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Can knowledge economics provide a way
for engineers to tackle poverty?
• there is a real-world context that engineers can work with
• the structure is founded in something sustainable
√there is an identifiable way for funding the work.
Social impact funding is “up and coming,” and replacing the old project
funding. It has identifiable stages of development. It is available as grants
and by capital investors.

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Can knowledge economics provide a way
for engineers to tackle poverty?
Answer:
YES
…. and African engineers are uniquely positioned to take the lead because…
• You know these communities
• It is just such communities that can show the largest benefits
• The knowledge value generated from such communities has the greatest
value to the world and to the communities
• You combine knowledge of the communities with engineering skills

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You have the competitive
advantage…. Get to work