@MWC: Millennium Villages, wireless and a break from the trade show blahs

BARCEOLONA, Spain – Amid the bustle of business models and clanging of product announcements, I was surprised to enjoy a moment of clarity during Ericsson’s press conference here yesterday.
The event began as expected, with clean-cut executives discussing revenues, profits, product strategies and other topics that can fry a normal person’s brain if such chatter goes on too long. But, seemingly out of the blue, Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg saved me from wondering whether the TDD or FDD version of LTE was better by introducing guest speaker Jeffrey Sachs, special advisor to the U.N. secretary general (currently Ban Ki-moon).
Sachs was on hand to discuss the U.N.’s work on the Millennium Villages, a topic with which I was not familiar. Turns out the Millennium development project stems from a meeting of U.N. nations in 2000 to “set time-bound and measurable targets for halving extreme poverty by 2015.” The project focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty is reflected in hunger, lack of education and prevalent disease.
According to the U.N.’s Millennium project Web page, the Millennium Villages efforts “seek to end extreme poverty by working with the poorest of the poor, village by village throughout Africa, in partnership with governments and other committed stakeholders, providing affordable and science-based solutions to help people lift themselves out of extreme poverty.”
Those working on the Millennium Villages hope to transition the areas from subsistence farming to self-sustaining commercial activity. And, naturally, wireless is a big part of this.
According to Sachs – a captivating speaker when compared with Ericsson’s reserved Swedes – the introduction of wireless technology to these African villages has been nothing short of revolutionary.
“The defining aspect of poverty is isolation,” Sachs said, explaining that cellphones immediately alleviate such seclusion. Wireless “is absolutely the most powerful tool for the poorest of the poor.”
Specifically, Sachs explained that cellphones can help farmers determine where to sell their crops without traipsing across the countryside. The devices can also connect healthcare workers with necessary training, information and – perhaps most importantly – those suffering from illness and who need them the most.
Sachs said some new African cellphones users even rely on their phones for banking and financial transactions, a function that he pointed out is still not widely available in his hometown of New York City.
“It has completely changed the life of these villages,” Sachs said of the introduction of wireless, adding that the rollout of wireless was in large part driven by market forces – supply and demand – rather than charity and altruism.
“The tool itself is powerful,” he said.
Amid the hype pouring out of all corners of the wireless industry during this year’s Mobile World Congress, it’s easy to cast a cynical eye on Sachs’ presence at the show. Gregarious and well-spoken, Sachs is the perfect feel-good narrator for an industry trapped in the throes of a recession, bussed in to provide a spin on the power and goodness of wireless in untapped, emerging markets.
Luckily, today is only the second day of the show, and I haven’t yet drowned in my own skepticism. Thus, I applaud Sachs’ and Ericsson’s work on the Millennium Villages, I’m proud to be a part of the wireless industry (albeit a minor part), and I hope that such technologies really can make a difference.