Fighting Poverty Through Tech at the World Bank
Can a mobile app help farmers sell their crops? Can slaughterhouse waste power a kitchen stove? These are the kinds of problems that infoDev at the World Bank works on. And the person running the whole thing is a Singaporean.
This is part of my retelling of “50 Years of Singapore and the United Nations” (Tommy Koh, Li Lin Chang, Joanna Koh, 2015, ISBN: 978-9814713030).
Chapter 28 is written by Valerie D’Costa, who left Singapore eight years before the book was published to lead infoDev, a programme at the World Bank that supports tech entrepreneurs in developing countries. The idea is simple: help people build sustainable businesses that create jobs and reduce poverty.
What infoDev Actually Does
Valerie likes to say that infoDev helps take innovative ideas “from mind to market.” The programme works across the developing world, with the biggest operations in Africa and East Asia. It helps technology entrepreneurs and startups grow into real businesses.
The best way to understand infoDev is through the people it helps.
A Mobile App for Jamaican Farmers
Jermaine Henry and Janice McLeod are two young Jamaican app developers. They saw a problem that was right in front of them. Jamaican farmers grow great produce but have a hard time selling all of it. The reason? They have to go through middlemen who supply hotels and restaurants. Those middlemen buy only produce that meets strict standards for color and size. Everything else gets left behind to rot.
Jermaine and Janice built AgroCentral, a mobile app that connects hotels and restaurants directly with small farmers. It runs on SMS and web technology. Hotels can find and buy produce straight from the farm. Farmers get better prices. Less food goes to waste.
The pair won first prize at Startup Weekend Jamaica. infoDev found them there and gave them feasibility assessments, business models, and financial sustainability analysis to help the company grow.
Turning Slaughterhouse Waste Into Cooking Gas in Kenya
The Keekonyokie slaughterhouse in Kenya is a community-based Maasai operation. It generates about 10 metric tons of slaughter waste. Instead of just dumping it, they built a biogas digester that converts the waste into gas for cooking. They even store the fuel in used tires, which reduces the environmental impact further.
The problem was getting Kenyan households to actually use the biogas. That is where infoDev’s Kenya Climate Innovation Center (KCIC) in Nairobi came in. The center helped Keekonyokie identify target markets and develop financial and marketing strategies. It also worked with Kenyan policymakers to create incentives for adopting clean fuels.
The result? Keekonyokie started selling biogas cylinders across several towns at Ksh 3,700, which is about US$44. That is exactly half the cost of liquid petroleum gas. When World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim visited the KCIC and saw projects like this, he described these entrepreneurs not just as business people but as “change agents.”
And the context matters. Over 90 percent of Kenyans use wood, charcoal, or kerosene for daily cooking. Those fuels pollute the air and cause serious health problems, including respiratory infections and even death. Clean alternatives like biogas are still rare. Keekonyokie is working to change that.
The Bigger Picture
By the time this chapter was written, the KCIC was supporting 83 enterprises working on clean technology innovations. Thanks to those Kenyan entrepreneurs, about 8,300 people had better access to cleaner water and 49,000 people were using low-carbon energy sources.
And Kenya was just the start. infoDev was setting up Climate Innovation Centers in seven more countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, India, the Caribbean, Morocco, South Africa, and Vietnam.
Valerie also works closely with tech parks, innovation clusters, startup accelerators, seed funds, and government agencies. As she writes, she sees technology and innovation as “great levellers.” They open up access to information and opportunity for people who would otherwise be left out.
Running a US$115 Million Programme
infoDev raises its own money from donor countries. The major donors are Sweden, the UK, Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and Norway. Valerie had never fundraised before joining the World Bank. She had to learn fast. But she came to like the discipline of raising the money she spends. It keeps the programme business-oriented.
By the time of writing, infoDev had grown to a US$115 million programme, all funded by donor support.
Being Singaporean at the World Bank
Valerie’s clients love that she is from Singapore. They admire Singapore’s development story and constantly ask her questions about the choices the country made over 50 years. She has been happy to share her experience from working at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) from 1992 to 2006.
Adjusting to the World Bank was not easy, though. There was a whole new vocabulary to learn. Decision-making is much slower than in Singapore. More bureaucracy. She notes that “decision-making in Singapore is so much faster, more linear and more flexible.” She is not sure she has fully accepted the World Bank’s pace, but her patience has grown.
Leading a team from many different countries has been a learning experience in cross-cultural communication. No two people see things the same way or express themselves the same way. But as she puts it, a lot more unites her team than separates them.
One thing she has been asked many times: why is Singapore not a donor to infoDev? She hopes it will happen one day. Singapore has built a lot of goodwill in the developing world, and its development path is closely studied and admired. There is what she calls a clear “development dividend” for Singapore to tap into by engaging more with emerging countries.
Why She Left Singapore
Valerie ends the chapter with something personal. She looks back on eight years at the World Bank and realizes she had to leave the relative comfort of Singapore to experience it all. The big successes, the hard knocks, the profound lessons. She was looking for a new challenge and wanted to try things she had never done before.
She certainly got what she wished for.
About the Author
Valerie D’Costa is infoDev’s Program Manager. Before joining infoDev, she served as Director of the International Division at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), where she formulated the Singapore Government’s policies on international ICT issues. She was a member of the Singapore team that negotiated the free trade agreement with the United States. She received a Public Administration Medal from the Singapore Government. She holds a Bachelor of Laws from the National University of Singapore and a Master of Laws from University College London.
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