The Idea Network

Article by Christian Kreutz

The Internet has become a global platform for radical new forms of cooperative development work. Now those in need search for potential donors themselves. Traditional development organizations can learn a lot from this dynamic process.

Adyaka, a village in the heart of Uganda, needed a new vocational school. Yet none of the village’s 4,000 inhabitants had the skills to develop a business plan, and the state itself had not been forthcoming with assistance. So the inhabitants of Adyaka set out on their own by appealing to the whole world for support via the Internet. Through the global neighborhood network Nabuur.com, a group of volunteers are now working together with the villagers to develop the business plan. Adyaka is not alone. A total of 150 communities in search of support have taken advantage of the 10,000 volunteers offering their expertise on Nabuur.com. The web-based help network is used by participants from around the world to discuss approaches to development, generate ideas, and get feedback.

Nabuur.com is only one of many new platforms that have recently sprung up. They all exploit the Internet’s networking potential to promote new development ideas. This has given development organizations new possibilities for empowering people to help themselves. It has also led to a redefinition of the aid seeker: now it is those in need who look for donors, not vice-versa.

Since its appearance ten years ago, the Internet has become, among other things, a multilayered medium for transnational social networking. Under the catchword “Web 2.0,” Internet users now have the opportunity to develop new individual arenas for action through networks, exchanging knowledge, and working together on solutions. How can biomass be used to generate energy? The answer is provided by Howtopedia, a platform for applied knowledge that supplies simple sets of technical instructions.

The technology is secondary: the main motors of this spontaneous Internet movement are openness, transparency, networking, and a focus on innovation. Cross-national project ideas are developed, uniting a wide range of experts, interested parties, and, above all, people in need of support. Collaborative work is carried out according to the peer-to-peer principle, i.e. on the basis of a relaxed, direct global discourse. Businesses work together with civil society, individuals, and groups in ad-hoc cross-national alliances. Charles Leadbetter, author of the forthcoming book We-Think: The Power of Mass Creativity,¹ sees unlimited creative potential in these flat, self-organized networks that do not require classic organization. This direct, decentralized networking has also led to new forms of cooperative development work. Globalgiving.org, for example, is a platform that donors use to promote projects that guarantee 85 to 90 percent of the money will be used locally. A project funded through globalgiving.org is transparent from beginning to end. The project’s realization, successes, and failures can be followed on the Internet, as the project is in progress.

The sponsors of these forums increasingly include rich philanthropists. However, the nodal points of these networks are small teams based on individual direct assistance and volunteer work. On Kiva.org, for example, anyone with a computer can contribute to the financing of a fish stall for a market vendor in Ecuador. This exchange of small-scale credit comes in the wake of the worldwide success of microfinancing in combating poverty. According to Kiva.org, they have already financed microcredits to the value of 13 million dollars, with a repayment rate of over 99 percent. Through cooperation with local organizations it has been possible to develop a highly effective and transparent approach that throws the existing strategies of charity organizations into question.

The diaspora increasingly uses the Web to develop and disseminate new ideas that link business and public interest. On Mukuru.com migrants can purchase products for their relatives in Zimbabwe. The mobile phone plays a key role, especially in Africa where sales are growing at the highest rate worldwide. Innovative services allow users to send gifts to friends via their mobile phones and let farmers exchange the latest market information. Migrants not only contribute to the prosperity of their home countries with money transfers, they are also increasingly using the Web in a strategic manner to channel their newly won knowledge into their own development projects. This “brain gain” fosters innovative business models and can offer alternative channels to promote democracy.

In developing countries the Internet is increasingly used as a forum for discussing political, economic, and social change. It is the bloggers who are expanding the frontiers of this citizen journalism. They report on the problems of poverty and critically analyze government policies, as well as the work and role of donors. An example is the Nata Village blog that describes the day-to-day struggle of a village in Botswana against the immunodeficiency syndrome HIV/AIDS. In Egypt, the opposition movement has successfully established a network of activists via the Internet. Human rights activists use weblogs to discuss the current political situation and a homegrown Arab public forum has developed alongside the state-controlled press. Here activists effectively deploy the latest technology, such as footage from mobile phone cameras, to document electoral fraud. These projects prove that processes of change are often less dependent on financial support than on the commitment of activists and their networking.

The local is not marginalized by these global networks. In Africa an independent blogosphere has already been established in Swahili. The worldwide blogger portal Global Voices provides a diverse range of reports that have been translated into other languages on a voluntary basis. The press agency Reuters is also lending its support to Global Voices’s work for press freedom by publishing its reports on the Reuters website.

These new social networks for change open up opportunities for a common dialogue on political development issues. The World Bank has recently launched its third blog with the title “How to end Poverty in South East Asia.” Together with the directors of the World Trade Organization, the World Food Program, and other bodies, the United Nations is seeking a dialogue with development experts and the public. At the launch of the ideas4development blog, Pierre Jacquet, chief economist of the Agence Française de Développement, stated: “The heads of development organizations are often seen as inaccessible bureaucrats. Through this blog the participants will have the opportunity to share their ideas, doubts, and even frustrations.”²

Development organizations such as the German Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) can become more effective through targeted participation in these networks. However, this requires innovative thinking and the opening up of bilateral and multilateral development organizations. The authors of the book Wikinomics,³ Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, argue that only those companies and organizations that network, change their communication culture, and utilize the added value of this productive potential will survive in the idea market.

Those aware of the genuine complexities of development strategies recognize the need for a broad range of expertise and an interdisciplinary approach. The latest report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, demonstrates the necessity of cooperative work on complex problems, as well as the potential benefits to be gained from more open organizations and companies. This does not come easily to many development agencies, which are used to keeping expertise within the organization.

The public and cooperative development of project initiatives via Wiki websites, where text can be edited by any user, is technically simple. But it demands a new culture of knowledge exchange. Many enthusiasts of the new Web believe that the open source code of freely available software creates an opportunity for completely new cooperative solutions. This goes hand in hand with efforts, frequently under the slogan “open access,” to make particular scientific information under limited licensing restrictions freely available.

The cycles of change on the Internet are rapid, the obstacles, in light of this dynamic, significant. The added value of online collaboration must be continually reexamined. The danger of a cacophony of discourses is ever present. No one today can say whether the theory of the “Long Tail,” which sees small niches as the driving force of the Internet, can be successfully applied to cooperative development work. Time will tell whether the Internet’s transparency can prevent the abuse of financial resources.

Restricted access to the Internet clearly represents one major challenge to this new vision of knowledge exchange. The cost of Internet access in many African countries is often higher than in Europe. Another challenge is the lack of necessary training for effective Internet usage. The mobile telephone plays an important role, providing a bridge to the Internet that may prove valuable considering the rapid expansion of phone sales in Africa. At present only a minority in the developing world uses the Internet. Yet particularly the social entrepreneurs and NGOs in Africa have been quick to make use of new online opportunities. Development organizations are slowly joining their ranks.

¹) See www.wethinkthebook.net. The draft text was posted on the Internet last year and the book will be pu blished in 2008.
2) To watch a recording of the press conference go to http://www.ideas4development.org/press-conference/en/.
3) Wikinomics. Die Revolution im Netz (Hanser Fachbuch, 2007).

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