It wasn’t so long ago that mobile telephones served the same purpose as their corded cousins. Flash forward just a couple of decades and today’s mobile phones are the equivalent of one-stop shopping at the biggest shopping mall.
Get directions, listen to music, call up dinner menus, read news feeds, monitor home security systems. In the developing world, the mobile telephone is equally useful. Mobile devices put banking in the hands of people who live in areas without brick-andmortar financial institutions and supply rural farmers with pricing information they need to get top prices for their crops.
It’s that kind of innovation that USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah hopes to harness for the developing world. In early October, Shah unveiled USAID’s first Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) awards to eight companies and institutions working on devices and technologies they believe will move the needle on innovation in the developing world. The grants range from just under $100,000 to just over $230,000—$1 million total.
“We need to try new approaches and take more risks, and commit to rigorous measurement and evaluation at every turn, so that we can discover what is truly effective and replicate it,” Shah said in announcing the grants in New York.
USAID is partnering with institutions that have creative ideas to aid international development, but need capital to see out their plans.
More than 100 proposals from would-be innovators were submitted in the first round of the USAID competition. The eight winners range from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), to Dimagi Inc., a technology company in Massachusetts.
The plan is modeled in some ways on the Development Credit Authority and Global Development Alliance—USAID’s more traditional ways of leveraging government funding with money from corporations and foundations. But the new arrangement is aimed at high-risk ventures.
“We know that great ideas and development breakthroughs come from all different places,” said Maura O’Neill, USAID’s chief innovation officer. “Often, it is a combination of different people and organizations working together in new ways to create a way to identify and grow innovative ideas. Our focus is on faster breakthroughs that scale to have global impact.”
UCSD, for example, is using its grant to research whether mobile phones in Afghanistan can lead to more transparent elections and reduce fraud. In the study, Afghans in certain polling locations will use cell phones to snap a photo of the election vote tallies and transmit the image to a central collection center.
Dimagi is also picking up the phone to help rural Indian residents improve access to health care. The company created an app, or application, called Comm- Care that is aimed at providing maternal health education regardless of literacy level.
Another venture is looking at developing an E-bike powered by a fuel cell. The bike will be able to travel up to 100 miles by battery power—the fuel cell can be removed to power other devices—and will emit only water vapor and air exhaust.
In a statement, Michael Lefenfeld, founder and CEO of SiGNa Chemistry Inc., developer of the E-bike, said the “fuel-cell power source is the type of transformative clean energy solution that will have an enormous impact on developing, third-world countries throughout the world, from making it possible to deliver life-saving medicines to the rural poor to providing a safe, efficient way to power emergency power systems during disasters.”
DIV is also looking to build scientific expertise at the Agency. Harvard University economist Michael Kremer, who first came up with the idea for DIV, will lead that part of the initiative. He will also help recruit USAID innovation fellows to develop projects alongside Agency staffers.
“For too long, USAID has taken on the bad habits of a large government bureaucracy,” Shah said in his New York speech.
But he also said DIV can exploit the advantages of a large agency like USAID, including global presence and impact, massive buying power, and scaling up efforts at lower cost.
“We can move development into a new realm,” Shah added, “with the discipline and focus of the private and entrepreneurial sectors, and the scale and reach of the public sector.”
