:Michael Anuzis

What if the ambitious youth of developing countries had a better understanding of banking, finance, and physics than the typical adult in the developed world? We’ll see examples of such individuals emerge within five years… despite a lack of properly resourced educational institutions in their area.

What will they need?

1) Affordable/ubiquitous internet access (ETA 2010, see my last post)
2) A device capable of streaming online video (MIT’s $100 laptops may not be cheap enough, but mobile phones are proliferating all over the developed world… throw Android into the equation and we’re gold.)
3) Free educational videos covering all topics from basic kindergarten/first grade math up through calculus, linear algebra, finance, physics, etc.: Khan Academy

Access to high quality education is no longer a luxury for the affluent. It’s exciting to imagine the world of opportunity that will open to the coming generations of children & entrepreneurs in the developing world as the playing field levels…

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Had an idea this morning for a huge social impact in Africa. To bring you up to speed quickly I’ll summarize three articles as background in 1 sentence each:

1) By late 2010 high-speed internet access will be cheap/affordable across most of Africa: http://www.o3bnetworks.com/press_quickstart.html?mod=2_1571_leftbox

2) Small pockets of people doing SMS messaging to inform farmers of fair market prices are helping to improve the income/economic efficiency of their regions:
http://whiteafrican.com/2008/12/01/tanzanian-farmers-and-their-sms-empowered-market-spy/

3) Ushahidi, an innovative African web startup that “Crowd Sources Crisis Information” has been hugely successful: http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2008/11/11/ushahidis-volunteers-rock/

Imagine a site that crowd-sources fair pricing information – the same info currently exchanged on a small/unorganized scale via SMS messaging. A site as simple as Twitter could be used with success today, but a site designed for the job that tracked pricing information simultaneously across thousands of products would bring market efficiency incredibly fast.

It’ll be amazing to see the explosive pace of innovation coming out of Africa in the next three years.

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