beyondbrics

During the Millennium Development Goals summit, which runs from Monday to Wednesday this week, beyondbrics will be posting blogs on the development debate from Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the UN Secretary General on the MDGs. Sachs is also director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a member of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development. His first post is here:

As 140 world leaders arrive in New York for brainstorming and action planning at the MDG summit, the focus of attention on the eve of the event has been broadband in developing countries.

The digital revolution has already put wind in the sails of development, most notably as mobile phones have ended the isolation of billions of people living in rural areas that are now connected by telephony.

On Sunday the Broadband Commission handed a report to Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, in which it proposes a pathway to deliver universal access to broadband in support of the MDGs.

The MDGs involve every aspect of life in poor communities: income poverty, hunger, education, children’s health, safe childbirth, disease control, and environmental safety.

Mobile telephony and broadband access (whether through wireless or fibre or a combination of the two), can contribute meaningfully to every single MDG. The gains are breathtaking in promoting livelihoods, improved health, better schools, and other areas.

In the Millennium Villages in Africa, the advent of mobile telephony (brought to very distant communities by Ericsson and local mobile providers as part of their commitment to the MDGs) has changed life dramatically.

The village is suddenly connected to the market with regular price quotes, phone-based banking, and is better able to arrange transport. The community health workers are empowered by phone-based systems to treat malaria and other diseases. The schools are connected to the web by wireless. And countless more applications are being scaled up.

The Broadband Commission has begun to chart a course towards universal access to broadband, looking to overcome the challenges of physical infrastructure, legal and regulatory arrangements, and content provision. The next steps will be solving practical problems in alliance with the world’s poorest countries.

As is typical of MDG problem-solving, the Broadband Commission includes leaders of government, industry, academia, and international organizations, and from rich and poor countries. A central key to MDG success is working today across many sectors of the world economy.

The next three days will work largely on the Broadband Commission model: mobilize the global community across key sectors to promote cutting-edge technologies and management systems that can accelerate progress in fighting poverty, hunger, and disease.

New technologies can triple food yields, improve nutrition through locally produced foods, resuscitate newborns, save mothers in child birth, fight malaria, ensure safe drinking water, bring solar-based electricity to the homes, and create other advances that are vital for life and wellbeing.

Yet all of these breakthrough opportunities, including broadband, require a high degree of cooperation if technologies are to reach and benefit the world’s poorest people.

The diplomats have negotiated a meaningful framework for the next five years, which will be debated, perhaps revised, and approved at the end of the summit.

The world leaders and thousands of development practitioners meeting in New York will be discussing the practicalities.

Turning ideas to real investments on the ground, in the drylands of Africa, the steppes of Central Asia, the Pacific Islands, the highlands of the Andes, and other regions struggling to overcome poverty, will be the drama and challenge of the coming three days.