In this talk, Dr Glennerster will discuss how technology has driven improvements in income and health in poor countries, why there is too little innovation designed to meet the needs of the poor, and the promise of the data revolution.
The lives of the poor around the world have been transformed by relatively simple but powerful technologies from mobile phones to high yielding wheat seeds. Many of these technologies were initially invented for the rich world but developing countries adapted them to great effect: mobile money, for example, first took off in Kenya. But there remains an important gap in technologies designed specifically for the needs of developing countries. We have high performance electric cars but not reliable clean replacements for the diesel generators that power the electricity in too many small businesses across sub-Saharan Africa.
The data revolution has the potential to power a new wave of technological innovation that could have a profound effect on poverty. It offers the chance to reach millions of people at low cost and the rapidly falling cost of data and data analytics opens the opportunity to tailor solutions to the needs of local populations.