Remarks by
Professor Muhammad Yunus
Founder and Managing Director, Grameen Bank

Opening Ceremony TELECOM WORLD 06
Hong Kong, 3 December 2006

Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen

It is real honour and privilage to address this distinguished audience today.

Let me start by thanking Mr Utsumi for his kind words and his invitation to participate in this special event. I would also like to thank Mr Wu Bangguo, State Leader of the National Council Peoples Republic of China as well as Mr Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong administration for your warm welcome here today.

Allow me to pick up on something that Mr Utsumi mentioned during his remarks a few moments ago. He noted the fact that this room is filled with many of the leaders of the global ICT sector and that collectively we have what is required to bring the benefits of ICTs to the millions of people currently left behind, if we choose to act.

Building on the Secretary-General’s thoughts, I would like to put forward some ideas on how we can together lever the potential of ICTs to empower the world’s poor. I will also take this opportunity to issue a challenge to the leaders of the global ICT sector, including those of you here today, to join Grameen, ITU and other partners to take action, to get this job done.

ICTs offer an opportunity unprecedented in all of human history to end poverty. Despite well-intentioned declarations in the past though, the number of people living in extreme poverty continues to rise.

The potential of ICTs to help eradicate poverty will remain unrealized unless we let the poor benefit from market forces as well. It is no fault of the market that it does not naturally solve the world social problems such as poverty. Fault lies in the absence of enough social conscience-driven entrepreneurs in the market place to make it happen. We need to fill this vacuum by creating an environment, which encourages larger companies as well as entrepreneurs to take up the challenge of applying their talents to achieve social progress.

Poverty is not created by the poor people themselves. They don’t lack anything intrinsically. They are endowed with the same human qualities as anybody else around the world.

All human beings have enormous potential inherent in them. The problem is that poor people do not get the opportunity to ever discover their own potential because of the social and economic barriers built around them.

ICTs have the capacity to remove these barriers most effectively and sustainably. No other technology has ever had this remarkable capacity to work directly against the barriers around a single individual. This is the most exciting part of ICTs we must recognize and make use of, with all the skill and commitment we can muster.

There is an enormous amount of goodwill and commitment at all levels to end poverty in the world today - more than ever before. World leaders have declared a unified goal to reduce the number of poor people by half by 2015, as part of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. One cannot be more categorical than this.

To reinforce this global commitment, leaders at the World Summit on the Information Society recognized the important role of ICTs as a catalyst to achieving global poverty reduction objectives, and set a series of targets to help guide collective efforts. Many initiatives are currently underway to this end.

Attempts are being made to build inexpensive computers and simple, wireless handheld ICT devices, as well as create content and expand connectivity to bring health services, education and business opportunities to the poor. Some are doing so using voice command, touch screen, and speech technology to reach illiterate users. Many more exciting initiatives will emerge.

The poor, and especially their children, can use and benefit from Information and Communications Technology when it is available at a price they can afford. They are as intelligent and resourceful as the rest of the population and are innovators and entrepreneurs. They can be among your very hardest working and most productive customers, business partners and employees. They just need access to the tools that most of us in this room take for granted.

It is in this context that I am pleased to announce that ITU and Grameen have today signed a new agreement, as part of our collaboration through the Connect the World initiative, to launch a virtual, global ‘ICT Empowerment Network.’ This network of partners will be devoted to a collective global effort to combine the power of ICTs with micro-credit financing to help the poor earn sustainable income. In doing so, the Network will focus on developing and implementing activities in three key priority areas: 1) ICT technical solutions, 2) sustainable business models, and 3) capacity-building.

To make this initiative a success, Grameen will reach out to more than 3,000 microfinance organizations and 100 million borrowers worldwide, while ITU will lever the support and participation of its 191 member states and some 650 private sector members from around the world.

Several Connect the World partners have already expressed an interest in participating in this network, including Cisco Systems, QUALCOMM as well as a new consortium out of Cambridge called “Enclusion”, comprising Aptivate, an NGO, and two local specialist companies with expertise in affordable wireless access and device design, Sagentia and Plextek. We welcome more to join us in this open, multi-stakeholder, collective endevour.

ICT designers need to be given the challenge and opportunity to show their talent in designing equipment and devices which will solve the problems of the poor, especially poor women. To inspire their work, in the ICT Empowerment Network, these designers will have pictures of poor women in Bangladesh, Somalia or Bolivia on their desks to remind themselves who they are working for. The designer has to start the work by asking himself/herself the question: What are her daily problems? How can my device or appliance help her find solutions to these problems?

While technology is essential, so too are the skills required to use the technology as well as sound business models to ensure sustainability.
That is why we will also help more people get access to ICT training, through micro-credit loans for their studies. And, we will provide micro-credit financing to help newly trained graduates of ICT training launch their own ICT related businesses to help build a sustainable, critical mass of ICT activity in their communities.

There is a view in some quarters that ICTs are totally irrelevant for poor people. ICTs are too complicated for the poor who are generally illiterate; ICTs are too expensive; the poor don’t need fancy ICT gadgets, they need food etc. The skeptics will always be there.

When we began our cell-phone company, Grameen Phone, the skeptics said: “You’ve got to be crazy to give cell phones to illiterate poor women in the villages who never saw a conventional telephone in their lives; she would not know how to dial a number; anyway, whom is she going to call ? It’s too expensive for her to afford.”

Today, everybody in Bangladesh looks at Grameen telephone ladies in the villages with admiration, and some, with jealousy. They are doing a roaring business selling telephone services to the villagers. Another Grameen company is setting up internet kiosks in the villages and running them on a commercial basis. We are pleasantly surprised to see the response from the villagers in using the Internet and other computer services. Young people are signing up to learn computer skills for a fee. In villages where electricity does not exist, solar panels are powering the cell phones and computers. Grameen has set up a Solar Energy Company to bring solar energy to those villages.

Micro-credit and ICTs both have a common capacity – the capacity to empower poor people, particularly poor women. Much of this cannot be measured in dollars and cents. I am convinced that the best way to change a society is to give dignity and self-reliance to the poor women in that society. Both ICTs and micro-credit do that very effectively. They mutually reinforce each other when it comes to addressing the issue of poverty.

As the Secretary-General mentioned, today we have 265,000 telephone ladies in Bangladesh. We now want to start adding Internet access at a price the poor can afford. Imagine these telephone ladies offering Internet services. I am absolutely sure they’ll be successful in that business too!

Now imagine empowering poor women with access to micro-credit financing, mobile phones and the Internet in countries all around the world. We would unleash a burst of creative and entrepreneurial energy that would change millions of lives.

Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

At the beginning of my remarks, I warned you that I would leave you with a challenge. This is what I have done. The potential for progress is great. And so are the problems were are trying to solve. But we have everything we need to get the job done.

The ICT sector is better positioned, perhaps than any other sector, to empower the poor to improve their own lives with sustainable, socially-conscious market-based approaches, if we put our energy and resources together.

I look forward to working with you to realize this vision.

Thank you.