Day: November 11, 2003

The BBC reported in August that Zanzibar is the latest developing country to take advantage of cellular phones to route around unreliable, expensive state-run phone systems.

According to BBC reporter Daniel Dickinson, Zanzibar cell phone company Zantel has enrolled 45,000 subscribers.

As in other countries, cellular phones may have their drawbacks, including expense, but they are often hands down better than the monopoly land-line companies.

According to the BBC, it can take 4-5 years to obtain a landline in Zanzibar, and generally only the wealthy have the resources to navigate their way through the red tape and bureaucracy.

Other developing nations are turning to Internet-based protocols for voice communications to route around the obstacles thrown up by traditional telephone carriers in their country.

If these nations would just learn to free their most important resource — their people — to solve problem in a market setting, they wouldn’t be “developing” for long.

Source:

Zanzibar’s mobile revolution. Daniel Dickinson, The BBC, August 12, 2003.

So McDonald’s does not want people to use the term “McJobs” to refer to low end, menial jobs that have little chance for advancement. Well, of course, what better way to make sure people don’t use the term than to issue press releases and make statements so that every news media outlet around reports on the controversy over the word.

Maybe what McDonald’s needs is a new public relations McStrategy.

The Associated Press reported back in May on technological advances in farming that would supposedly help make farming more profitable. Any and all technological advances in farming are certainly welcome, but the effect of such innovations has historically been — and will certainly continue to be — to make farming less rather than more profitable in the long term.

The technology being highlighted by the AP is precision agriculture and described the experiences of farmers using global positioning systems and computers to “evaluate the field’s fertility on an almost row-by-row basis.”

That sort of incredibly detailed information is then used to automate exactly what crops are planted, how much fertilizer they receive, etc. This sort of technology is still in the early stages, but eventually the result will be higher yields at lower costs which will be good for everyone.

Well, everyone except for farmers. If successful, the higher yields and lower costs will soon attract other farmers and pretty soon the price farm commodities will experience price pressure from competition. Consumers win, the number of hungry people in the world will decline, but farmers will be stuck in the sort of technological arms race that has been going on for literally thousands of years.

They don’t call them commodities for nothing.

Source:

Technology could make farming more profitable. Associated Press, May 12, 2003.

In August, the World Trade Organization brokered a final deal to bring cheaper generic drugs to the developing world. Poverty in developing countries makes it difficult for individuals and governments there to afford expensive medications that fight diseases such as AIDS.

Under World Trade Organization rules, developing countries could produce generic drugs for domestic consumption, but could not export or import such generics. The new WTO agreement allows developing countries to import generic drugs produced in other countries provided that it is done to “protect public health” rather than for commercial exploitation.

The pact also requires developing countries to take steps to ensure that such generics are not smuggled into developed countries. Generics produced for developing countries, for example, will have to be packaged differently or be of a different color or shape than the non-generics sold in the developed world.

Sources:

WTO gives final approval to cheap drugs deal. Associated Press, August 30, 2003.

World Trade Organization finally agrees cheap drugs deal. Fiona Fleck, British Medical Journal, 2003;327:517 (6 September).