Apps: Poverty's New Foe

Poverty's got a new enemy: Apps. We sort of knew that would happen. The aid these gadgets provide during catastrophes has been widely known. The donations made through apps alone are just one of many examples. To up the ante, the World Bank is sponsoring a competition to develop new and more sophisticated applications in hopes to boost the institution's clout over poverty.

In a rather unusual, documentary-style video, World Bank President Robert Zoellick challenged  experts to come up with software applications, data visualization tools or other mediums that analyze and help grapple the world’s pressing problems. The competition's name is “Apps for Development” and its programs can be web-based, for mobile, desktop or other uses. There are only two requirement: that it uses the World Bank Data Catalog and that it acknowledges one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MGDs).

This isn’t the first time technology has lend international aid groups a hand. Experts have devised several applications meant to raise awareness — and money — for these important issues. CharityFinder is one of these helpful apps. Through an 1800-database of non-profit causes, user can locate and donate to their favorite charity. Another application, Compassion, lets users profile a child they’d like to sponsor in Africa, South America, Asia or the Caribbean.

But there’s a big gap between these applications and the ones the World Bank hopes to sponsors. Programmers are expected to build apps that target specific problems. Their modality must use existing data in such a way that it renders real results.

The advantages of the initiative are several. First, the challenge is bound to improve the current data management technology and multiply its uses. This will allow policy makers to make faster, better-informed decisions about existing problems or acknowledge problems that the institutions didn’t know existed (hint: the World Bank hopes that those "closest to problems in developing countries" pitch some interesting apps).

The enterprise will surely get some of the world's brightest minds working for altruist causes. It's hard to avoid thinking the World Bank is tapping on the millennium's new tool for cost effectiveness, crowdsourcing, to do its work. Will the $45,000 in prizes and further financial support make the work worthwhile? Only time will tell.

For some, saving the world might be incentive enough.

Photo Credit: BuddhaMunx