Innovating to Break the Cycle Of Poverty and Violence

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2010-03-04 16:08:00 UTC
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In his seminal 2007 book The Bottom Billion, development economist Paul Collier identified the cyclical relationship between poverty and conflict that keep fragile states locked into an extremely self-destructive cycle. But now, through an innovation contest and conference scheduled in Cape Town, South Africa later this spring, the World Bank is trying to bring social innovators using new technology and ideas together to break this cycle.

The Innovation Fair: Moving Beyond Conflict will be held from April 12-15, and feature the voices of 30 innovators who are creating new projects in one of four thematic areas, including:

  • Using technology to facilitate access to basic services

  • Improving government accountability through technological services

  • Reducing incentives for crime and preventing youth violence

  • Addressing violence through multi-country strategies

So what type of projects are they interested in? There are a lot of projects I can think of that resonate with these goals. FrontlineSMS:Medic is using technology to make it easy for rural clinics to communicate with patients, and it would be great to see this applied to government-run health programs as well. Tools like Ushahidi are being used to monitor elections and distribute better information about the way governments are responding to crisis. The CeaseFire model that treats violence as an epidemiological problem in need of intervention could easily be taken to new contexts beyond the south side of Chicago where it has grown up.

I can't overstate how vital it is for us to apply all the tools we have at our disposal to break the cycles of poverty that lead so easily to conflict. This is only going to become more important as climate change creates new resource shortages that can easily lead to violence. In today's world, no violent conflict is localized, and it's not a metaphorical statement to say what happens anywhere affects us here.

To learn more about the relationship of conflict and climate, check out this report by the International Crisis Group. To learn more about the Innovation Fair, check out their website or watch the video below.

Innovation Fair: Moving beyond Conflict from WBI Innovation on Vimeo.

Applications for innovators who want to present at the fair are open until March 7th.

Photo Credit: jbachman01

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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