The “ICT hummingbird” pollinates the world with knowledge

Published regularly throughout the year, Transform is a platform for conversations about how digital technology is re-shaping the present, while giving readers a glimpse of the future.

In this edition:

Tech’s two-edged sword can fight poverty – or make it worse

ICT can play a breakthrough role in ending poverty, raising crop yields, revolutionizing retail commerce, and making healthcare and education more widely available, says well-known economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

But the Director of Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development also warns that “if the digital divide widens, ICT can exacerbate inequalities and leave weaker, poorer, and less educated parts of society even further behind.”

The key, he tells Huawei Editor-in-Chief Gavin Allen, is to ensure universal access to the skills and digital platforms needed across society. 

Read the full interview with Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

“Immersive, interactive, and intuitive”: an optimistic view of the internet’s future  

Some people find the metaverse scary. Who wants to live in a virtual world instead of the real one?

But Dr. Christina Yan Zhang, CEO of the Metaverse Institute, is optimistic. “We’ve already tried to map out all the challenges and prepared for the worst scenarios,” she said in a recent interview with Huawei Transform magazine. “We do not have any room left to fear anything. Our focus is to identify the most effective and pragmatic solutions to address any challenges experienced in the process.”

In fact, Yan Zhang says, the metaverse will actually increase the odds of success when there’s no room for error. “The most important use case of the metaverse is for simulating and optimizing real-world construction projects that are too expensive to fail,” she says, pointing as an example to the US$500 billion smart city in Saudi Arabia known as NEOM. Metaverse technologies can also be used for risky surgical procedures, or to predict how large numbers of people would evacuate a stadium during a fire or earthquake.

Read the full interview with Christina Yan Zhang.

Tech can help the poor move back from the brink

After researching poverty for 40 years, Julian May has come to some pretty stark conclusions.

“Poor people experience more shocks, and are less able to protect themselves from them,” says May, a professor at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa who also holds the UNESCO Chair in Science and Education for African Food Systems.

May says most economies don't work well for poor people. “If you have a bright idea and you’ve got qualifications, you can borrow money from a bank. But the talented poor can't turn their talent into a stream of income” because most banks won’t lend to them.        

Read the full interview with Julian May.

Tech helps African countries facilitate currency exchange

In 2009, Elizabeth Rossiello was working in Nairobi, Kenya as a rating analyst for a European investment bank. Her financial background enabled her to quickly spot several gaps in the market.

“When abroad, it was impossible to send money back into Kenyan shillings,” she says. “Millions of people traveled across Africa for work but could not top up or send payments home.”

Today, Elizabeth is Founder and CEO of AZA, a leading cross-border payments provider that helps businesses buy, sell, settle, and pay in G20 and African currencies.

In this interview with Transform, she explains how easier currency change fosters African prosperity.

 “Silvering the net” for digital immigrants

Older people aren’t stupid, they just need help adapting to tech, says Frank Leyhausen.

Leyhausen is CEO of Reifegrad4, an organization that helps test the demographic resilience of new business ideas. He’s based in Germany, where, in just two years, one-quarter of the population will be 65 or older.

“China, India, and Japan have similar demographics,” Leyhausen writes. “This global shift is creating many challenges, one of which is helping the elderly embrace digital technology.” 

There is “a latent ageism, which seems to plague many societies that are digitalizing quickly,” he says. Those societies tend to blame seniors for being unable to adapt quickly to rapid technological change.

But there are better ways of bringing “silver surfers” up to speed. He lists several in this article in the latest edition of Transform magazine.

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