Trip at the Bottom of the Pyramid

I guess this title sounds interesting enough to make you read this posting. However, instead of some fascinating travel stories I am going to write a bit about the project I am working on these days (The rainy season has already started in Oslo anyway…so I have to use my imagination to travel).

The Bottom of the Pyramid

The Bottom of the Pyramid theory refers to the largest and the poorest socio-economic group in the world. Nowadays billions of people on our planet are living their everyday life with an average income of 2-3 USD per a day. Living without proper food, education, electricity, running water, telephone access…We don’t think too much of this. How much did I pay for my new pair of sneakers i am wearing right now? (probably not much compared to Oslo prices, but it cost more than 2 USD) How much did you? Are you reading this? You are lucky then, because one third of the people on Earth are illiterate.

So, there is a gap. What can we do with that? Offering them aid? That is the first, general reaction on how to help them. This was in fact, the general reaction of the “western world” on this issue for a long time. Bud did it changed anything? Giving aid for centuries did not really fulfilled the hopes of eliminating poverty, moreover it contributed to maintain the existing inefficient systems in the emerging countries and conserved the gap between poor and rich.

How to Use Telecommunication to Help?

So, what can we do? And why am i talking about this? The reason is that there are several initiatives in Telenor at the moment which are targeting the so called “Bottom of the Pyramid” markets and I was lucky to work on one of them in the last months. The goal of these kind of activities is to empower the poor people of emerging markets by enabling them to access to information, to telecommunication services, to internet and to the world…(of course with an EBITDA margin which warms up the heart of a CFO as well). So, this is what I call a win-win game! So, we are working on something like this at the moment with my colleagues.

I suggest you to visit the photo exhibition of Jonas Bendiksen in Noble Peace Center (info: at http://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/?aid=9071453) if you are here in Oslo. Anyway I will keep you updated. Only if you are interested of course…If not, I can write more about beers, pubs, girls, whatever in Oslo. Or even about the rain…