Can Technology Help Reduce Poverty?

There can be little doubt that global poverty is one of the world’s major challenges today. There have been many measures brought forward over the years to attempt to lessen the impacts of extreme poverty around the world which have not always been fully successful. In a changing world, technology may offer the world’s poor more access to the resources they need to work themselves out of poverty. How might this work?

Self-Starting Enterprise

With the right resources at their disposal, even the most impoverished people can begin to make a better living for themselves. Although sustainable development goals have often been the focus of international organizations, many smaller charities and aid missions have looked into the possibilities of small technology grants to help poor communities develop. Today, this often means projects which register their own domain names and run websites which offer local access to goods and services. By registering domains for communities and businesses, local people gain more control over the technology that is there to underpin business development. For too long, the world’s poor have relied on tech giants to provide marketplaces, but with their own registration and website ownership, this is no longer the case so often, allowing poor people to become true self-starters with the entrepreneurial tools they need to succeed online.

Poverty Reduction

Building better business links within poor communities and allowing entrepreneurship to flourish through technology that allows for greater connectivity is one thing. However, technology still has a role to play in making current systems work more effectively. According to the European Commission, this involves making digital technologies more mainstream in poorer global communities. With greater digital take-up, so such communities can share information more effectively, helping them to deal with common issues, such as water sanitation, natural disasters, and other emergencies. It is hoped that digital technology will also help to make farming more effective and resilient, thereby growing the potential for many poor communities for which agriculture is still the backbone.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has many applications that are still being dreamt up. One such AI use case could be in assisting the eradication of world poverty. AI is particularly good at spotting patterns. By assessing aid programs, for example, AI could be leveraged successfully to help determine which ones have been the most effective over time. In turn, this could lead to more successful projects being replicated in other communities and global contexts. That is to say, AI can help people to determine what works best and which pitfalls should be avoided. AI is also a useful tool for financial inclusion, with banking initiatives and financial services being delivered, at least in part, by AI-run servers.

Conclusion

Through greater take-up of localized domain names, more access to digital business tools, and mitigations for many of the problems the world’s poor face, technology is likely to play a larger and larger role in poverty eradication. Few seriously doubt it will be part of the solution to poverty which is why addressing the so-called digital divide between rich and poor is so crucial today.