Exponential Growth or Exponential Decline: What Innovation Means in the Developing Countries with COVID-19
Diverse Innovations aims to stimulate discussion related to emerging technologies and their greater implications within global affairs and design. In this month’s publications, we explore interdisciplinary issues related to COVID-19. In last week’s publication, Muriam reviewed a series of technologies used to capture personal data to curb the COVID-19 outbreak.
This was supposed to be the era of exponential growth. Unprecedented successes in business, sustained levels of employment, and blooming demands in global markets made analysts excited about what was coming. Little did anyone know that the clock was ticking. Like an hourglass, the global economy was turned on its head and forced through a congested neck into uncertainty. Headlines with “exponential growth in business” suddenly became “pray for exponential decline of the coronavirus”. One other buzzword remained constant in both addresses — innovation.
From Bill Gates to the United Nations to governments across the world, everyone is looking for innovative ideas to tackle the coronavirus and create means to conduct business in the post 2020 world. However, the question I pose is — what is innovation and who does it impact? After all, innovation is an abstract idea and it does not carry the same meaning for two people, let alone two economies.
Headlines with “exponential growth in business” suddenly became “pray for exponential decline of the coronavirus”.
For a resource-based, capital intensive system as in Canada, technological innovation can have practical implications which can at least provide momentum to the economy, if not absolutely drive it. It has the infrastructure, ability and public support to say “through innovation, Canadians will create and deliver leading technologies to overcome issues created by COVID-19 and to position us well to rebuild our economy in the future,” and act on it. Copy and paste this statement on the front page of a national daily in a low-income country, and find it wrapped around stale bread in the hands of a disconsolate wage labourer.
In countries where human resource was a competitive advantage, the pandemic has caused significant confusion. The re-initiation of market activity is dependent upon consumer demand, which is fuelled by liquid pockets. Those pockets were filled with the payment of daily wages for manual labor in commercial jobs, at workplaces that cannot possibly comply with social distancing. This is a spiral with no foreseeable end, which is evident in the political debate on lockdowns in India, Nepal and Uganda.
Ask them if risk-mitigating robots will secure them home, food and employment and let their bewilderment answer your question.
When we speak of innovation we automatically assume it to be for small, medium, and large companies that cater to the few of us in the developed countries of the West or in the new high rises of the numbered metropolitan cities in the East. If the categorisation is simplistic, it is because the real complication is in the social structures that embrace the other chunk of the world’s population. According to the World Bank, in 2015 there were 734 million people globally who lived on $1.90 a day (that is, in extreme poverty). The coronavirus could push another 40 to 60 million more people below the line into extreme abject poverty. Yet another 40 to 150 million people could see incomes falling to less than $3.20 a day. Ask them if risk-mitigating robots will secure them home, food and employment and let their bewilderment answer your question.
So what must we do? Is innovation redundant? Of course not; innovation is essential. But to make it relevant in Bangladesh, Kenya, or Nigeria, we do what we always do to any concept to make it applicable in the third world — add social. As much as digital innovation or automation need continued interest and investment, so does social innovation.
Stanford Social Innovation Review defines the idea as:
“A novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals”.
Now don’t take me to be of the leftist kind. I am not. The only place I see myself agreeing with Karl Marx (at least, to an extent) is where he says economics is the base of everything. Belief in the power of the market (thank you, Western education) compels me to draw urgency towards social innovation for the humankind. Economic loss is powered by a greater and much more catastrophic human loss. And yes, the enemy is common, but I fail to agree with thinkers on the internet that say the fight is common too. With unequal resources, political structural incapabilities, and draining national reserves, some countries have a bigger fight to win than others. Social innovation can facilitate action here.
One way could be through creative micro-financing and philanthropic funding which can keep money in circulation. Fundación Paraguaya (FP) in Paraguay is collaborating with rural banks and micro-enterprises to extend micro-finance credit to the extremely poor. Other organisations are pitching in too: Vital Capital in sub-Saharan Africa and FINCA International in countries of operation. Another way is to practically plan the opening of the economy. Obviously, in these efforts, richer countries will find more ease than the poorer ones. However, in our attempt to tap numbers in the market, we cannot and must not forget those that once ran the show for us. Developing economies will need solid plans to bounce back. It could be through sequential opening on the basis of age, region, or sector. Allow manufacturers to open before retailers? There is no definite strategy yet. But there needs to be. We need the most creative minds working on this, taking into account all stakeholders.
The world does not lack ideas, neither do we lack people who’re willing to work in the field. However, we need to build on the intention and reach out. The disease is pan-national, and so must be the response. Novel times must not cultivate novel competition. In the near future, there is an apprehension of further deepening inequalities. Once a cure is found or when breakthrough research produces the vaccine, the struggle would be about who gets first access? A rich country which sponsored the research or a developing country with high population density. We are at a point where economics fails in at least one principle — individual self-interest. That will be destructive.
Alimah is a Master of Global Affairs Candidate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto.
