GVA's Garrity on Using Technology to End Tuberculosis (Audio)

a gain of six tenths of one percent. SMP five hundred index at a seven month high, has fed Chair Janet Yellen signals the economy is still strengthening enough to withstand gradual increases in borrowing costs, despite recent signs of slower chop growth. Gold up four ninety the ounce to twelve forty seven, a gain of four tenths of one percent. Crewed up one point one percent. Forty nine seventy six per barrel of West Texas Intermediate again there of two

point four percent. I'm Charlie Pellett and that's a bloom Bird business flash. Is taking stock with Kathleen Hayes and grim Box on Bloomberg Radio Africa. Africa Man he say, is definitely turned the corner, and one big piece of that puzzle is technology from tiny startups to major corporations like General Electric investing in that continent helping it to move ahead. Someone else who's helping it to move ahead

is joining us now. A regular on the show. Dick Garity, principle at g v A, research columnists at Investopedia and also advising the World Bank Group on integrating information and communication technologies in development projects in Africa. Dave, Welcome to the show. Kathleen, thank you very much. Well, it's really terrific for our listeners to hear this part of your story and your work because this is so important, so powerful.

Tell us what you're doing with the World Bank, uh in terms of I've been consulting with the World Banks and spent two thousand and ten looking mostly around how do we use technology to get financial inclusion for people in Africa? And financial inclusion basically means how do we give people access to the use of either bank accounts

or access to other formal financial services. This could be microinsurance, this could be micro loans, but primarily being able to leverage the technology platform that cell phones represent to be able to get access to those services. And this has been instrumental in a number of areas, whether it's doing you know, utility bill presentation, settlement, paying school fees, wide

range of applications. Could you give us one specific example that you've worked on, you've been part of, to give us a sense of how it got you know, what it is and then the impact it is having. Sure. Yeah. In case in point um just it was less than months ago, I was in northern Nigeria work in a project to modernize irrigation districts UM. This is a five million dollar project that the World Bank is doing with

the Nigerian government. Obviously, the first thing that has to happen there is that the farmers have to be pay their irrigation fees. If they don't pay for the water fees, the irrigation project will fail. UM. Typically, though, you're finding that these farmers, you know, they're operating in rural locations. UH they're about a hundred and fifty thousand farmers across

five irrigation districts. And we're going to be implementing UH mobile money payment programs starting in the second half of to help assist all this now to the extent that we can help farmers pay their water fees. Obviously the protect productivity can improve. They spend less time basically trying

to travel their costs. We're also at the same time trying to leverage their cell phones to provide other information to improve their productivity, whether it's crop prices, whether it's further information in terms of what techniques might be used

to improve their own productivity. But this is a five million dollar project, it's in it's that's in its third year right now, but it's really going to start to take its benefit over the balance of sixteen going tea into seventeen and eighteen, and just another way to show how profound the impact can be of information and communication technolog and she's particularly in poor areas like Africa that are are really trying to take off in many ways

exceeding a paper you co authored with Paula f Lightel, a senior social development specialists at the World Bank. It's about using I c T information communication technologies to support ending the tuberculosis epidemic in Southern Africa. Tell Us, I don't think most people realize that the tuberculosis right now is killing almost as many people as HIV AIDS around

the world. It's actually, according to the World Health Organization, is killing more people than HIV eight And in the case of looking at Southern Africa, you've got infection rates for tuberculosis that are about three times the global average. And from that standpoint, we're in a situation where, um, you know, being able to control tuberculosis is going to be very important in terms of addressing a major public

health issue. And this is a project that the Bank's working on and it's going to be going forward over the next five years. It just recently got approval and we're going focusing on countries such as Zambia Mozambique, allowing last that have a population about six people. So this is going to be having significant impact. The important thing with tuberculosis is that it takes about six months for

people to actually get a cure. And the issue that we're going to be using mobile money with here is to ensure that people are being incentivized to stay and continuing to complete their treatment programs so we didn't have more disease resistant forms of tuberculosis arise. So the i C T aspect information technology communication technology aspect is the mobile money? Are there other ways in which you're using

I c T to fight tuberculosis? Certainly, in the event of being able to use um, you know, mobile forms of computing, whether it's tablet computers in terms of putting these in the hands of healthcare workers, whether they're working in clinics or whether they're actually going out to communities

to deal with patients on a more localized level. UM. Certainly the ability of these tablets and mobile forms of computing to ensure that you can try to find ways to train people while they're in the field, and then not only in terms of training people in the field, but also once the information and data is gathered, then being able to bring that back in a centralized basis fairly quickly, and more importantly, to the extent that this

information is being gathered as fairly transparent, being able to react on a faster basis in terms of trends that are developing, and what about where is technology going? This is certainly, this is humanitarian, This is work to help people. Is there eventually an investment angle here as well? Certainly there is an investment angle if you wanted to look at mobile money services in Africa. They're primarily operated by

mobile network operators cell phone companies. The company that actually had pioneered the development of Empessa in um Kenya, company called Safari Comm is actually a subsidiary of Vodaphone. But if one was looking for a pure local play around mobile money as well as also mobile network operations. As a company headquarter in South Africa, mt N Group there over the counter a d R here in the United States is mt N o y market caps about fifteen

and a half billion dollars traded. Uh was up one point seven today, closing in a dollars fifty two cents, has an average volume about a hundred and sixteen thousand shares, So it's it's a liquid named fifteen and a half real quick five seconds? Do you own any of these days? MTN okay? But hey, well truly certainly gave us an interesting idea when it comes to investing in Africa. Gave garrity for principle at g B a research and a consultant to the World Bank, on some very important work

being done in Africa. This is taking stock on Bloomberg Radio coming up. Bloomberg Lab brought to you by Deutsch Jakins PC. If you feel you've been unlovely terminated, you owe it to yourself to call the law firm of Deutch Jackkins Now for a free phone consultation called eight hundred four nine eight zero nine one