So I was talking to a dude at one of Australia's major banks. And he was enthusing about P2P lending (Kiva, Zopa, Prosper). And I said something along the lines of "You know that Grameen bank has been doing microfinance in Bangladesh for over 30 years?" He hadn't. Whilst P2P lending and microfinance are not identical, there are significant similarities.
I had a brief Skype conversation this evening with Sriram Reddy from Infoxchange and Engineers Without Borders. Some of the issues he is working on with farmers in India sound very similar to initiatives I have heard about in rural Australia.
For decades we have assumed that technology transfer in international development basically flows from the Developed World to the Developing World. That assumption is increasingly untenable.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
I think Barclays have also been doing something very similar in Africa. I attended a CSR event a while back where they talked about it. Doubt it's been going 30 years though.
Also, at the E2E Forum last week, David Backley, CTO at Westpac, was asked about his views on social/P2P banking and said he felt it was inevitable that its popularity will rise in the coming years.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the larger banks or their subsidiaries attempt something similar in more developed countries.
On a tangent, check out Islamic banking practices.
Cory
Alex - Given the current credit crunch, I think the time is ripe for this kind of thing.
Cory - There is a lot of interest on this topic in my current environment. Given the population growth rates in the Islamic world vs. the West, this is only going to get more important.
Post a Comment