 Thank you very much. It's great to be here. It's a beautiful day. And I'm sorry. This is the first time I've been to Ireland. And so I'm delighted to be here. It's all the same. Yes. Yes. It is. It is. It's all the same. It's all the same. It's all the same. It's all the same. It's all the same. It's all the same. Pointing at the computer. Pointing at the computer. Yeah. OK. That's just the, OK. First of all, developing countries, I see them as 75% world. And this is why I think so. First is that 75% of the world's population, and this is just a rough number, are in the developing countries. 75% of the world's growth over the last decade is in the developing countries. That may be due to the current recession in the United States and elsewhere may have helped this number. 75% of the flow of funds, remittances and aid, is in remittances. And from the rich countries towards poor countries, 75% of the world's mobile phones are in developing countries. And 75% of the world's GDP that could happen easily by 2050 would be in the developing countries. So there are many ways. Actually, it's a very important part of the world and we perhaps need to see it in a different light. And the distribution of what we are talking about cell phones, what are actually powerful connected computers, are in these regions also, 75%. But what makes it more interesting is that 85% of the world's youth population are in these countries from 10 to 25 years old. What makes that the reason is the combination that is very, very even more powerful because young people tend to be tech savvy and they're able to use these machines even more in more ways and more sophisticated ways than older generations. And therefore the world might actually blossom in a different way than we have imagined. Now, what I want to also show, that I run a center at MIT which helps MIT students who want to create enterprises in low income countries. MIT students so far have created companies largely in the first world with the revenues of about $2 trillion right now. But so my point is, that's the kind of entrepreneurial development in these countries would give rise to greater economic growth. And so some of the MIT students, actually many of them come from developing countries, should be able to do the same of what they have done in the developed world. And just to introduce you a little bit, so far in the last four years, we had 90 fellows who are gone through our system. Just last week, our fourth class graduated and all added up, became 90 so far. And we give them financial support, we teach them entrepreneurship, we bring other entrepreneurs to interact with, we expose them to new technologies. This is how our program is. Anybody wants to be involved or contribute funds, you're most welcome. Okay. And what's happening with taking, okay. These are just examples. Here is a student from Nigeria, she's trying to create a recycled scrap metal business in Nigeria and there's plenty of that, that's not going, that's not being useful. Here is another student who was creating diabetic clinics for low income people in Mexico, which would manage a diabetic patients, patients' disease at a much more low cost effectively. Here is a student who has created actually a cell phone-based program whereby if you have depression, it can tell the doctor because by seeing the pattern of your calls, it can detect whether you are feeling depressed at this point and the doctor will get to know it without your telling it, okay. And it's apparently 95% correct, okay. So that's another, so my own entrepreneurial experience helps you explain what the center does and so I will switch to that now. And okay, I actually came to the United States, I went to the United States, now that I'm not there right now, went to the United States 36 years ago to go to college and what I first noticed when I was trying to do that is that not all good colleges are in Washington, D.C., okay. And that was a little surprising because back in Bangladesh, all good institutions are in Dhaka, okay. And then I, over time, I began to see that we have a really a centralized situation in the country and that's because the emphasis on the government and that the government would do everything for us, okay, is to very radically different from what is in the United States and the reason I was interested in this, I was fully aware that Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world and the United States is one of the richest so naturally these differences I started to notice, okay. And over time I realized that dispersion of resources, dispersion of power is very important element of progress. So in other words, concentration of resources is connected to stagnation and dispersion of resources is connected to progress and this you can see everywhere in the world. Even today, let's say if you, there's a famous picture of electricity use in North Korea and there's a little one dot of electricity at the night picture and that's actually Pyongyang, okay. So it's not that North Korea doesn't have electricity, it does but it is used in a concentrated manner but if you see South Korea, you see all lit up the whole country. So I'm trying to say that it's not just having knowledge, having resources but whether it's concentrated or not is actually makes a critical difference. So in the 1980s, I saw this dispersion taking place right in front of me, okay. Namely, some of you may not even remember that there used to be such a thing called mainframe computers, okay. But then soon, they came to people's desktops and laptops and whatnot, it was getting dispersed, okay. I myself was a token representative of a little committee that decided on my college's computer, okay. This committee met for six months, many different meetings just to decide on buying one computer and the computer was $3 million, okay. So by today's terms, it might be $10 million, okay. This is like 30 years ago. And but the same amount of computing power actually is in my cell phone right now, okay. But of course, I didn't see all of that. So it was by mid-80s, I could see, huh, things are getting dispersed. And I naturally saw, oh, maybe this means we can take computers to Bangladesh, okay. But you need to be literate to be able to use computers. So this was another problem in getting it, this kind of machinery to a poor country. So anyway, so in 1993, by this time, I managed to become a budding investment banker. And we had a small office, a small firm, small office, four or five people. And we, again, many of you may not remember, there used to be such a thing as floppy disks, okay. And you would write a paper and you give the floppy disk to somebody and then he can work on that, okay. And somebody connected our computers by a wire and we didn't have to do that. So we became suddenly more productive, okay. And then one day it broke down and I was waiting for someone to come and fix it, okay. But as I was waiting, not getting anything done, I remembered a day in 1971. These are not my pictures. These are just something they found in the computer, okay. But in 1971, I was only 13 years old and there was a war in Bangladesh. This is the war that separated what was East Pakistan from West Pakistan. And there were a lot of violence in the urban settings and my family moved to a remote area. This is actually one case where lack of communication is good for you. Namely, if there is no infrastructure, then you are safe from the violence coming from outside, okay. And so we were safe in that area, but I could see the lack of communication facility, lack of modern infrastructure, what that does to you, okay. So one time my mother sent me to get some medicine for younger siblings, some 10 kilometers away. So I walked all morning to get there and when the medicine man wasn't there, I walked all afternoon back, okay. So I was a child, so what I'm saying is my lack of productivity didn't matter too much, but I remember this unproductive day. So when I was having another unproductive day in New York in 1993, I put these two experiences together and said, you know, connectivity is productivity, whether it's in a modern office or an underdeveloped village. And then I realized that microchips that I was talking about mainframe to computers, the same microchips were beginning to be used for phones as well, okay. And so therefore it's true that the computers could not be used in poor countries because people are not literate, but everybody can talk. So therefore if cell phones become computers because the microchips would empower them, then suddenly the power of that dispersion can be used in communication, okay. Because at the end of the day, talking, communicating is a egalitarian phenomena. It's not a written few people can do it, at least in our context, okay. I know everybody can read it right here in Ireland or in America, but I'm talking about places like Bangladesh. So that's what made me think that indeed this is what the transition is and there is something to capitalize on, okay. And of course behind this is there is this Moore's law which says something more complicated, but this is how it summarized. That every 18 months or so, same number of dollars by twice as much brain power of the computer, okay, processing power. So just think about this. 18 months doubles everything, the power, which means three years would quadruple it and which means in six years it would go over 16 times. In 12 years it would go up by 256, okay. And by 15 years you will see it go up by at least by a thousand times, okay. So you can see it that way or a thousand dollar computer becomes one dollar in 15 years. So this is why, and by the way, this is going on. So at 30 years it would be a million times. And this process is actually going on for last 45 years, okay. This is why the computer that took man to moon in 1969 has less processing power than your cell phone today. Now, so if computer, if self communication, so on one hand I realize the communication is connectivity is productivity because I showed you that I realized in my office that if you connect people, you enable and you disconnect them, you disable. That's how I wasted a day, okay. And so I started looking at where did Bangladesh stand vis-a-vis telecommunications, okay. One out of 500 people had a phone. And even that one phone that did exist was in the urban settings. So here is the centralization, decentralization we're talking about. 70% of all phones, albeit very few phones, but 70% of those very few phones were in one town. By and large all telephone calls there were local calls, okay. And another town had 20% and few other towns had few others, okay. But by and large this is the demonstration of when I'm talking about all the facilities were in the urban centralized situation that telecommunication itself is a good example. And by the way today electricity is still 70% of it is in the major number one metropolitan area. Now then I started looking at what is the why are we not getting more phones out there, okay. And so I want to show you I faced a lot of what I call misconceptions that I wanted to go through with you so you can see the problem. People said well poor countries are under resourced, okay. That's why they don't have the money to get the phones, okay. So my point is why is that? First of all why is, are we really under resourced? As far as I'm concerned we are very wasteful we are wasting what we already have. So for instance time is a very important resource, okay. That without the phones we're wasting time and therefore we are falling further behind. You know Ireland has 24 hours a day, Bangladesh has 24 hours a day. So if we don't use those 24 hours obviously Irish people would get further ahead of us, okay. So therefore time is an extremely important resource that's being wasted. So it's not a question of being under resourced but rather are we, can we somehow prevent waste that is somehow taking place, okay. Okay then the other point is that one second, okay. Poor people lack the buying power and therefore they don't have it. But you know if it is a productivity tool you don't need the buying power. The, you can get something, for example let's take in the United States I almost don't put any money down to get a car. They will lend me money to buy a car and the car takes me to work, work pays me a salary and the salary allows me to pay off the loan for the car. So the car is actually paying for itself, okay. So if it's a productivity tool we don't need to worry about buying power. The buying power will come from the tool, okay. So I again thought this is a misconception, okay. And because all the consultants told me calculate how much GDP is there in every village then you can decide whether it can get a phone or not. And I was saying that's not an issue, okay. Another point is that you need money to start a business to have a money and make more money. But my point is again there are other ways to look at it, for instance shared access. So let's say again in the United States all of us are even here, all of us need banking services. But how many of you are trying to buy a bank in order to get a banking service? You don't, usually somebody does buy of course. What I'm saying is somebody does buy a bank but the rest of us, the normal mortals usually get a service from him. So therefore it's not quite necessary to buy something in order to get the service, okay. And let's say then people said no, you see because they said I'm totally crazy that I was thinking about this digital very modern telephones when a lot of people told and I have many stories to tell and I wouldn't waste your time. But basically point is we have to think about food, clothing, shelter, all these important things. Where are you thinking about cell phones? That's very modern thing. We have far more important things to have, okay. And I said you know the income is the ability. If people have income then they engage their brains. Actually the brains are an important resource that's being wasted. In fact brains are democratically distributed, nobody has two, nobody has zero, everybody has one, so if we don't utilize it obviously we won't have democracy, okay. So what I'm trying to say is that this very, just like 24 hours a day some of the best things in life are actually democratically distributed. If we cannot capitalize on them we cannot have a good society, okay. So my point is if there is a way to raise people's income then they will engage their brains and decide how to spend that money. Is it necessary for food, clothing, shelter, whatever. So the key is to improve income, okay. So the bottom line is on the demand side connectivity is productivity and the productivity translates into purchasing power, okay. On the supply side prices are cascading down. So therefore there must be some sweet spot when it should become viable to bring telecommunications to everywhere in Bangladesh because if it's thousand dollars becoming one dollar then why shouldn't it be? So even if I'm wrong in my calculations I just felt some of many of my mistakes will be taken care by these forces, okay. And this is why I decided there ought to be a way to bring communication service in Bangladesh, okay. And so what is the real problem? These things we can sort out in our brains, okay. But what is the actual problem on the ground? That I felt is that lack of other infrastructures. This is a new thing. What I'm trying to say is that for instance the internet was booming in the 1990s. Remember I'm telling you this story now cell phone is all over the world. Everybody has forgotten that it was a big problem, okay. But what I'm saying is I'm thinking 20 years ago, okay. So the point is in those days the internet suddenly started booming in America. I'm sure it's here too. But it was doing, and why was this happening? That's because people already had computers, they had telephone line, they had something called modems which you don't see anymore. And there are many other things that are out there on which a new thing emerges quickly, okay. So something to piggyback on is what is necessary to get the new thing, okay. So what is it, but in a rural Bangladesh for instance, and same is true in Africa and many other countries, those other things are lacking. And therefore it's harder to bring it in. And that creates a real vicious cycle. Because whatever little infrastructure you have is in the urban setting in Dhaka. But that's exactly what makes it difficult to bring it out. But I said these supply and demand economics if it actually allows me to bring it out. Then it doesn't make sense if we just confined that in Dhaka as well. So I have to take it out. That's where it would be really beautiful. But in order to do that, there is no other infrastructure. There is no electricity for instance. Even today there isn't, okay. And there isn't other infrastructures to collect bills, to send a repairman, and all these things. And that's how I started noticing the micro-credit organizations that Bangladesh had. And Grameen Bank was one of them. And Grameen Bank even in those days had a thousand branches. It had two to three million borrowers, excellent repayment records. And 95% of the borrowers were women. That's because over time they found women manage money better. So they simply decided in their own self-interest to lend to women, okay. And then, so I started talking to them. And I said, what is it, what about a phone? I mean, I'll connect all your branches, 1,000 branches by telephone. I thought maybe they could be a good client, okay. And they were not that interested because they after all evolved in a country that didn't have telephones. So they let these branches manage themselves, okay. And they got a report every week, okay. And so I said, they don't quite need to manage it hour by hour. And so I started focusing on what is it that they really do. Somehow I can dovetail my idea with their operation. And this is what they do. They typically, you know, they give loans for growing vegetables, growing chicken, ducks, whatever. But a cow loan was the most common loan. Somebody would borrow some money, buy a cow. The cow would give milk and she would sell the milk to the villagers and pay off the loan. And then she basically bootstraps herself and buys a second cup, for instance, a year or two later. And so I suddenly realized, and again, this is because I was commuting between Dhaka and New York. And suddenly I realized that a cell phone could be a cow. Somebody could borrow money and it could be a phone for the whole community and it could be a business for her and she could pay off the loan. So I then went back to Bangladesh again and I said, you know, I've thought about it. The cell phone I think can be a cow, okay. And they thought about it for a while and they said, it's a little crazy, but somewhat logical. But so they said, if you think it can happen, then come and make it happen, okay. So at this point I went back to New York and quit my job and I created a company called GonoPhone, which in Bengali means phones for the masses, okay. And that was registered actually in May 94 at this point, okay. And so I created that and I convinced an angel investors to give me $100,000. He would take half the shares. I would take half the shares of GonoPhone. And the GonoPhone would be a company that would pursue creation of what later on became known as GramminPhone, okay. And then my idea was to create GonoPhone in Bangladesh, another GonoPhone, but because it's called phone for the masses. But GramminBank said, take our name. So we took that, okay. Anyway, there's a long story that I did many, many steps and eventually I managed to convince the Norwegian telephone company to come and basically what happened, I got many rejections frankly. And because my idea was bad in the sense that I was going to a poor country and then I was trying to go to the poor of the poor country, okay. So TeleNor basic arrangement is that TeleNor gave the know-how and Grammin would distribute the phone service through that cow model, okay. And of course I spent at least a million miles, I got million miles frequent and many sleepless nights and some minor loss of hair, but I managed to create a consortium, okay, that became known as GramminPhone and it got a license from the government, okay. Then we started building the network. And at one point we had 300,000 ladies who are distributing telephone services in their respective communities, okay. At this point those numbers have come down because everybody now has a phone. There is actually it says 35, I just learned last week there is 38 right now. And the country as a whole has 80 million phones, okay. So not everybody needs that business but some of those ladies are now doing other kinds of retailing services, okay. But the point is everybody actually got the access to telephone services. And if you go to Bangladesh you will see there is very good digital coverage throughout the country. And generally it's producing the, I would say the conservatively, there are six or seven telephone companies now. And it's a very competitive market and we have more than $4 billion in revenues in the country. So let's say GramminPhone probably has about 2 billion and the overall industry profit is about a billion and the government gets through many, many fees at least another billion dollars. It makes interestingly far more money by not owning the telephone companies than the one it owned. Because it was that business was very, very small, okay. The fixed network in Bangladesh now owned by the government still has I think less than a million phones. And the cellphone is 80 million, okay. But what I want to show, okay. There was a article in the, there was a special report in the economist because the cell phones have proliferated so much throughout the developing countries, okay. That this phenomena is registered of course by lots of people and the economist had a 20 page article, okay. And my point is, so it's not even confined to Bangladesh in any peculiar situation, it's all over the world. So the question is why? Why is this phenomena going on, okay. And my answer is, again, I come back to the productivity tool phenomena. But because it's a productivity tool, people are able, people earn more money and therefore they are able to pay, therefore somebody provides the service because somebody is paying, okay. And then therefore those companies are spending billions of dollars in building up this infrastructure, okay. And therefore at the end of the day the common citizens in Bangladesh, in Africa, wherever are actually building the network. Because their productivity is going up and therefore these structures are happening, these infrastructures are being built, okay. So that's a very important point to understand. It's not somebody coming from heaven and building up a little facility, okay. It's actually very much ground up phenomena. Now if that's the case, then the success can be generalized by maybe other technologies may not be as compelling as cell phone phenomena, okay. But the same idea must work. That is somebody provides in a productivity tool in general would be true for any other tool, okay. And therefore there is this simple model that if you provide productivity tool, then people win by earning more. A business wins by charging something for it, okay. And the countries can win because the overall GDP has gone up, okay. And of course even the first world wins because they can export those equipments to this country. So it's a very, very win, win, win, win situation. Simple model, this is what we should pursue. And in a way my, the Legardham Center at MIT is trying to do that. This is what gives the tailwind to these kinds of factors. But here's the point. Let me break down that tailwind into few things. Number one, the question is what can the western countries do for these countries, okay. One is that invent new tools. Some of them helped here, bicycles, sewing machines, computer. These are all generally used here, okay. Second, there are actually lot of powerful insights into how societies emerge, okay. That are very useful. I won't waste your time if you ask me questions, I'll come back. But what I'm saying is these great thinkers, Adam Smith, Frederick Hayek, Ricardo, all these people gave insights that I actually used to think about how gramophone can come about. Because I had no market data. It's 20 years ago, people couldn't tell me. Yes, indeed there's gonna be a cell phone in one of the poorest countries. So for example, I'll give you an example. Hayek said, as an example, I can come back to it if you want me to. The Hayek said all the dispersed information in a country, okay, are an important ingredient to economic progress. So for example, let's say mangoes are good in my, are oversupply in my village. That information is a useful ingredient to the overall economic progress of the country. Because then another district has a shortage of it. I can relay that information. But without my local knowledge, this information would not go. So what I'm saying is if communication facilities are all over the country, then these information would come into play. And the country moves forward. And Hayek said it for a different reason. He was saying it because he was basically trying to say you cannot plan an economy. That all the useful information is actually dispersed. But what I'm saying is whether there is planning or lack of planning, the point I have is that unless we have communication facilities throughout the country, little people have all sorts of information. That is actually very, very useful. So I move on. Another thing people can do is find angel investors. This guy who gave me $100,000. By the way, subsequently, he made $10 million, okay? Even though I sold out rather early, if I didn't, he would have made $100 million, okay? Then another thing is that, by the way, these are very prominent entrepreneurs in Africa, in China, in India who made it big because of certain things they brought about, okay? But they had the home field advantage, namely they knew their countries, okay? But what I want to show is that the reason I picked these particular examples, they were also Western educated. So what the Western countries can do actually provide education to people that they can learn and they can bring about these ideas. That's another element. In a way, that's the fifth element. Now what is the headwind for this progress, okay? To me, the centralization that goes through aid to central government, to be honest, is one of the impediments, okay? Because that simply makes overbearing bureaucracies, okay? And that process hurts the entrepreneurial progress. Western countries generally made progress through entrepreneurship. In fact, England was a dictatorial country only a thousand years ago, okay? And it dispersed power through merchants, through enterprise, through innovations. And that dispersion of power is what made England powerful and perhaps we have suffered from it. But what I'm saying is that that progress that took place in England was purely due to dispersion of power. That didn't come about because the king handed over things to people. Rather, people were able to bargain better deals, checks and balances from the king. So what I want to say is that externally empowered governments may not take care of its people. It gives rise to governments looking into outside, okay? And not creating the interlocking situation between citizens' progress and the government's viability, the government's revenues. That interlocking situation, we're necessarily disturbing by empowering the governments. And then citizens, of course, get impoverished. The nature of progress is actually the other way. Governments, they become sensitive to the needs on the ground. And so this, again, Elaine told me that you wanted to hear about the emergence of bioenergy. Do you have time for it? We need only a few minutes. We'll need to leave a little time. Yeah, okay, okay, sure. This is just another cow. We talked about the cow, my point is. This is not about the struggle to move over. No, it hasn't. Okay, okay, okay. But I haven't forgotten my cows. Yeah, okay. Okay, okay. And typically, in Bangladesh, the cows give milk and that is the revenue, okay? But my point is, this is a resource that we have, but therefore we should make use of this resource in a better way, okay? And we have created something called Emergence Bioenergy Utility Station that gives rise to many things that a farmer can triple his return on the dollar by having this system as opposed to just milk production, okay? And that's commercial space, milk, refrigeration, electricity, fertilizer, and methane credit, okay? I'll show you this situation. This, we have a very sophisticated engine which quietly produces electricity and it's very versatile in terms of what kind of fuel it uses, okay? And we are just, in July, we'll have another pilot in Bangladesh, okay? This machine makes no noise. Even the US submarines use this so that there is no signature so that the Russians cannot find this. It's so quiet and it can use any fuel, including biogas, and it does not require repairing, repair or maintenance very easily. So this is the Emergence Bioenergy Electricity Machine that will produce electricity from methane which will be produced from the cow manure, okay? And so a small dairy farm could now have the facilities of a large dairy farm and the heat rejected by the machine would be used for a cooling services, cooling refrigeration. So the milk spoilage will be lowered and 20% of the milk is wasted because they don't have refrigeration facilities, especially for small farmers, okay? And so we have this design that has all those six elements and upstairs we could have the internet here because there's electricity in the system, okay? And this design itself, as lot of thought has gone into it and I don't want to waste your time but just in case you have questions again going through. And in 2005, we actually produced electricity in this village through similar machines but at a very early prototype. But we are gearing up for a more almost close to market, going to market situation now. But this required a lot of effort and the machines are being produced in Washington. And again, this is another way that we want to bring electricity in a distributed manner than through a central grid, yeah? So we can, if you have questions, we can talk about it and BRAC is the large NGO in Bangladesh which is our distribution partner just like Grameen Bank was for Grameen Bank. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.