A Matter of Supply

Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times today reports on the school in Sudan founded by Valentino Achak Deng (whose story was told by Dave Eggers in "What is the What" - I can't do that book justice bracketed by parentheses but I highly recommend it). Thanks to a best-seller that distributed Valentino's story across the world, the school is being generously supported by donors around the world. The school is starting its second year, and it is taking on an awesome task. Kristof reports that last year, only 11 girls in all of southern Sudan sat for high school graduation exams, and chillingly:

Based on official data, a girl there is far more likely to end up dying in childbirth than she is to gain a primary education.

The school can accommodate only 150 students in its incoming ninth grade class. Thousands have applied, many of them adults; the actual need is surely more than that. And yet, even to supply the educational needs of its relatively few students, the school is stretched not only because of its limited resources, but also due to the paucity of infrastructure. Lacking the power grid that we in the US take for granted, the school relies on generators and solar panels to power its computers. And then there is the question of books:

Recent donations have enabled the school to build a library, which is starved of books, but there is no local postal service for American friends to send books. Valentino looked into the possibility of having books mailed to Kenya and then trucked in, but found he would have to pay prohibitive import duties.

 John Sviokla recently wrote "If one looks throughout history, workers' productivity has always been proportional to the quality of the tools they use." This is an important aspect, but equally important to economic development is the quality of distribution or infrastructure access. A person without access to infrastructure is by definition living off the land. Without access to tools for preparing the soil, planting, irrigation, and harvesting, that person (and that person's family) must by definition live hand to mouth.

Education requires very sophisticated infrastructure, which if you have it, is simply invisible. Basic literacy can be taught one to one, with few tools: as Kristof points out, Valentino learned his letters by drawing them in the sand. That's a necessary foundation, but not what it takes to articulate within the world as we know it today, from Seattle to Sudan. That requires tapping into an immense network of information, and having the tools and access to do so.

This is necessary even for very modest education efforts. I'm currently collaborating on a problem solving course. Without a second thought, I availed myself of the following tools that any corporate worker in the US today expects is readily on hand: computer, high speed Internet connection, projector, training rooms, software to create presentations and manuals, reference materials (books, articles, videos), books for students purchased on-line and delivered within a week for the class, copying and binding services, on-demand electricity, subject matter experts and colleagues who can review and advise. Because of this wealth of infrastructure, tools and knowledge that I could access with little effort or delay, my co-workers and I are able to produce a series of training classes in very little time, just in the normal course of our work lives.

Humans have solved the problems of distribution in many parts of the world; the technical answers are not elusive. Investment is not necessarily the constraint - there are a lot of investors who see the value of the untapped potential of communities around the world. The bigger problems to solve are -- as always in the human condition -- politics and exclusion. These too can be changed: even modest prosperity can empower transformative change. Distribution can promote prosperity.