IGADD

A number of partners were involved in generating the ideas presented in this site. These partners were drawn from governments, corporations, academic institutions and NGOs. The project has emerged from a “Financial Solutions to the Digital Divide” advisory group of IT policy professors and researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chaired by Iqbal Quadir, a Kennedy School lecturer who also founded Bangladesh’s Grameen Phone. The project’s partners are organized by DigitalDivide.org, whose site was designed by the Oracle Corporation in Gurgaon, India. Those who provided financial and in-kind resources to support these ideas include Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, MIT Media Lab of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institute of Policy Studies (Singapore), and Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and Industrial Finance Corporation of India (New Delhi). Hewlett-Packard (Asia-Pacific) took the lead in bringing the “Financial Solutions” initiative to the Asian ICT Ministries’ Summit, which Craig Smith keynoted in Hyderabad, India in 2004.

Those institutions that offered to serve as hosts of Financial Solutions seminars include Goldman Sachs (New York), Thailand’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (Bangkok), India’s Ministry of Information and Telecommunications (New Delhi), and Indonesia’s Ministry of Information and Communications. Others that provided research funding include Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, Paris) Research teams in each participating country were supported by Harvard’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, where Craig Smith was Senior Fellow in 2004-5.

In Thailand, Assumption University was research partner for the Financial Solutions to the Digital Divide project. The Thai team was led by Team Leader, Asst. Prof. Dr. Supavadee Nontakao. (Dean of Faculty of Science and Technology), Asst. Prof. Dr. Pratit Santiprabhob, Prof. Dr. Graham Winley, Dr. Jirapun Daengdej, Asst.Prof. Dr. Thotsapon Sortrakul. Other members of the team included Dr. Graham Winley, Dr. Pratit Santibohob and Ms. Rattanawan Rattakul. Their work was backed up by another team from the ICT Ministry.

In India, several meetings were held in New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Mumbai to build a research group for a Financial Solutions to the Digital Divide India initiative, under the invitation of the ICT Minister of the Hindu party. The institution that offered to volunteer as research partner is the Economic Research Department of India’s second largest finance institution, IFCI, under the leadership of its chairman. In addition, International Management Institute (IMI) Director General Dr. Nitish Sengupta nominated Dr. Himadri Das to support this effort. The Confederation of Indian Industries also agreed to support research on this initiative. Though not formal sponsors, others include McKinsey & Co (New Delhi), OECD (Development Assistance Committee), and Goldman Sachs.

In Indonesia, Intel’s Southeast Asian division, under its managing director Yi Loong Lai, took the lead to bring “Financial Solutions to the Digital Divide” to Indonesia in 2004 and 2005. The emphasis was on establishing a financial model in which public and private stakeholders (domestic and international) would all share costs of risks of accelerating wireless market penetration. The Harvard Club of Indonesia hosted the first session, attended by senior representatives of various ministries, including the country directors of the major IT multinationals, the country’s chief telecommunications companies, World Bank, USAID, IFC and other bilateral and multilateral agencies.