Views from the Brookings Blum Roundtable on Global Poverty: Innovation and Technology for Development

Several staff members and scholars from the Global Economy and Development program have traveled to Aspen, Colorado for the annual Brookings Blum Roundtable—an off-the-record forum for global leaders, entrepreneurs and practitioners to discuss innovative ideas and advance groundbreaking initiatives to alleviate global poverty. Since 2004, participants have come together for our roundtable to explore timely subjects ranging from emergent new players in the international donor community to the poverty-insecurity nexus.

This year’s theme is “Innovation and Technology for Development.” New technologies offer the promise of breakthroughs in development and poverty alleviation by spurring innovative business models and pushing down transaction costs in the developing world. One example many of our participants have been talking about is mobile money, with a rapid rate of scale up in Kenya that is unparalleled, having reached more than half the country’s population in less than three years.

In the spirit of this year’s theme of innovation and technology, we have incorporated social media and other online elements to the roundtable. We are live tweeting from the conference using the Twitter hashtag #Blum2012. We are also filming short videos of some of our participants answering questions about their thoughts on innovation and technology for development.

We will be posting these videos starting August 1 and into the next week. We hope you enjoy watching them and welcome your feedback on the topics our participants are addressing.

-Laurence Chandy

Rakesh Rajani, Twaweza

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Kemal Derviş, The Brookings Institution

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Mung Ki Woo, MasterCard Worldwide

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Mary Robinson, Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice

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Juliana Rotich, Ushahidi

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Lalitesh Katragadda, Google

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Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State

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Rajiv Shah, USAID:

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Gillian Tett, Financial Times:

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Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton University: 

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