The November 17 Liberation Technology Seminar was co-hosted by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a nonpartisan economic policy research organization that unites remarkable economic talent from all parts of Stanford University. This seminar featured four student-led design projects that were created in the Designing Liberation Technologies course taught each spring at Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) by professors' Josh Cohen and Terry Winograd. The class works in partnership with the University of Nairobi's School of Computing and Informatics to develop user-based designs that address outstanding challenges in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. 

Josh Cohen described the three main elements of the design school class:

(1) There is a focus on user/human-centered design. Projects are designed based on a close engagement with end users: the people who will be using the solutions. (2) Courses are inter-disciplinary. The idea is to take people who are deeply embedded in a certain discipline and put them together with people from other disciplines. In order to come up with a solution to a real problem, team collaboration is necessary and (3) The approach to problem solving is about practice, not about theory. It is necessary to fail early and fail often in the process of creating workable solutions.

The panelists consisted of students who were working with partners in Kenya on how mobile technology could be used to address various social issues. A multidisciplinary team of students work in close collaboration with partners in Kenya, and some of these ideas are now being tested on the ground.

The first project that was described was M-maji (mmaji.wordpress.com). Sangick Jeon described how water in Kibera is scarce, costly and contaminated. Their aim is to use the nearly ubiquitous mobile technology to improve access to water. Vendors are able to advertise their water and then buyers can ask questions and provide feedback. This saves the time and resources that it takes to find clean water.

Nishuari, the second project, addresses the problem of inaccurate advice and rumors which lead to risky sexual behavior and often HIV and AIDS. They provide a mobile counseling service whereby individuals can submit health questions and receive responses from trained counselors using text messages. This helps to break down logistical and social barriers.

The third, Makmende considered the issue of serious crime in Kibera. Their aim is to look at how individuals can get safely from Point A to Point B. They set up walking groups so that people would not have to walk alone. Over 90% of people had a mobile phone and this was seen to be an effective way of building timely communication, so that groups of people can coordinate to walk more safely to reach their destinations.

The final project was Take Taka, which was the one project that was not focused on using computer technology. The team took up sanitation as the project and decided early on that the use of mobile phones adds no value to the issue. The focused instead of designing a special sanitary bucket that could be used instead of a toilet inside the home, and on developing a system of transmitting the deposits to a biogas unit. This project however has not been carried forward.

Congratulations to Anand Habib, selected this weekend for a Rhodes Scholarship. Habib, 22, of Houston, Texas, is a 2011 graduate of Stanford, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology, with honors in international security studies. He plans to pursue a master's degree in public policy and in medical anthropology at Oxford.

Habib is currently working on community health programs at St. Joseph's Clinic in Thomassique, Haiti, under a one-year global health fellowship awarded by Medical Missionaries. The nonprofit organization is a volunteer group of more than 200 doctors, nurses, dentists, and others who work to improve the health of the poorest of the poor in the United States and throughout the world.

In 2011, he won a Deans' Award for Academic Accomplishment which honors extraordinary undergraduate students for "exceptional, tangible" intellectual achievements. One of the professors who nominated him for the award described him as a "superb critical thinker" whose work is characterized by "creative genius" and "mature insights," adding that he "exemplifies exactly the kind of deeply informed, pragmatic and caring leadership that the world needs and Stanford enables."

As a Stanford student, Habib worked on behalf of politically and medically disenfranchised people in India, Mexico and Guatemala. On campus, he turned the Stanford tradition of the annual Dance Marathon into a vehicle dedicated to addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic by engaging not only Stanford students but also local communities and corporations, raising more than $100,000. His exceptional work was recognized by his participation in the Clinton Global Initiative University Conference in April, 2011.

From Haiti, Habib discussed his current position, his plans in Oxford, and how his CISAC thesis relates to his work. 

What are you currently working on? 

I am currently working on a global health fellowship with an NGO that operates a clinic in Haiti's Central Plateau. As part of the fellowship I am helping to manage a number of community and public health projects including fortified salt (to counter iodine deficiency and filariasis), a point-of-use potable water system, a malnutrition intervention program, and a small system of community health committees and community health workers. For the past two months, I've taken on a number of administrative functions along with my co-fellow, who is also a recent college graduate. I started the fellowship shortly after graduation at the end of June 2011 and I am slated to be in Haiti until the end of June 2012.

What will you do at Oxford?

I proposed two one-year Masters programs: a masters in public policy from Oxford's new Blavatnik School of Government, and an M.Sc. in medical anthropology. As of now, I'm thinking of sticking with my proposed programs -- probably pursuing the medical anthropology degree first as it is a bit more theoretical. I think it would be better to have the more "academic" experience first before gaining the practical tools that an MPP will hopefully afford me. After a short send-off in Washington, D.C., at the end of September 2012, I will fly with the other American Rhodes Scholars-elect to Oxford the first week of October with term beginning shortly thereafter.

How does your work in the CISAC Honors program relate to what you are currently doing, your plans for Oxford, or what you'll be doing afterward? 

My honors thesis has allowed me to contextualize my experiences in Haiti in some fairly amazing ways. Two very persistent issues in Haiti are that of poor governance -- e.g. lack of strong regulatory structures, lack of government effectiveness, etc. -- and ineffective aid modalities, or the ways in which aid is delivered. My thesis was situated exactly at this nexus: how to deliver aid more effectively in order to improve governance. Ninety-nine percent of relief aid after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti was funneled to non-state organizations and only 12 percent of recovery aid went toward supporting government activities. In Haiti, I've witnessed how detrimental a patchwork system of NGO activity can be with little coordination between NGOs and little harmonization of NGO activities with government objectives. It becomes very frustrating at times, because, if my thesis is any indication, things need not be this way if both NGOs and states were engaged in collaborative partnerships -- along the lines of what Dr. Paul Farmer, deputy U.N. special envoy to Haiti, calls "accompaniment."

My initial interest in the topic of global health financing was spurred by work out of Oxford's Global Economic Governance Project. The director of the project, Dr. Ngaire Woods, was actually named the Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government through which the MPP is offered. I'd love to continue exploring the issues broached in my thesis at Oxford -- especially issues of aid effectiveness and sustainable systems of delivering development aid for health. In the future, I hope to become a physician-policymaker, helping to not only deliver care to individuals in difficult conditions around the world, but also in fostering more robust global health governance.

- Interview by Michael Freedman

This past Thursday, on the 10th of November 2011, former U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan delivered a speech at Stanford University on the occasion of the launch of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies' Center on Food Security and the Environment. Citing UN estimates, more precisely the UNFPA State of the World Population 2011 report, he highlighted that the world population had recently reached seven billion and growing. Advancements in healthcare and technology have increased our life expectancy, affording 'man' the ability to escape a life that is, in Hobbesian parlance, "poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Yet this apparent human success story eclipses the "shameful failure" of the international community to address an indiscernible fact: that in the contemporary technological age, an astonishing number of people in the world go hungry each day. The marriage of a globalized economy and scientific innovation was supposed to - at least in theory - increase and spread wealth and resources to enhance the human condition. And yet today - talks of unfettered markets and the financial crisis aside -, we lay witness to close to one billion people around the world who lack food security (both chronic and transitory). Citing numbers from the World Bank, Annan stated that rapidly rising food prices since 2010 have "pushed an additional 70 million people into extreme poverty". Adding to these disturbing figures is the fact that one of the world's most ravenous culprits of infanticide is no other than hunger, which claims the young lives of 17,000 children every day.

Dwindling incentives to farm and increasing pressures on farmers are not helping the food insecurity crisis. Frequently, companies who contract local farmers to produce cash crops for export do not employ "strategic agricultural planning" or take into account the impact their policies and modus operandi may have on local farming communities and their immediate (food) needs. Artificially low prices for agricultural goods force farmers from their land and discourage investment in the sector, Annan warns. Agricultural subsidies in the US and Europe against farm produce injected into the market by farmers from developing countries have also added to the problem. Agricultural subsidies in Europe in particular have had a devastating impact on farmers from other parts of the world - mostly in Asia and Africa - who simply cannot compete with the existing market conditions and the low price tags attached to their goods. This phenomenon is most acute in Africa where a significant segment of the population lives modestly by working the land and these subsidies are choking the lifeline that feeds their families. To bring home the point of the sheer imbalance between the conditions of Western farmers and the 'rest', Annan stated that with a fraction of the funds generated by a reduction of subsidies, one "can fly every European cow around the world first class and still have money left over". Without a more balanced approach to international trade policy making, subsidies will continue to be a factor in food insecurity.

And it gets worse. The 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' of our times - (i) an ever emerging global water crisis, (ii) land misuse and degradation, (iii) climate change, and (iv) kleptocratic governance - have combined to aggravate an already dire international food insecurity predicament. The hard truth is that without countering the forward gallop of these ills, food insecurity cannot be adequately addressed.

The facts on the ground and projections into the future do not paint a promising picture. Food prices are expected to rise by 50 percent by the year 2050, Annan warns, and this at a time when the world will be home to two billion more inhabitants. In 40 years from now, there simply isn't enough food to nourish and satisfy the world's population.

The growing world food crisis also stifles development. It is the cyclical brutality of poverty that keeps the hungry down. Without the means or access to proper and adequate nutrition, the impoverished who are always the first victims of food insecurity invariably suffer from poor health, in turn resulting in low productivity. This vicious cycle traps the less privileged to a seemingly inescapable downward spiral.

During the course of his poignant remarks, Annan stated that without addressing food insecurity "the result will be mass migration, growing food shortages, loss of social cohesion and even political instability". He is correct on all counts.

The fact is that a world which 'cultivates' and then neglects the hungry is a dangerous and volatile world. Since time immemorial, dramatic human migrations have had a direct correlation with changes in climate, habitat and resource scarcity. Survival instincts are engrained in our genetic make-up. When the most basic and fundamental necessities of life are sparse and hard to come by, our natural inclination is to look for 'greener pastures'. An unaddressed and lingering food insecurity crisis will mean the world will witness significant and rapid migration trends in the 21st century (a phenomenon very much in motion today). The injection of mass flows of people into other foreign populations will cause friction and conflict induced by integration challenges, both social and economic (surmountable, but conflicts no less).

Moreover, the desperation and unmet basic needs of the underprivileged can translate into open outbursts of conflict and violence. Tranquility and social harmony are virtues enjoyed by countries that can provide for their people. Leaving the growing food insecurity dilemma unaddressed will be to invite inevitable political instability and violence in countries and fragile regions of the world grappling with high poverty rates and concomitant food insecurity challenges. More often than not, history has shown a positive nexus between hunger and social upheaval (it bears noting that La Grande Révolution of 1789-99 was preceded by slogans of "Du pain, du pain!"). Further, it does not take too much of a forethought to recognize that it is precisely in environments of destitute and despondency where autocratic rule can easily take root and grow to inflict further suffering.

Food insecurity can also lead to wars, but similarly wars contribute to food insecurity by destroying both the land and the ability to cultivate the land. Conflict represents formidable barriers to the access and availability of otherwise usable land (countries like Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Ethiopia and Liberia come to mind).

To be sure, "[w]ithout food, people have only three options: they riot, they emigrate or they die" (borrowed from the often cited words of Josette Sheeran, the Executive Director of the UN World Food Program).

How are we to tackle this grave problem in a realistic and effective manner? Annan rightly tells us that the "[l]ack of a collective vision is irresponsible". Implicit in Annan's remarks is also a lack of leadership to effectively tackle and untie the Gordian Knot of food insecurity. The nature and colossal character of food insecurity demands action and cooperation on a global scale. Climate change and its negative impact on the environment - e.g. diminishing arable lands, water resources, recurring drought -, one of the accelerators of food insecurity, requires robust and committed international agreement and action to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Strict adherence and compliance with the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord are a must in this regard. With strategic agricultural planning, knowledge transfer and investment, uncultivated arable lands - abundant in many parts of the world, including in Africa - can become productive and bear fruit, reducing in turn the hunger crisis. Efforts to implement more balanced international trade policies which make farming viable across continents as well as efforts to eradicate corruption (by promoting good governance) are also part and parcel of the fight against hunger. So are innovative ways of thinking about establishing, say rapid response mechanisms to preempt and effectively counter famine and other food emergencies by bolstering the capacities of relevant existing international and regional organizations. We could also reduce the threat of hunger by doing more than just pay lip-serve to the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and uphold our commitments to the MDGs through sustained funding and support.

The UN and other multilateral bodies and pacts are tools we have created to work collaboratively - as best as human frailties permit - to confront global challenges and ills that threaten the social fabric of human society (whether they be food insecurity, dearth in development, war and the crimes that emanate from aggression which threaten peace and security, inter alia). Our capacity to reason, innovate, communicate and cooperate is hence an indispensible tool in our struggle to keep the peace, to protect our fundamental human rights and to satisfy our most basic needs for survival. It's time to put these faculties to work in confronting the world's food security challenges.

It is only fitting to conclude these brief remarks by quoting from the man and the lecture that inspired them. "If we pool our efforts and resources we can finally break the back of this problem", stated Annan in his call for action to defeat food insecurity. If there's a will, history tells us, change is within grasp, no matter how daunting the task. It only takes the trinity of courage, commitment and leadership.

Throughout the developing world, people are dying at alarming rates because they don't have basic necessities we often take for granted: enough food, clean water and health care.

Political instability and weak institutions are often to blame. Corruption, violence and lack of accountability keep the world’s poorest people from the chance to prosper.

Even as countries like China and India revel in their economic booms, the gap between rich and poor in those countries has never been wider. And those left behind often struggle on less than a dollar a day.

Researchers at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies are focusing on how to improve the quality of lives for those in the greatest need – the people caught in places of chronic underdevelopment.

“Our job is to take intellectual ideas and push them out into the real world where they can be tested and refined – or discarded. The impact of that can be transformational."

-Coit BlackerThey're helping children in rural China get the food they need to do well in school and land competitive jobs. They’re using cell phone technology to make sure people living in one of Africa’s largest slums have access to clean drinking water. They’re working with local governments in Latin America to improve medical care and educational opportunities for children.

FSI: Where disciplines come together

The success they have in fighting poverty takes more than a lone researcher focusing on a particular topic. It comes from economists working with doctors, political scientists collaborating with environmentalists and engineers sharing ideas with lawyers. And it comes from putting academic findings into the hands of policy makers.

As Stanford’s primary forum for research on international issues, FSI fosters the multidisciplinary match-ups that influence policy worldwide and make a difference in people’s lives. It provides the glue and the space for academics across Stanford’s campus to come together and develop ideas.

“Unless and until we can offer profound answers as to why such a large a portion of the world’s population lives on less than a dollar day, we won’t be able to help countries develop institutions for reliable self-governance,” says FSI Director Coit D. Blacker. “And we won’t have building blocks for stability in place. If you can’t feed your people, you can’t educate your people and you can’t sew together a social and governing structure to help them break from chronic underdevelopment.”

Action Fund grants: Sparking research, shaping policy

FSI’s Global Underdevelopment Action Fund provides seed grants to help faculty members design research experiments and conduct fieldwork in some of the world’s poorest places.

The program awards up to $40,000 to researchers creating projects that tackle issues like hunger, poverty and poor governance.  Since it was established last year, the Action Fund has awarded $436,000 to nine researchers who have designed at total of 11 programs. 

With fresh findings, FSI researchers are in a unique position to influence global policy. Drawing on the FSI’s network of faculty and alumni who came from and are now working with governments around the world, scholars have the opportunity to direct their research to those who are able to affect change.

“Our job is to take intellectual ideas and push them out into the real world where they can be tested and refined – or discarded,” Blacker says. “The impact of that can be transformational.”