How tech ideas are raising Nepal out of the rubble

Two years ago, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on April 25 and a major aftershock on May 12 took nearly 9,000 lives and damaged hundreds of thousands of homes in Nepal. Thailand like many other nations was quick to respond with offers of assistance.
While rich in culture and heritage, Nepal is one of the world’s least-developed nations, second only to Afghanistan among Asia’s poorest countries. More than 40 per cent of the population live on less than $2 (Bt70) a day, and 70 per cent are employed in agriculture, reports the World Bank.
Now two years after the 2015 earthquake, the results of reconstruction efforts are decidedly mixed, with tens of thousands of homes, buildings and heritage sites still needing to be rebuilt. This, despite pledges of more than $4 billion in aid.
Still, amid pessimism over persistent corruption, there is reason for hope. My latest visit to Nepal and conversations with stakeholders there underscore that even in the poorest of countries, the transformative power of technology is key. 
 “Technology” likely brings to mind images of Silicon Valley and elite entrepreneurs, but it is not just in rich nations that tech can spark significant, positive change. Three lessons from Nepal bear this out.

Relief efforts
1. Tech can help transform traditional relief efforts.
This is particularly true after natural disasters, says Basanta Shresthra, director of strategic cooperation at the Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an intergovernmental organisation based in Kathmandu that is focused on sustainable development in the region. Encompassing Nepal, this mountainous region extends more than 3,400 kilometres over eight countries from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east.
Immediately after the devastating earthquake in 2015, technologies such as satellite imaging, crowdsourcing, unmanned air vehicles and mobile apps were used for damage assessments to help with disaster response and recovery, notes Shresthra.
Technology has also helped increase collaboration across disciplines and borders.

Empowering farmers
2. Technology can empower.
Information Communications Technology, driven in part via the humble mobile phone, can help transform agriculture – a core of the Nepali economy. Better access to weather data, information on improved crop selection and market prices transforms lives.
“Disruptive technologies offer new opportunities to devise innovative solutions and take meaningful actions to address key societal challenges such as climate change, disaster risk reduction, and air pollution among others,” adds Shrestra.
“We live in a truly interconnected world, with an ongoing digital transformation providing unimaginable opportunities for youth to help the development of Nepal. Youth forces are unleashing the power of technology to address issues such as governance and transparency.”

Creating jobs
3.  Perhaps most critically, technology is creating jobs. This is true even as fears rise in richer nations over the negative impact of technology on employment.
That’s a clear message from my meetings with Tim Gocher, the CEO of the Dolma Impact Fund, and others focused on growing Nepal’s private sector. Dolma Impact – on whose advisory board I sit – is the first international private equity fund for Nepal and has been investing for almost three years in the nation.
“In Nepal, we are seeing how technology can also transform businesses and lives,” Gocher tells me. “We see examples in healthcare with remote medicine, in education where teaching materials can now be distributed online to remote schools, and in banking where mobile and online banking are changing the landscape for rural financial services.”
One example is the fund’s investment in CloudFactory Group, a company aiming to connect one million people in the developing world to digital-age work, while raising them up as leaders to address poverty in their own communities. 
In essence, the company is using a cloud-based platform to distribute simple tasks to its cloud workers, mainly in Nepal, from tech companies around the world. Such tasks range from transcribing expense receipts to annotating images for firms developing AI algorithms for self-driving cars.
“Our investment in CloudFactory Group takes technology’s social and economic benefit to a new level,” says Gocher. “ They have changed what would be minimum wage work in a developed nation into much-needed work for Nepalis paying well over the minimum wage, and already have over 1,000 cloud workers. Our investment aims to enable them to create meaningful work for thousands more.”
Meanwhile, at Incessant Rain Animation Studios in Kathmandu, teams are specialising in 3D character animation and producing visual effects for games, feature films and television. In biotech, Intrepid Medtech, with bases in Canada and Nepal, works in close conjunction with the Centre for Molecular Dynamics Nepal on clinical diagnostics tools and technologies. And Massachusetts-based Deerwalk, a healthcare analytics company, has established a large development centre in Nepal.
As often is the case, private citizens and the private sector are the ones who are – by necessity – innovating and filling the gap, when promised official development assistance is slow in coming. An environment that enables businesses to develop – not more aid money – will be the key to a stronger economy and sustained job creation.
For Nepal’s private sector to now match the resilience of its people, the government must follow up on its own pledges to loosen its grip on the economy, including on foreign direct investment flows. 
Technology has a critical role to play in helping Nepal to overcome past tragedy and to leapfrog from its current state of development. That and other lessons must be taken to heart before the next quake hits Nepal, for resilience and growth will be found first and foremost in a thriving private sector.

Curtis S Chin, a former US ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group, LLC, and the inaugural Milken Institute Asia Fellow. Follow him on Twitter at @CurtisSChin.