The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a comprehensive call to action for countries to work together to address global poverty. I have been considering throughout this blog series how the work of Opportunity International Canada contributes to progress in some of the goals. Today I will focus on SDG #9 — Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.
As with SDG #7, I didn’t initially see a strong connection and was tempted to skip to SDG #10. However, after reading through some of the material on SDG #9, I concluded that the poverty alleviation work of Opportunity International does at least partially address this goal.
One of the targets set out by the United Nations is increased access to financial services and markets. Another is universal access to information and communications technology.
Central to the work of Opportunity International is providing those at the bottom of the economic ladder with access to financial services – microloans, microinsurance, and savings. When combined with training and market access support, it is amazing what clients can build and accomplish!
The Opportunity International Agriculture Finance Program is a perfect example of this dynamic. Many smallholder farmers barely eke out a subsistence. But their farming operations can be completely transformed into successful enterprises that generate income that will change the trajectory of an entire family.
Through loans and training, farmers gain access to lower-cost higher-quality inputs and affordable access to mechanized support, resulting in significantly improved crop yields. By addressing the whole agriculture value chain, farmers gain access to markets with fair and predictable pricing, providing a stable income. Access to financial services and market access changes lives.
Another SDG #9 target is access to information and communications technology, an area in which we are deeply engaged, and which leverages technology to assist the above target of increased access to financial services and markets. Our Digital Financial Services (DFS) experts were early pioneers in developing such services and provide technical assistance to our Partners to ensure they leverage technology in a manner that addresses the unique needs of their clients.
Technology provides the opportunity to deliver a range of services in remote and marginalized communities. Challenges include the predominance of low feature/long battery life phones (i.e., non-smartphones), illiteracy, innumeracy, multiple languages, secure financial transactions, and the delivery of remote training.
Solutions have been found to all of these and more, such that women in very remote locations with low feature phones can make deposits, move funds around, pay bills, and receive voice-based training on a wide range of business-relevant topics.
And the innovation continues, with very active development underway to formulate extensive client-centred solutions to leverage increasingly available smartphone technology — services that will increase client success through access to financial services, training, and to networks including peers, suppliers and customers.
Dan Murray, CEO