I'll just take you to Bangladesh for a minute.
バングラデシュをしばしご覧下さい
Before I tell that story, we should ask ourselves the question: Why does poverty exist? I mean, there is plenty of knowledge and scientific breakthroughs. We all live in the same planet, but there's still a great deal of poverty in the world. And I think -- so I want to throw a perspective that I have, so that we can assess this project, or any other project, for that matter, to see whether it's contributing or -- contributing to poverty or trying to alleviate it.
本題に入る前に 一緒に考えてください なぜ貧困があるのか? 我々は多くの知識を持ち 科学は発展し ひとつの同じ星に暮らしているのに 今も世界中に貧困がはびこっています まず 私の視点を聞いて下さい 今から話す事業や その他の事業が 貧困撲滅や緩和に貢献しているのか 見極めてみましょう
Rich countries have been sending aid to poor countries for the last 60 years. And by and large, this has failed. And you can see this book, written by someone who worked in the World Bank for 20 years, and he finds economic growth in this country to be elusive. By and large, it did not work. So the question is, why is that?
過去60年間 豊かな国は貧しい国を援助してきました でも全体的に見て失敗でした この本を見て下さい 世界銀行に20年勤めた人が書いたもので “この国の経済成長の理由は不明だが 援助の結果ではない”と示しています それはなぜでしょうか
In my mind, there is something to learn from the history of Europe. I mean, even here, yesterday I was walking across the street, and they showed three bishops were executed 500 years ago, right across the street from here. So my point is, there's a lot of struggle has gone in Europe, where citizens were empowered by technologies. And they demanded authorities from -- to come down from their high horses. And in the end, there's better bargaining between the authorities and citizens, and democracies, capitalism -- everything else flourished. And so you can see, the real process of -- and this is backed up by this 500-page book -- that the authorities came down and citizens got up.
欧州の歴史が参考になると私は考えています 昨日通りを歩いていて見つけたのですが 5百年前に処刑された3人の主教を 通りの向かいで展示しています つまり 欧州で多くの闘争が繰り広げられ 市民は技術に支えられ力をつけました 市民は権力者が馬の背から降り 市民と同じ土俵に立つことを求めました 最後にはよりよい妥協が 権力者と市民との間で成立し 民主主義や資本主義などが花開きました 真の発展に必要なことは この本にも書かれているように 権力者に代わり市民が力を得ることです
But if you look, if you have that perspective, then you can see what happened in the last 60 years. Aid actually did the opposite. It empowered authorities, and, as a result, marginalized citizens. The authorities did not have the reason to make economic growth happen so that they could tax people and make more money for to run their business. Because they were getting it from abroad. And in fact, if you see oil-rich countries, where citizens are not yet empowered, the same thing goes -- Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, all sorts of countries. Because the aid and oil or mineral money acts the same way. It empowers authorities, without activating the citizens -- their hands, legs, brains, what have you.
この視点から考えると この60年間 援助が逆方向に注がれていたと分かります つまり援助によって権力者が力をつけ 結果的に市民をのけ者にした 権力者は経済成長などいりませんでした 人々に税金を課し 国の事業資金を稼ぐ必要がなかったのです 海外から資金が得られたからです 事実 石油収入が豊富で 市民の力が弱い国でも同じ事が起こっています ナイジェリアやサウジアラビアのような国です 援助は石油や鉱物の収入と同じです 権力者に力を与え 市民は活性化されない 市民の労働力や才能が活かされない そうであるなら 国の発展に最も必要なことは
And if you agree with that, then I think the best way to improve these countries is to recognize that economic development is of the people, by the people, for the people. And that is the real network effect. If citizens can network and make themselves more organized and productive, so that their voices are heard, so then things would improve.
経済発展とは 人々の 人々による 人々のためのもの と認識することです 人々のつながりが発展をもたらします 市民がつながり 組織化され より生産的になることで 市民の声が社会に反映され 世の中はよくなるのです 反して 世界で最も影響力のある機関-
And to contrast that, you can see the most important institution in the world, the World Bank, is an organization of the government, by the government, for the governments. Just see the contrast. And that is the perspective I have, and then I can start my story.
世界銀行は 政府の 政府による 政府のための組織です まさに正反対です 以上が私の視点です それでは私の物語を始めましょう どうすれば市民が力を持てるのでしょう?
Of course, how would you empower citizens? There could be all sorts of technologies. And one is cell phones. Recently "The Economist" recognized this, but I stumbled upon the idea 12 years ago, and that's what I've been working on. So 12 years ago, I was trying to be an investment banker in New York.
携帯のような技術が使えます 英エコノミスト誌も最近認めていますが 私は12年前にこのアイデアを思いつきました 以後この事業に取り組んでいます ニューヨークで投資銀行家を目指していた12年前 多くの同業者とコンピュータネットワークでつながっていました
We had -- quite a few our colleagues were connected by a computer network. And we got more productive because we didn't have to exchange floppy disks; we could update each other more often. But one time it broke down. And it reminded me of a day in 1971. There was a war going on in my country. And my family moved out of an urban place, where we used to live, to a remote rural area where it was safer. And one time my mother asked me to get some medicine for a younger sibling. And I walked 10 miles or so, all morning, to get there, to the medicine man. And he wasn't there, so I walked all afternoon back. So I had another unproductive day.
フロッピーディスクを交換する必要もなく より効率的に 最新の情報を交換することが出来ました ある時 ネットワークが故障しました その時 1971年の出来事を思い出しました 当時私の国は戦争のさなかにあり 私たち家族はそれまで暮らしていた都会を離れ より安全な地方の田舎に引越していました ある時 弟の薬を取りに行くよう母に頼まれました 午前一杯16キロ歩き 薬屋に辿り着きましたが 不在で 仕方なく半日歩いて戻りました 全く無駄な一日でした ニューヨークの高層ビルの中にいた私は
So while I was sitting in a tall building in New York, I put those two experiences together side by side, and basically concluded that connectivity is productivity -- whether it's in a modern office or an underdeveloped village. So naturally, I -- the implication of that is that the telephone is a weapon against poverty. And if that's the case, then the question is how many telephones did we have at that time?
この2つの出来事を比較して つながりこそが生産力を高めると気づいたのです 近代的なオフィスも昔ながらの農村も同じなのです どういうことかと言うと 電話は貧困に対する武器になるということです さて そうだとすると 当時 何台の電話があったでしょうか? 調べてみると 当時のバングラデシュには
And it turns out, that there was one telephone in Bangladesh for every 500 people. And all those phones were in the few urban places. The vast rural areas, where 100 million people lived, there were no telephones. So just imagine how many man-months or man-years are wasted, just like I wasted a day. If you just multiply by 100 million people, let's say losing one day a month, whatever, and you see a vast amount of resource wasted. And after all, poor countries, like rich countries, one thing we've got equal, is their days are the same length: 24 hours. So if you lose that precious resource, where you are somewhat equal to the richer countries, that's a huge waste.
5百人に1台だけでした それも都会のみでした 1億人の人々が住む広大な地方には 電話がなかったのです かなりの人月 人年の無駄ですね 私が無駄にしたあの日のように 月1日の無駄でも 1億人を掛け算すると どれだけの資源が無駄になるか分かりますね つまり 貧富に関係なく平等にあるもの それは一日の長さであり 24時間です この時間という貴重な資源を失うと 豊かな国となんら変わりなく 莫大な損失です そこで 私は何か証拠がないか探し始めました
So I started looking for any evidence that -- does connectivity really increase productivity? And I couldn't find much, really, but I found this graph produced by the ITU, which is the International Telecommunication Union, based in Geneva. They show an interesting thing. That you see, the horizontal axis is where you place your country. So the United States or the UK would be here, outside. And so the impact of one new telephone, which is on the vertical axis, is very little.
つながりが本当に生産性を向上させるのか? 証拠に限りはありましたが このグラフを見つけました ITU ジュネーブにある国際電気電信連合が作成したものです 興味深いことを示しています ここを見て下さい 横軸は所得レベルです 米国や英国はこのあたり 図の外になります 縦軸は電話1台の経済効果です 大変小さいですね 一方 一人当たりのGNPが
But if you come back to a poorer country, where the GNP per capita is, let's say, 500 dollars, or 300 dollars, then the impact is huge: 6,000 dollars. Or 5,000 dollars. The question was, how much did it cost to install a new telephone in Bangladesh? It turns out: 2,000 dollars. So if you spend 2,000 dollars, and let's say the telephone lasts 10 years, and if 5,000 dollars every year -- so that's 50,000 dollars.
5百ドルや3百ドルの貧しい国だと 5~6千ドルの大きな経済効果があります では 一方 バングラデシュで電話設置に幾らかかるか? 調べると2千ドルでした 2千ドル払い 10年使えるとします 1年5千ドルなら10年で5万ドルです これはもう明らかに相当の品物です
So obviously this was a gadget to have. And of course, if the cost of installing a telephone is going down, because there's a digital revolution going on, then it would be even more dramatic.
事実 デジタル革命が進んでいますから 仮に電話の設置費用が下がれば これは益々素晴しい 私も経済学をかじっていましたが
And I knew a little economics by then -- it says Adam Smith taught us that specialization leads to productivity. But how would you specialize? Let's say I'm a fisherman and a farmer. And Chris is a fisherman farmer. Both are generalists. So the point is that we could only -- the only way we could depend on each other, is if we can connect with each other. And if we are neighbors, I could just walk over to his house.
アダム スミス曰く 専門化が生産性を高める では どうすれば専門化が進むか? 私が魚も獲る農家だとしましょう 仕事の相方も同様に色んな仕事をする 専門を伸ばし相互依存するには 二人がつながっていることが不可欠です 二人が近所に住んでれば 彼の家に歩いて行けばいい でも経済活動は狭い範囲に制限されます
But then we are limiting our economic sphere to something very small area. But in order to expand that, you need a river, or you need a highway, or you need telephone lines. But in any event, it's connectivity that leads to dependability. And that leads to specialization. That leads to productivity.
拡大するには 川が必要です 高速道路や電話が必要です いずれにせよ つながりによって相互依存が可能になり 相互依存が専門化を促し さらに生産性が向上します 私はこの課題に取り組み始め
So the question was, I started looking at this issue, and going back and forth between Bangladesh and New York. There were a lot of reasons people told me why we don't have enough telephones. And one of them is the lacking buying power. Poor people apparently don't have the power to buy.
バングラデシュとニューヨークを行き来しました バングラデシュに十分な電話がないのは 沢山の理由があると人々は言いました 1つは購買力がないこと 貧しい人は確かに購買力に乏しい でも電話が生産手段なら心配無用です
But the point is, if it's a production tool, why do we have to worry about that? I mean, in America, people buy cars, and they put very little money down. They get a car, and they go to work. The work pays them a salary; the salary allows them to pay for the car over time. The car pays for itself.
つまり アメリカで車を購入する時 わずかばかりの頭金を払って 車を手に入れ 仕事に行く 仕事によって給料が入る 給料で車の費用は時間をかけて払えばいい 車があれば元が取れる 電話も生産手段であれば
So if the telephone is a production tool, then we don't quite have to worry about the purchasing power. And of course, even if that's true, then what about initial buying power? So then the question is, why can't we have some kind of shared access? In the United States, we have -- everybody needs a banking service, but very few of us are trying to buy a bank. So it's -- a bank tends to serve a whole community. So we could do that for telephones.
購買力の心配は無用です 頭金を払うのは簡単ではないかもしれない そこで ある種の共有ができないかと考えました 米国では誰もが銀行を必要としますが 銀行を買う人はほとんどいません つまり銀行は 地域に貢献しているのです 同じことを電話でもできるのではないか? 衣食住の基本的ニーズが優先だと言う人もいましたが
And also people told me that we have a lot of important primary needs to meet: food, clothing, shelter, whatever. But again, it's very paternalistic. You should be raising income and let people decide what they want to do with their money.
それは過保護で 干渉的な考えです まず収入を確保することが大事で 何が必要かは 個々がを決めるべきなのです 本当の問題はインフラの不足でした
But the real problem is the lack of other infrastructures. See, you need some kind of infrastructure to bring a new thing. For instance, the Internet was booming in the U.S. because there were -- there were people who had computers. They had modems. They had telephone lines, so it's very easy to bring in a new idea, like the Internet. But that's what's lacking in a poor country.
新しいものの導入には基盤インフラが必要です 米国ではインターネット利用者が急増しましたが みんなコンピュータを持っていて モデムや電話線もあったので インターネットのようなアイデアが簡単に広まりました 貧しい国はこうしたものがない 例えば 信用調査をする方法がなかったし
So for example, we didn't have ways to have credit checks, few banks to collect bills, etc. But that's why I noticed Grameen Bank, which is a bank for poor people, and had 1,100 branches, 12,000 employees, 2.3 million borrowers. And they had these branches. I thought I could put cell towers and create a network.
集金してくれる銀行もほとんどない で 貧困者向けのグラミン銀行に目を向けました 1,100の支店を持ち 1万2千人のスタッフと230万人の借り手がいる この支店網を 携帯基地局にしたネットワーク化を考えました 途中を省きますが 私は乗り出したわけです
And anyway, to cut the time short -- so I started -- I first went to them and said, "You know, perhaps I could connect all your branches and make you more efficient." But you know, they have, after all, evolved in a country without telephones, so they are decentralized. I mean, of course there might be other good reasons, but this was one of the reasons -- they had to be. And so they were not that interested to connect all their branches, and then to be -- and rock the boat.
まず グラミン銀行に出向いて提案しました ”支店網をつなげれば効率的にできますよ” でも 彼らは電話のない国で発展を遂げた組織です 組織は分権化されていました その必要性があったのでしょう 支店間のネットワーク化で混乱するより 今のままでよいと彼らは考えた そこで銀行のしくみに焦点を絞ってみました
So I started focusing. What is it that they really do? So what happens is that somebody borrows money from the bank. She typically buys a cow. The cow gives milk. And she sells the milk to the villagers, and pays off the loan. And this is a business for her, but it's milk for everybody else.
銀行でお金を借ります 彼女は牛を買い 牛はミルクを出します ミルクを村人に売り それで銀行に返済します これが典型的な商売―食料流通のしくみです 携帯が牛になると閃いた
And suddenly I realized that a cell phone could be a cow. Because some way she could borrow 200 dollars from the bank, get a phone and have the phone for everybody. And it's a business for her.
つまり 彼女は2百ドルを銀行から借りる 電話を購入し その電話をみんなに使ってもらう それを商売にするのです グラミン銀行に手紙を出し しばらくして返事がきました
So I wrote to the bank, and they thought for a while, and they said, "It's a little crazy, but logical. If you think it can be done, come and make it happen." So I quit my job; I went back to Bangladesh. I created a company in America called Gonofone, which in Bengali means "people's phone."
”少し突飛な話ですが 筋は通っていますね 実現可能なら事業化させましょう” 私は仕事を辞め バングラデシュに帰ってきました ベンガリ語でみんなの電話という意味の ゴノフォンという会社を設立し 米国投資家の資金を集めました
And angel investors in America put in money into that. I flew around the world. After about a million -- I mean, I got rejected from lots of places, because I was not only trying to go to a poor country, I was trying to go to the poor of the poor country.
私は世界を飛び回りました あちこちで断られました 貧しい国の最貧層が対象なので 無理もありません 世界中を飛び回り 髪の毛をたっぷり失い
After about a million miles, and a meaningful -- a substantial loss of hair, I eventually put together a consortium, and -- which involved the Norwegian telephone company, which provided the know-how, and the Grameen Bank provided the infrastructure to spread the service.
ついにグラミンフォンを設立しました ノルウェーの電話会社が ノウハウを提供し グラミン銀行が地方展開に必要なインフラを提供しました 経緯は省きますが これが現在の受信地域です
To make the story short, here is the coverage of the country. You can see it's pretty much covered. Even in Bangladesh, there are some empty places. But we are also investing around another 300 million dollars this year to extend that coverage.
ほとんどの地域をカバーしています バングラデシュにも 過疎地域があります でも 今年は更に約3億ドルの投資を行い 過疎地域にもサービスを広げるつもりです 先ほどお話した牛のモデルですが
Now, about that cow model I talked about. There are about 115,000 people who are retailing telephone services in their neighborhoods. And it's serving 52,000 villages, which represent about 80 million people.
11万5千人が 電話サービスを近所の人たちに 提供しています 5万2千の村 つまり8千万人が利用しています これらの電話が稼ぎ出す収入は
And these phones are generating about 100 million dollars for the company. And two dollars profit per entrepreneur per day, which is like 700 dollars per year.
グラミンフォンに1億ドルをもたらし 販売員の収入は1日2ドル 年間で7百ドルになります 電話は万能ですから
And of course, it's very beneficial in a lot of ways. It increases income, improves welfare, etc. And the result is, right now, this company is the largest telephone company, with 3.5 million subscribers, 115,000 of these phones I talked about -- that produces about a third of the traffic in the network. And 2004, the net profit, after taxes -- very serious taxes -- was 120 million dollars. And the company contributed about 190 million dollars to the government coffers.
所得や福祉を向上させます グラミンフォンは350万人の加入者を持つ― 最大手の電話会社になりました 先ほどの11万5千台の電話が 全体3分の1の通話を担っています 2004年の税引き利益は1億2千万ドル かなり莫大な税額を課されました 当社は政府財政に1億9千万ドルの貢献をしました ここで検討してみましょう
And again, here are some of the lessons. "The government needs to provide economically viable services." Actually, this is an instance where private companies can provide that. "Governments need to subsidize private companies." This is what some people think. And actually, private companies help governments with taxes. "Poor people are recipients." Poor people are a resource. "Services cost too much for the poor." Their involvement reduces the cost. "The poor are uneducated and cannot do much." They are very eager learners and very capable survivors. I've been very surprised. Most of them learn how to operate a telephone within a day. "Poor countries need aid." Businesses -- this one company has raised the -- if the ideal figures are even five percent true, this one company is raising the GNP of the country much more than the aid the country receives. And as I was trying to show you, as far as I'm concerned, aid does damages because it removes the government from its citizens.
政府の経済向上事業は必要か? 実は 民間企業にも実行可能なのです 政府が企業を補助する必要があると― 考える人もいますが 企業が納税で政府を助けているのです 貧しい人々は受益者でしかない? いいえ 貧しい人々も資源なのです 貧困地域のサービスはコスト高? 貧しい人の関与がコストを下げるのです 彼らは教育もなく力にならない? 有能で向学心もある逆境に強い人たちです 実際驚くほどでした 多くが電話の使い方を1日で覚えました 貧しい国には援助が必要? いいえ必要なのはビジネスです 当社のもたらした経済効果の5%だけでも 海外援助の総額を上回るGNP拡大効果をあげました 先にも話したように 援助には政府と市民を分断する弊害があるのです こちらは米国人発明家ディーン ケーメンとの新事業です
And this is a new project I have with Dean Kamen, the famous inventor in America. He has produced some power generators, which we are now doing an experiment in Bangladesh, in two villages where cow manure is producing biogas, which is running these generators. And each of these generators is selling electricity to 20 houses each. It's just an experiment. We don't know how far it will go, but it's going on.
彼は発電機を作ってきたのですが 今 バングラデシュの二つの村で実験をしています 牛の糞から発生する― バイオガスで動く発電機です 1つの発電機で20家庭分の電気を販売しています これはまだほんの実験です どう発展していくかまだ分かりませんが すでに動き始めています 以上です ありがとう
Thank you.