A formula to ignite youth tech start-ups in developing countries

 

I was invited to give a talk on “Trends in Robotics and AI – How Sri Lanka can prepare to ride the economic wave” to the senior policy staffers of the honourable members of the Sri Lankan parliament (225 MPs in Sri Lankan parliament).

In the Youtube video below, I talked in Sinhalese but kept the slides in English as a compromise to make maximum impact. I am not sure how far my final recommendations would go, but I think any developing country can benefit from the formula I proposed. Here is the essence:

Economic development cannot be spoon-fed. People should be challenged to stand on their own feet, and they should be rewarded for trying.

Just like making origami, kirigami, and other crafts is a household habit in Japan, playing football is a street thing in Brazil, playing Cricket is part of life in Sri Lanka, any country who wants to be a leader in any field, it should be cultivated at a grassroots level. The next waves of AI and Robotics will be the same. 

How do we make AI and Robotics a grassroots level culture in a developing country? Here are some tips:

• Even the poorest youth communities with a basic high school education can get together and save to invest in single board computers like Raspberry Pi or Arduino. For instance, in Sri Lanka more than 300,000 students take GCE (A/L) exam every year.
• Ask each Ministry in the Government to identify locally relevant small challenges people can address using these low-end computing platforms with their own money. Though the tech solution is low-end, the impact can be broad. i.e. A code running in a Raspberry pi can use passive infrared camera images to identify wild animals encroaching a farm in the night to produce a sound deterrent. It can save millions of lost crop value.
• Estimate how much of a cash award for the top 10 winners for each challenge would motivate several thousands of groups to try. For instance, if the government and private sector can come together to offer USD 50k for the top 10, and if it can motivate 5000 youth out of a 20 million population to invest USD 100 each to try the challenge, you create a USD 500k economic activity by showing USD 50k and you also teach people to develop an entrepreneurial mind set.
• Empower the youth by sharing free online resources such as the https://experience-ai.org/en/ courses developed for kids to use Raspberry pi boards to learn Ai.
• Commission local universities and technical colleges to review the submissions for these competitions. The Government may have to pay these institutes to review thousands of submissions. However, it is another investment to stimulate university-community engagements and tech incubation channels. Always keep utmost transparency in the review process. Flawed reviews can kill the enthusiasm of the youth.
• Once the final awardees are chosen for each challenge, invite angel investors and crowd funding initiatives to support business development. This is why the challenges should be carefully thought out. They should be widespread local challenges for a viable business to solve it.
• The government may even source these funds from World Bank or IMF if it can be formulated as a national strategy leading to broad based start-up eco-system.
• Even if most start-ups will not work out, you kick start a youth movement where they start to know local challenges and develop entrepreneurial mindsets to take a risk and try out. This mind set alone will drive the country.

I tested this when I was the chairman of the Sri Lanka Inventors Commission. I launched a National challenge to make any food item using bitter gourd. People with a kitchen (the food labs) had tried various forms of ice creams, powders, dressings, etc. So I am pretty sure it will work for tech too.