Amongst the economists, entrepreneurs, Nobel laureates at the inauguration of MIT’s Legatum Center of Entrepreneurship and Development two speeches stood out. One was by Ben Cohen, one half of Ben and Jerry’s. His story can be found in lots of places so I won’t dwell on it here. Suffice to say he was probably the most welcome guest for giving the entire lecture hall free ice cream (sadly, just vanilla at our table).
Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's
The other person that really made people sit up and listen was by Karim Khoja, CEO of Roshan, the largest mobile phone network in Afghanistan. The country, he said, had no mobile phone service five years ago. Several decades of war also meant that it had few landlines. Now, he said, 58% of the country has access to telephony. His service alone has 2.4m subscribers and he’s currently adding new ones at 200,000 per month. The story is even more incredible when you know about the risks involved in keeping his network running. Not only is he working in war torn areas, his engineers are trying to build base stations and infrastructure in a country that has the highest density of landmines anywhere in the world (so far three have been injured). Also, he said, threats from the Taleban mean the company has to shut down 50 of its transmitters in the south of the country every night. Supposedly they will blow the towers up if he doesn’t comply; they do not want to be tracked as they go about their nocturnal activities. Yet, despite these factors, Roshan is now the largest private utility in Afghanistan. An incredible story…
the mit atom 