The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) is a part of the World Bank that insures high-risk business projects for a company in a high-risk state. For many business investors, obtaining insurance and mitigating risk are key factors in the decision to invest in a foreign country. Since the World Bank has signalled its backing, it creates a permission, so to speak, for businesses world-wide to consider investment in Afghanistani telecommunications. MIGA insurance financing also opens the gate for individual states with export credit agencies (ECAs) to insure part of any offering a telecommunications company within their home state. Therefore, this announcement by the World Bank introduces a “Likely Possibility.”
For those of us who have plenty of telecommunications, it's good to reflect just what they are used for besides calling Grandma. That would be: faster business deals-better information about prevailing prices in nearby cities or where shortages are of a product one sells. Stock quotes and commodity prices. Wireless internet. A rapid transmission of information about the conduct of officials, townspeople, how good the hospital is–where one is staying, and if one is well after a natural disaster. A more connected and therefore accurate media–also, a more free media.
Like all infrastructure projects, the program is value-neutral, because it can also support illicit activity–but, without it, legal activity is constrained even more. I wait to see just what shape the project will take and in what areas of the country. One constraint I see is that cellular technology does not always work well in mountains. Whoever invests in this program using MIGA guarantees will have to apply technical know-how that may in the long run benefit all of us. To be sure, it will be of great benefit to Afghanistan.
Photo: CNN