Global Leader for Tomorrow - Class of 2000

Iqbal Quadir is one of the World Economic Forum's Global Leaders for Tomorrow - people selected as representative of a new generation of people who have demonstrated a commitment to addressing issues beyond their immediate professional interest. They are global decision-makers already holding positions of influence and responsibility.

Few people can claim to have impacted as many people's lives as Iqbal Quadir, or have had such innovative ideas.

His philosophy that digital technology provides a breakthrough in solving social and development problems has seen him introduce mobile telephones to rural Bangladesh, taught women how to run businesses, and empowered some of the poorest people in the world.

"I was sitting idle at my desk after my computer broke down," he says. Location: New York. Position: investment banker.

"It reminded me of a day in 1971 in Bangladesh when I was 12 or 13. I had been sent to a remote village to get medicine for one of my relatives. I walked all afternoon to get there and the man was not there. I then spent the rest of the day walking back home thinking how I had wasted the day.

"When my computer broke down I was sitting idle again."

Mr Quadir says it was then that he realised that connectivity was productivity. Had he been able to communicate with the medicine man he would not have needlessly walked all the way over there.

Mr Quadir went on to co-found GrameenPhone, a company valued at $55m and 51 per cent owned by Telco, Norway's state-owned telecommunications operator. His idea was simple and successful. He decided to introduce mobile phones to rural villages in Bangladesh, where people would otherwise have to take a bus to the nearest city to be able to make a phone call.

"I realised that 100m people lived in rural areas and had no phones. The only infrastructure was a bank which had branches everywhere. They would lend $100 to someone to buy a cow, so I told them that a cellular phone could also be a cow but that in five years it would be like a cow that produces a lot more milk."

The banks bought the idea and started lending villagers money to invest in buying a mobile phone that they could then charge their friends, family and neighbours to use, thereby repaying the loan, showing a profit, and making their lives much easier.

The phone owners make a modest $2 a day in sales - two to three times the country's daily per-capita income. At a rate of 8 cents a minute for a local call, village phone calls work out between two and eight times cheaper than the combined cost of a bus ticket and a phone call made on a city phone.

Village phone users are connected not only to family, but also customers and suppliers. Communities are empowered, the economy develops, and productivity goes up. "Costs are substantially reduced through shared access; like one bank serving a community, one computer improves a whole village," says Mr Quadir.

Some 95 per cent of people applying for the phone loans are women keen to start their own businesses. Bangladeshi men often work abroad, leaving women to raise families and supplement income.

Mr Quadir says phone usage has doubled for the region thanks to the programme, and with just two or three phones per 1,000 people, market saturation will be a long time coming. With 2,000 rural villages, each with about 2,000 inhabitants now phone-enabled, the potential number of users could be upwards of 4m.

He says the company is "barely profitable", although it will be "attractively profitable" with another 100,000 subscribers. He is being modest. GrameenPhone is three times more profitable than urban phone systems in Bangladesh.

It is estimated that the Bangladeshi rural phone market could be worth about $205m a year. GrameenPhone's goal is 40,000 village operators and net income of $24m a year.

Mr Quadir's business ideas are based on help and improvement and guided by the connectivity theory. "Information and connectivity improve freedom and governance," he says. "Poor governance and poor people go hand in hand. Our real poverty is that of understanding and imagination."

Mr Quadir has been a "Global Leader for Tomorrow" for the past three years and will be at the Davos World Economic Forum, starting today. The GLT title is given to young but proven leaders from business, politics, the arts and civil society. They represent the new generation of leaders who demonstrate a commitment to addressing issues beyond their immediate professional interest.

His next project will take him to Harvard and involves virtual immigration through computers for children.