EAM International 2017 Proceedings »
Supply Chain Opportunities for Alleviating Rural Poverty
Track: Social Issues
Keywords: Supply Chain, CSR, Rural, ICT, Poverty, ICT4D
In this paper we bring attention to inefficiencies in the rural supply chain and identify opportunities that private business organizations can use to engage with the rural community and help alleviate poverty. We focus not on philanthropic activities, but activities that are of mutual benefit to business organizations and the rural poor. Strategies we suggest include bypassing the supply chain completely revamping it substantially, augmenting the supply chain, and reversing the direction of flow of goods to benefit both the organization and the rural community. We provide examples of these models with caveats for using each of them.