According to this NYT article Hewlett-Packard is involved in a projec to standardize and add efficiency to micro-finance institutions in the worlds poorest nations. Microfinance is one of those development efforts that everyone seems to agree, are really important, effective and actually work (which is not the case for most development projects IMHO).

I’ve been talking to people like Ethan Zuckerman of GeekCorps about the potential of developing good, Opensource-based microfinance software, ever since having a meeting with a small microfinance company during my trip to Armenia last october.

One of Ethan’s ideas is to come up with solid, Open Source software solutions to developing world challenges, and thereby offer a cheap way to increase efficiencies in these situations.

Once of my ideas, after talking to Kamurj in Armenia was to set in motion an Open Source project to develop a simple, reconfigurable micro-finance package. They need it, and the commercial alternatives are either too expensive or not good enough, and being in a remote location means that the benefits of commercial support operations are often wasted.

I’d welcome a project in which HP puts it’s considerable resources and knowledge towards solving this problem. So since this article has very little actual information on the project, i’ll be looking for more info….

But Hewlett-Packard sees a direct connection between the company’s long-term future and such loans, known as microfinance. Debra L. Dunn, the senior Hewlett-Packard executive in charge of its philanthropy, said a small-loan program could enable consumers in the developing world to afford some of the company’s computers, printers or digital cameras.