Do ICTs have an impact on Poverty

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Do ICTs have an impact on Poverty?
Riff Fullan Program Coordinator April 2003
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General Observations

• ICTs have enormous potential to alleviate
  poverty
• Evidence suggests that on balance ICTs have
  exacerbated inequalities, both intra- and
  inter-nationally
• The environment within which ICTs can help to
  reduce poverty does not exist in many countries
• Existing inequalities work against closing gaps
  in effective ICT use
• Knowledge and information are the most critical
  ingredients to successful participation in the
  global economy

Acacia Conference April 2003
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Global Context

• 1/3 of the worlds population has no access to
  electricity
• To date, the developed countries account for
  over 80 of the world market for information
  technology (Yu 2002)
• gt80 of mobile cellular subscribers, gt90 of all
  fax machines and gt95 of Internet host computers
  are in the North (Kirkman 1999)

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Sub-Saharan Africa Context

• 500m people share 14m phone lines, fewer than
  Manhattan (Norris 2001)
• For every 100 people, there are 17 radio sets, 5
  televisions and 0.5 mobile phones (Norris 2001)
• There is less than 1 computer per 100 people in
  SSA as compared to over 50 per 100 in USA (WDI
  2001)
• About 1 in 250 Sub-Saharan Africans use the
  Internet as opposed to 1 in 2 in NA and Europe
  (NUA 2002)
• The Adult literacy rate is still under 65(UNDP
  HDR 2002)

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Some Implications

• The historically early adopters (in the North)
  not only have a head start but are at the cutting
  edge of new developments, therefore
• It may be extremely difficult for countries near
  the opposite end of the continuum of connectivity
  and infrastructural development to catch up
• Existing control over content creation (which is
  oligopolistic) exerts a dominating influence on
  information consumption
• While the information and communications
  infrastructure challenges are substantial, the
  challenges relating to human capacity and the
  development of relevant content are much greater

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Key Requirements for effective ICT Use

• Connectivity substantial growth in population
  centres, little in rural areas
• Capacity large rates of illiteracy and lack of
  knowledge about how to use ICTs
• Affordability not only are Internet and
  telephone access expensive for many, but the
  quality and speed of connections put serious
  limitations on use. Moreover, developments in the
  North suggest access will be increasingly
  stratified (broadband)
• Relevance in the case of the Internet, most
  content is of questionable local relevance and in
  a foreign language (most often English)

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Additional Contextual Factors

• Certain existing conditions (e.g. poor transport
  and telecommunications infrastructure) severely
  limit the potential to use ICTs for
  entrepreneurial activity
• For governments, investing in ICTs must
  necessarily involve decisions to not invest in
  other critical areas (esp in the case of rural
  connectivity)
• Human technical expertise is in relatively short
  supply and subject to poaching and brain drain

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Are Telecentres an Answer?

• It is not clear that they can be economically
  viable viz. Universal Service Agencys rolling
  out of Community Telecentres lt50 are now
  operating and lt5 covering costs (Caspary 2002)
• Those that are self-sustaining tend to be in
  areas of higher population density but are not
  likely to provide local content
• Those that provide more equitable access and
  more development-oriented information are not
  easy to sustain financially

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Conclusions

• ICTs are as likely to worsen poverty as they are
  to alleviate it
• In fact, ICTs as a whole have less impact on
  poverty than poverty has on ICTs!