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ROUNDTABLE
Multilateral Development Banks: Helping Recipient Countries Become Knowledge Societies
Commentaries from the Perspective of Three MDBs
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Multilateral Development Banks (MDB) fund information and communication technology initiatives either as infrastructure projects in recipient countries or as components of development projects across multiple sectors, such as agriculture, health, and education. In this roundtable, representatives from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and World Bank talk about their priorities for ICT as a development tool.
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 How do Multilateral Development Banks assist developing countries to harness information and communication technologies (ICT) for development? What are your Bank’s priorities from the perspective of funding? |
 Asian Development Bank: ADB is committed to helping bridge the digital divide and reap digital dividends within and across its developing member countries. In our policy paper we adopted three strategic trusts: 1) create an enabling environment 2) build human resources and 3) develop ICT applications and information content. With respect to priorities we realize that ICT can not be seen in isolation or applicable for only a few sectors or themes. From a development perspective e-education and e-governance projects are very important in which ICT can make a difference as an enabler but also ICT as industry led growth should not be ignored. Because ICT is a relatively new area many governments have not yet implemented ICT or cyber laws which are also an important area to cover. In addition, we must not forget that for people to use ICT there needs to be electricity and they must understand the keyboard. So it starts with infrastructure in the broadest sense and education.
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| Inter-American Development Bank: IADB strives to strengthen its support to its borrowing member countries of the Latin American and Caribbean Region in the promotion, design, implementation and financing of ICT solutions. It works with the countries in the Region to build consensus on outcomes, outputs and indicators so that diverse country needs can be effectively matched with the Bank’s resources and experience. At present, the IADB is working to promote ICT as a priority within the political agendas of its borrowing member countries; create and strengthen existing institutional capacity; increase the number and quality of ICT projects and programs; develop mechanisms to transfer lessons learned, best practices and training of human resources; encourage the establishment of public, private and civil society networks; and increase the level and quality of public expenditures assigned to ICT. |
| World Bank:The World Bank supports ICT development in client countries through multiple instruments. Our priority is to help countries adopt an enabling environment conducive to private participation and investment in the sector, emphasizing the importance of competition and a good regulatory environment. The World Bank is a bank and in the end our priorities reflect the priorities of our borrowers, namely our member countries and their governments. Priorities for Bank funding are agreed upon with the country in the context of national programs, typically coordinated on the government side through the ministry of finance. This represents a challenge, as many in client countries, as well as in our own country departments, are not (yet) convinced of the fundamental importance of ICT for growth, public service delivery, social inclusion or poverty reduction, or believe that ICT, and telecommunications in particular, should be the domain of the private sector. |
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| How do Millennium Development Banks ensure that ICT projects are socially and culturally friendly? |
Asian Development Bank: From a social aspect we must ensure that ICT projects are sustainable, pay adequate attention to training and support, accessible not only from urban areas but also from rural areas, gender, indigenous people and from a cultural viewpoint we have to take into account the diversity in this region, development of ‘local’ content, variety of languages. Proposed projects within ADB are reviewed against these objectives.
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| Inter-American Development Bank: At the Inter-American Development Bank we believe that information technology issues are human development issues. Our efforts in the past years have been devoted to how to make more effective partnerships between the Inter-American Development Bank and the beneficiary countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The entire society is more likely to benefit when individual stakeholders are part of a collective effort to achieve this type of development. |
| World Bank:First, I should point out that the projects we are discussing are not World Bank projects, but projects of the host government for which the Bank contributes financing. Our policies and approaches thus require national ownership and involvement of stakeholders. ICT projects cover a wide range from support to information and communication infrastructure and a pro-ICT enabling environment, to actual applications in fields such as e-government or ICT in education. There is no standard approach, but rather tailored support to country-, sector- and project-specific conditions. |
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| In your opinion, what are the areas in which ICT can contribute most? How would you rate the success of ICT as an enabler to achieving the Millennium Development Goals? |
Asian Development Bank: ICT enables more efficient, cost effective, and participatory government, facilitates more convenient government services, allows greater public access to information, and makes government more accountable to citizens. Millennium Development Goal 8 which seeks to build a global partnership for development mentions ICT. It has two indicators: 1. number of telephone lines and cellular subscribers per 100The requested resource (/editor/default/) is not available; and 2. personal computers in use and internet users per 100 inhabitants. The good news for Asia is that ICT penetration in the region has been growing rapidly. Hidden behind these figures, however is penetration is very uneven. Even in the most advanced countries access to ICT is limited to urban areas. There is still a lot of work to do!
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| Inter-American Development Bank: In spite of the growing recognition of their potential, there is still much debate regarding how and to what extent the effective application of ICT fosters the achievement of social goals and economic growth. We need to develop mechanisms and instruments for providing the evidence on the socioeconomic impact of ICT and their contributions to the implementation of the MDGs. But in order to be effective ICT has to be relevantly used with the right policies, in the appropriate and pertinent programs and with focused objectives. |
| World Bank:The potential of ICT is almost without limit. It is one of the few important general purpose technologies that have the potential of transforming whole economies, much as the introduction of electricity and the steam engine did in the 19th century. As a matter of fact, there are few areas that would not benefit from the appropriate use of ICT. We are only at the beginning of a process of increasing contribution of ICT to the MDGs, as illustrated by our publication ICT and MDGs - A World Bank Group Perspective. | |
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 How did Development Gateway members respond to our Information
Society Survey questions?:
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- Nov
3, Fill-the-Gap!, Netherlands
- Nov 9-Nov 11, World Summit of Cities
and Local Authorities and the role Information Society, Spain
- Nov 10 -11, Libraries and the
Information Society in Action, Egypt
- Nov 13-15, Past, Present and Future of
Research in the Information Society
- Nov 16-18, World Summit on Information
Society, Tunisia
- Nov
17, Creating Transformations: Intel at WSIS, Tunisia
- Nov 28-Nov 30, IEEE International
Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education, Japan
- Nov 28 - Dec 5,
GKP/MSSRF South-South Exchange Traveling Workshop 2005, India
- May 25 – May 26, First
International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and
Development, USA
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