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Search by Keywords: Advanced Search In Numbers Charts and graphs on how internet usage and spending on information and communication technologies have changed in developing countries- click here. ICT at the Development Gateway AiDA - Projects dgMarket - Tenders dgCommunities – ICT for Development About this Report This Special Report provides a forum for diverse perspectives on the Information Society and what's ahead for ICT as a development tool. Participating in this Special Report are our online communities focused on: Afghanistan Reconstruction Culture & Development E-Government E-Learning Environment  Food Security Foreign Direct Investment Gender and Development HIV/AIDS ICT for Development Indigenous Issues Iraq Knowledge Economy  Microfinance  Non-Governmental Organizations Poverty Space Applications Trade and Development Urban Development  Water Resources Management Youth for Development       Please take our online survey for the next Special Report "Online Education: What Can It Deliver?" coming in March 2006. Become a Development Gateway member, and you will be notified of our upcoming reports. Sign-up! See previous Special Reports here. Special Report The requested resource (/editor/default/) is not available FROM OUR MEMBERS What are good examples of how ICT has worked for the poor? Applications of ICT can be wide and varied. The Development Gateway survey to our users asked for examples of what works—and what doesn’t—in making ICT work for the poor. Their answers follow. Amera Salman – Pakistan The best example is the advent of the telecommunication revolution. Cell phones are bringing much of the population under the range of development activities. Internet cafes are being set up by government and semi-government organizations using satellite based systems and this is bringing definite progress in the areas of education, health and provision of electricity. Cotton farmers in Mali are getting better prices for their crops by being informed of international prices. Students who formerly had no libraries or even textbooks are now using he Internet to aid them in their studies. Women are forming radio listening clubs, reacting to radio broadcasts developed from materials found on the web. Development Gateway Member Emmanuel Roldan - Philippines In the context of the Philippines, most subsistence farmers in remote areas learn new farm techniques, technologies, current events, diseases, etc. through the radio. Rural folks also respond positively to comics (with graphic presentations) as a source of information and entertainment. Television is also popular as TV sets become affordable and electrical power is available in rural areas. To some extent ICT helped improve people's awareness about the impending mercury and cyanide pollution in the Mt. Diwata mining area; the ancestral domain claim of various IP communities in Zamboanga, Davao and North Cotabato; and in mainstreaming gender and development in Davao City. Brenda Anugwom - Nigeria In Nigeria, where 80% of the population is highly impoverished, ICT has not done so much. Rather it has widened the margin between the rich and the poor. The poorest class is still trying to acquire basic education to launch them into the working class. Because they have access to ICT, the wealthy class is making this more difficult by occupying all the ‘seats of survival’ in the country. The rate at which the upper class is moving further by embracing ICT will never give the poor any opportunity to improve or even meet up. Only through aggressive capacity building with the aid of donor agencies will there by any chance to change this trend. Until that date, ICT has not worked for the poor in Nigeria. An example of how ICT has worked for the poor, as a tool for development, is the way rice farmers in Mbeya have set up an SMS (independent) network of information exchange, with buyers at the market place in the main city (Dar es Salaam), to get information on market pricing for their product. This has helped them get the right market information, at the right time, as well as negotiate better pricing. Development Gateway Member Samudra Haque - Bangladesh The good that ICTs bring to countries are huge, but the risk is that the demand for connectivity that ICTs create may ultimately have a counter-intuitive effect, unless that connectivity is not provided at the speed required, those ICTs may ultimately end up in the local garbage dump as they become technologically obsolete, The present rate of growth of the required global telecommunications infrastructure with respect to changes in population demographics is really so slow that perhaps it is a battle that cannot be won, and we should really consider the challenges of changing the emphasis of introduction of ICTs in favor of building more access networks and allowing existing ICT resources to be flow down to the newly connected areas. Another related issue is the question of cost vs. delivery vs. infrastructure - who are we really trying to kid? Mobile phones service has been touted as the key driver in bringing ICT to rural poor, but it is a fallacy, the capital expenses involved in establishing CDMA or WLL or GSM Networks (such as Grameenphone in Bangladesh, and other fixed telephony networks elsewhere) would have been better of spent in setting up community telecenters combined with upgraded facilities for school teachers and distance education, power and health sectors. Knowledge is power, and a key driver in building human resources that are necessary to drive the knowledge economy. Where do SMS/WAP/GPRS services really fit in, and who does it ultimately benefit if the agricultural products that are sold are not able to be refrigerated and distributed efficiently, where hospitals don't have the basic X-ray machines or medical diagnostic laboratories to extend the life span of new-borns or elderly people, or where subscribers are forced to pay the highest rate for telecommunication calls per minute in the region to companies that regularly report multi-million dollar profits; Essentially it is quite obvious and is a running joke in the global telecoms industry that the poor are actually poor because they don't know better and they are the key reason why you have the rich telecommunications operators and their equipment suppliers. Show me an existing telecommunications network plan, and I will show you a better way to deliver ICTs through their network and deliver it cheaply to deeper regions. Trás-os-montes Digital, Portugal, is one of the poorest regions in Europe. The project involved 37 rural municipalities, 84 local parishes, the Regional Agriculture Directorate, 3 hospitals and more than 300 basic schools. The program focused on setting‑up the technological infrastructure for the data center (hardware, software and networking), launching 84 Internet community center, building competences in application development, web-design and service support, publishing a portal (http://www.espigueiro.pt). Development Gateway Member Vidyaratha Kissoon - Guyana In providing access to low cost VoIP calls to relatives abroad. This has been one of the most significant uses of the Internet in Guyana. In other sectors, ICTs have been used to enable business (eg in the growing tourism sector). The limited electricity availability in some parts of Guyana also limit the access to ICTs. Poor communities and municipalities are common in the Kyrgyz Republic. The emergence of one PC at a village in Naryn was able to free up responsible people to get more administrative work done per day, keep a record of municipal property or land plot allocations, have a set of templates for people who do not know how to file letters or requests for various services provided by the municipality or the state. Also, access to the internet and to re-writable CD or DVD-Roms provided remote mountain municipalities with the opportunity to use files, software, readings and pictures that they would not have gotten otherwise. Development Gateway Member Mikhail Doroshevich - Belarus In my opinion, the concept of best practises does not carry an advantage since it promotes creation of patterns. The success of each project can be attributed to special conditions and cannot be transferred to other country and other region. I think it is necessary to collect examples of bad pracrises. After all 70-80 % of ICT projects are unsuccessful and it is more important to analyze and systematize mistakes Additional Comments I think that telecenters (offering a variety of services) are a good example - but only where a community took over them and made them really sustainable. Another good example could be mobile classrooms providing courses on health issues, entrepreneurship and computer literacy; PDAs and mobile phones distributed among local manufacturers and agricultural producers to compare prices on the market and organize the distribution of goods; web sites advertising local craftsmen globally (e-commerce); e-government solutions that provide citizens with services that would not be easily accessible from remote parts of larger countries. Poor people have been able to broaden their horizons through Internet. It hasn't changed their lives yet, but it has shown, in a way, that the world is bigger than what they had seen until now. And that they can not only see this new world, but also participate on it. The ubiquity of accessible, low cost telecommunications services is one example of how this has worked, for instance, in South Asia. It has allowed entrepreneurship to burgeon in unlikely places and raised the overall quality of life as well as economic well being. Education is another area where this is useful, again an Indian example, Pratham comes to mind. Provision of information regarding healthcare, sanitation, agricultural methods, basic accounting software for rural enterprises, all these are good examples of how ICT can be integrated to provide sustainable development. Some international organizations (such as IREX) work on bringing internet to the rural areas of Azerbaijan where many spheres, including education, are extremely underdeveloped, as after the collapse of the Soviet Union no healthy policy in the social and economic sphere has been there. These efforts' outcome is that the children of poor peasants get access to the information on hundreds of topics. In many developing countries poor people who earn for their living only through agriculture get the newest information on techniques in this field, or find potential partners and buyers via Internet, which no doubt helps to increase their income. A good example at the all India level is in Railway reservations. At the state level examples are Bhoomi in Karnataka (computerization of land records virtually eliminating the control/role of the village record officer) and SARITA in Maharashtra (computerization of registration of documents reducing the waiting period for the return of documents from years to almost less than an hour), SETU in Maharashtra (computerizing the issue of birth, death, marriage and a large number of certificates required by the general public). SpecialsBody3Sec25 The requested resource (/editor/default/) is not available Email this page Sign-up Sponsored by: From Our Members How did Development Gateway members respond to our Information Society Survey questions?: Has ICT been an effective tool for development?  What are good examples of how ICT has worked for the poor?  How do you use ICT for development? (NEW) E-Leadership: What Role Can it Play in Development? Nagy Hanna, e-Leadership Institute Peter Knight, Telemática e Desenvolvimento Ltda Read Civil Society How Can ICT Contribute Most? M.S. Swaminathan, India Shafika Isaacs, South Africa Yahya Tabesh, Iran Cornelius Hopmann, Nicaragua Read Development Banks Do they Promote Knowledge Societies Daan Boom, Asian Development Bank Pierre Guislain, World Bank Danilo Piaggessi, IADB Read Case Study: How ICT has Transformed India Kiran Karnik, NASSCOM Sam Pitroda, World-Tel Limited Read WSIS  How Can WSIS Facilitate Development? Despite advances since 2003, the digital divide still exists Read Blogs and Wikis  Citizens Usher in an Era of Change New tools for citizens are changing ICT Read In Country  Putting ICT to Work for Development Examples from Africa and South Asia Read ICT Awards  Recognizing Leaders and Pioneers Promoting ideas through competitions Read Partners Global Events 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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