Analysing ICT applications for poverty reduction via micro-enterprise using the livelihoods framework

This paper seeks to provide a contribution to theorising ICT and development by applying a livelihoods approach as a suitable framework of analysis, taking rural micro-enterprise as an important potential area of ICT application in a developing country context such as Botswana. The livelihoods framework has been chosen because it employs, at its centre, a broad and systematic analysis of poverty. The paper highlights how information systems concepts can be integrated into the livelihoods framework in order to aid analysis.

A number of characteristics of information have been highlighted:

• information has both an analytical and functional role within the livelihoods framework
• information should be considered as part of a dynamic process of change (access, assessment, application and action) rather than as a static resource, dynamic information processes can be formal or informal and each is imbued with certain quality attributes
• information can fulfil both short-term and long-term needs
• dynamic information processes can be actionable at different levels (micro/meso/macro) and can serve to foster interaction between different levels of activity (i.e., linking structures and processes via assets to the rural poor themselves through channels of communication).

From the literature surveyed, three underlying factors are highlighted as being important for an analysis of ICT applications for rural micro-enterprise:

• differeing portfolios: rural entrepreneurs participate in a range of income generating activities. The ICT requirements of the rural poor are likely to cut across those activities and it may be difficult to separate one from the other
• differing vulnerabilities: the level and complexity of poverty experienced by rural entrepreneurs will differ significantly. Differing vulnerabilities will also impact upon how ICT can be accessed and used by the rural poor
• differing capabilities: the assets possessed by rural entrepreneurs will also vary. Potential for ICT applications will be dependent, not only on availability of financial assets and income, but also on a wide range of other capabilities associated with level of education, extent of social resources, advantages conferred through gender or ethnicity, access to infrastructure and availability of natural resources. The author contends that in itself information and ICT can do little to assist the poor in reducing their vulnerability.

However, there are two key enabling applications: an analytical role for information in assessing the vulnerability context; and a need to communicate that information to those who can act upon it. Furthermore, the author suggests that the rural poor need to build existing livelihood assets more than they need to access new information. In this respect, the poor need to build trust through their locally contextualised social networks more than they need access to information via ICT. Rural telecommunications via ICT and new radio formats will likely play an increased role in this regard. In addition, technologies that facilitate two way flows of information are of greater benefit to the diversification of livelihoods.