Introduction to livelihoods and ICT
Information and communication technology (ICT) can support livelihoods in several ways: by providing access to information needed by the poor in order to pursue their livelihood strategies; and by supplying information to inform the policies, institutions and processes that affect their livelihood options.
Livelihoods approaches, with their emphasis on understanding the complexity of people’s lives, can offer a useful framework for thinking about the role of ICTs in development. For example, ICT has an important role in poor people’s livelihoods through enhancing their access to a wide range of assets, including:
- Financial capital: through helping to improve the organisational effectiveness and reach of financial organisations. Mobile banking can enable greater access for the poor to banking facilities and provide a secure place for cash deposits including remittances
- Human capital: by providing access to knowledge, for example through agricultural extension or health information services, or distance learning. ICT can also help intermediaries or knowledge providers to access up to date information
- Physical capital: through enabling service providers to monitor access to local services
- Natural capital: by improving access to information about availability and management of natural resources, or through strengthening market access for agricultural products. ICTs can also support early warning systems to reduce risk and vulnerability to natural disasters and food shortages
- Social capital: through strengthened connectivity and contact for geographically disparate households and social networks. ICTs can also enable intermediary and advocacy organisations to access information and provide a platform for advocacy initiatives.
This section provides recommended reading and a regularly updated list of resources on livelihoods and ICT for development.
Recommended reading
- Livelihoods approaches to information and communication in support of rural poverty elimination and food security
- ( R. Chapman; T. Slaymaker; J. Young / Research and Policy in Development, ODI , 2003)
- This report looks at the of information in livelihoods, and makes recommendations on how agencies can capitalise on and integrate the best elements of traditional communication methods and the ICT rev...
- Analysing ICT applications for poverty reduction via micro-enterprise using the livelihoods framework
- ( R. Duncombe / Institute for Development Policy and Management, Manchester , 2006)
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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 po...
- Enhancing the rural livelihoods of the poor: knowledge map
- ( K. McNamara / Infodev , 2008)
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The rural poor, one billion of whom are defined as those living on less than a dollar a day, have been by-passed by developments in ICT. This is despite substantial investment by the private sector...
- Researching women's ICT-based enterprise for development: methods, tools and lessons from fieldwork
- ( R. Heeks; S. Arun; S. Morgan / Women's ICT-Based Enterprise for Development , 2005)
- The paper reports on, and draws lessons from, experiences in researching a group of ICT-based enterprises (mainly doing data entry, IT training, and hardware assembly work) run by cooperatives of poor...
- Revisiting the magic box: case studies in local appropriation of Information and Communication Technologies
- ( C. O’Farrell / Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations , 2003)
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This report looks at the ways in which ICTs can contribute to development and poverty reduction. It explicitly reviews and builds upon research conducted by the FAO in 2001, which sought to documen...
