Telecentres and kiosks

Supporting ICT production doesn't just mean helping large hardware and software firms in developing countries. It includes that but the ICT sector can be a much broader, much deeper development activity. It encompasses IT consultants, IT trainers, Web designers, Internet service providers, data services providers, etc. And it runs from the top to the bottom of the economy. India's Tata Consultancy Services may be nudging the global Top 10 in software but it sits alongside tens of thousands of tiny backstreet database developers, PC assemblers and the like. For example, part of Kerala's Kudumbashree initiative that is inducting women from below-poverty-line families into the ICT sector through hardware and services enterprises. These create real and direct benefits for poor communities (jobs, incomes, skills, empowerment, gender equalities) in a way ICT consumption projects cannot. Yet this most valuable aspect of ICT's role in development falls under the radar of most development agencies.

Priority action points for ICT consumption projects include:

• Breaking the MDG hegemony: MDGs currently prioritise ICT applications for small- and micro-scale firms, which seems odd given these are the enterprises that have the least impact economically in terms of growth, incomes, efficiency and exports. At least equal weight should be given to assisting medium- and large-scale firms. They still need help but they are far better equipped to make sustainable use of ICTs, and are the main engines of wealth creation and competitiveness
• Focus on the back office not the front office: ICT initiatives reaching out to citizens are beloved by politicians and agencies because they grab media attention. They are also the ones that fail. Far more effective are the back office applications that help better planning, decision-making and management. They may not attract the limelight but they are more likely to sustain and to have a mass-scale impact. Here, the motto could also be "the data centre, not the telecentre".
• Follow some cowpaths: sometimes agencies need to lead countries and communities in new directions they would not go by themselves; but they don't always have to do this. With ICTs it often makes sense to take the organic approach of following fashion, rather than the inorganic approach of trying to create your own fashion statement. The ICT fashion already being followed in so many developing communities is the cell phone, not the PC. So agencies should be paying far more attention to the development potential of mobile telephony

[adapted from author]

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