Beyond the digital divide: harnessing ICTs for rural development

Could information and communication technologies (ICTs) help make markets work for the rural poor and transform current patterns of inequitable access to information? What are the prospects for implementing decentralised control and capacity building in the management of information resources? What is the role of the private sector in building pro-development information systems?

A report from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) examines the untapped potential of ICTs to free up public information resources to stimulate rural development and more efficient markets and institutions. Arguing the need for approaches to encourage widespread adoption of locally relevant ICTs, it suggests how local partnerships could improve systems for information exchange via small, local networks powered where necessary by long lasting batteries, solar and wind-up power sources.

Knowledge capture, the high cost of information access and infrastructure limitations all affect the equitable distribution of information in rural areas. Preconceptions of the role of information in development processes mean that issues such as quality, delivery and efficiency take precedence over flexibility, creativity and usability. Few ICTs in use in rural development programmes have been designed for that purpose. Technology is often too expensive and fragile to be used freely for public access. Debates on the potential role of ICTs for rural development are limited by a lack of understanding between technology drivers and development agencies.

However, barriers to improving information exchange are being overcome. Among the many replicable examples of ICT innovation described in the report are:

• the success of Grameen Telecom, enabling Bangladeshi women to become tele-entrepreneurs by charging users for making and receiving phone calls: the potential for mobile phones to make microcredit institutions more effective is enormous
• Hewlett Packard’s e-inclusion initiative in India, working with local partners to develop products for the agricultural sector to improve market access and small farm efficiency
• the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation’s pilot e-villages in Pondichery, empowering people with computer terminals to access a specially designed government services database, and using email to ensure the prompt delivery of information useful to villagers’ daily lives such as news, weather and market prices  
• Worldspace Corporation’s delivery of education via digital satellite radio.

The paper stresses that technological advances in ICTs have dramatically reduced the cost and increased the quantity and speed of information transfer. The challenge is to deliver, through targeted research and development, low-cost, easy-to-use devices. Policy-makers and donors are urged to:

• seize the opportunities new ICTs provide to reduce the amount of public information that is under-utilised or captured by local elites
• avoid the temptation to pursue ‘one-size-fits-all’ ICT applications
• realise that the rural poor need to be able to operate in increasingly sophisticated input and output markets: ICTs can improve inadequate extension services and ensure farmers have access to reliable information about agricultural technologies and markets
• avoid the failures of agricultural extension systems – underestimating the importance of free and open information flows and providing top-down information of limited local relevance to rural users unable to ask questions or provide feedback
• build on existing information networks, particularly by connecting innovative local radio to the Internet
• explore creative ways of providing incentives to the private sector to invest in suitable  technologies for developing country information systems.

Source(s):
‘ICTs and rural development: review of the literature, current interventions and opportunities for action’, Overseas Development Institute, Working Paper 192, by Robert Chapman and Tom Slaymaker, 2002 Full document.
'Rural radio in agricultural extension: the example of vernacular radio programmes on soil and water conservation in N.Ghana', Network Paper no 127, Agricultural Research and Extension Network, Overseas Development Institute, by Robert Chapman, Roger Blench, Gordana Kranjac-Berisavljevic and A.B.T. Zakariah January 2003.

id21 Research Highlight: 15 May 2003

Further Information:
Robert Chapman and Tom Slaymaker
Rural Policy and Environment Group
Overseas Development Institute
111 Westminster Bridge Road
London SE1 7JD
UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 7922 0300
Fax: +44 (0)20 7922 0399
Contact the contributor: r.chapman@odi.org.uk

Contact the contributor: t.slaymaker@odi.org.uk

Overseas Development Institute, UK

Community Knowledge Partnerships Research Programme, ODI

Other related links:
'Missing the connection? Using ICTs in education' Insights Education #1

'Community radio - bridging the digital divide'

'Net Gains or net dreams?' Insights #25

'IT: are the poor being left out in the cold?'

'Are ICTs the road to riches for the poor?'

'ICT revolution: creating a southern info-underclass?'

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