Global markets, global technology, global ideas and global solidarity can enrich the lives of people everywhere. The challenge is to ensure that the benefits are shared equitably and that this increasing interdependence works for people - not just for profits (UNDP Human Development Report 1999)

The Issues

Many of the critical development issues today are being approached from both global and local perspectives through the joint participation of the public, private and non-governmental sectors and members of civil society. Building innovative and distinctive knowledge societies requires assessment of the interactions between development initiatives and the enabling features of access to knowledge, information, and related technologies to achieve the empowerment of men and women and the transformation of private and public governance within developing countries. New means are being sought for combining the efforts of national governments and donor organisations with those of the private sector, non-governmental organisations, and representatives of civil society to take advantage of developments in ICTs to facilitate information sharing, communication, and new applications that can contribute to sustainable and equitable development.

Three issues are high on the ‘ICT for development’ agenda: 1) Access - promoting equitable access to ICTs as tools for the effective generation, exchange and use of information for development; 2) Empowerment - identifying ICT tools for empowering individuals and communities to use information resources effectively; and 3) Governance - exploring how the use of ICTs may enable more efficient, transparent, and participatory forms of governance.

Why Promote ICTs for development?

If action is not taken, a substantial majority of people in developing countries, and more women than men, will be excluded from contributing to, and benefiting from, a wide range of social and economic activities that affect their lives. ICTs are enabling technologies that can be applied in support of many social, cultural, political and economic activities. These technologies include those provided by the telecommunication, computing hardware and software industries and the media and information industries. ICTs increasingly incorporate digital technologies that enable the creation, storage, and processing of enormous amounts of information. They are being used to support electronic commerce services and a wide variety of service applications for citizens. Where ICTs are in use in developing countries, they are supporting information systems for decision-making within organisations. Software applications are being embedded in retail, manufacturing and natural resource control systems and in financial services. ICT applications for health care, education, small-enterprise development, and agricultural management are also being developed. The explosion of Internet connectivity is enabling communication by electronic mail and the use of World Wide Web browsers to access information.

These uses of ICTs are available to those who have affordable access to an ICT infrastructure. Features of the very substantial disparities in the accessibility and quality of the ICT infrastructure between low income, lower and middle income, and high income countries are shown in Table 1. These statistics mask significant within country disparities between wealthy and poor areas.

The potential benefits of increased use of ICTs for development

The potential benefits include:

• strengthening local capacities and the knowledge base through training and education;
• creating opportunities for employment and generating new sources of income;
• facilitating governance and enhancing service delivery for citizens; and
• improving the management and cost-effective provision health care, environmental protection, etc., and services for business users.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to participate in international trade without access to ICTs. Those who do have access to electronic information resources, even on a limited basis, are developing entrepreneurial activities in areas such as software services provision as well as marketing of locally produced goods on global basis. It remains unclear whether people in developing countries who seek to trade on the international market will rely on external intermediaries to facilitate trade or whether ICT applications such as electronic commerce will enable direct supplier-customer relationships and/or the emergence of locally-based intermediaries.

Investing in technology is never sufficient

The potential benefits of ICTs for users cannot be achieved without focused efforts to build new capabilities for using the applications and services. Simply providing physical access to a telephone or a computer (and financing for network usage) is insufficient to generate a contribution by ICTs to sustainable development. Improving access to the technological tools is only part of the challenge. Effective ICT use requires that women be able to use the new services and applications in ways that are responsive to their local needs. This means investing in enhancing the skills base, developing capabilities for evaluating and selecting between alternative ICTs, and encouraging creative ways of using the new technologies and services. The costs of organisational change and training for effective use of ICTs are substantial and ongoing. Capability building and the acquisition of new skills must include technical competencies for selecting, using and maintaining ICTs and services (including support services), and the knowledge to train other users at various levels of skill and education.

A major obstacle to building the capabilities of ICT users in developing countries is the weakness of human and institutional resources in the public and private sectors to develop, manage and implement ICTs. The necessary skills in this area include those for managing and assessing the need for organisational change within user communities and for developing effective uses of ICTs. The skills needed for policy and strategy implementation include business and policy management.

In developing countries, there may be no network connectivity and little or no access to computers or software. Alternatively, existing legacy applications and networks may need to be replaced, interconnected or made interoperable with new technologies and applications. When new initiatives are taken the technology configurations must be appropriate to the specific conditions within each country, and assessments must be sensitive to gender issues. There is also a continuing need to examine the feasibility of introducing innovative financing arrangements aimed at extending access, reducing risk for investors, and strengthening demand.

ICT related policies and strategies

Policies and strategies for the enhanced use of ICTs for development often produce unexpected economic, political, social or cultural outcomes. Impact assessment and evaluation are essential for monitoring initiatives that involve the use of ICTs. The results can be used to inform national governments, donors, the private sector, community-based organisations and NGOs about the practical aspects of promoting more effective uses of ICTs, especially by women. The results of evaluations can also be used to help to sensitise governments and other public actors to the need for ICT initiatives.

The need for development co-operation

Avoiding duplication of effort and capitalising on synergies are essential. Enhanced co-operation can help to: promote capability building; encourage the design and deployment of ICTs that are appropriate for developing countries; introduce innovative financing arrangements and appropriate regulatory and policy frameworks; and monitor the impact of ICT related initiatives.

The private sector is unlikely to invest sufficiently in ICTs and services to tackle the growing gaps in access to the new technologies and in the capacity to use them effectively. There is a growing consensus that multi-stakeholder efforts are essential. These can be aimed at harnessing and integrating available resources; identifying successful approaches as well as the reasons for failure; and building capacity by encouraging ‘ICT entrepreneurs’, especially women’s groups who have local knowledge.

The risk of exclusion

Without greater access to, and use of ICTs, there is a real threat of exclusion, not just from global trade, but from the ‘virtual’ communities that are beginning to connect localities within and between developing countries. Without action to reduce the growing gaps between those who have access to ICTs for development and those who do not, women in greater numbers than men will be ‘locked out’ of increasing numbers of important activities in their economies and societies. The skills and capabilities that make it possible to transform information into usable knowledge are absent for major segments of the populations in developing countries and the problem is greater in the case of women. This is profoundly inequitable. It poses threats to the global economy and thus to both the industrialised and the developing countries.

Prepared by Professor Robin Mansell

Director of Research

University of Sussex

Email: r.e.mansell@sussex.ac.uk

2 March 2000

Table 1 ICT Access Disparities

	Low Income	Lower Middle Income	Upper Middle Income	High Income
Distribution of Population and Income
Pop. (millions) 1997	3,324	1,178	449	914
GDP per capita US$ 1996	663	1,930	5,045	25,726
Telephone Access and Service Quality
Main Telephones (per 100 population 1997)	2.99	10.43	14.43	54.72
Telephone Subscription Cost (as % of GDP per capita 1997 (1))	21.5	4.4	2.1	0.9
Public Telephones (per 1,000 population 1996)	0.56	0.91	2.68	5.17
Telephone Service Faults (per 100 main lines per year 1996)	184.1	56.7	29.2	7.0
Mobile Telephone Access
Cellular mobile subscribers (per 100 population 1996)	0.23	0.53	2	13.17
Broadcast Media Access
Televisions per 100 population 1997	13.1	22.7	26.3	61.9
Personal Computers (PCs) and the Internet
PCs per 100 population 1997	0.23	1.34	2.92	22.28
No. Internet Hosts Jan. 1999	195,862	791,162	1,104,999	41,406,675
Internet Host Density per 10,000 pop Jan 99	0.59	6.70	24.59	462.35
Est. Internet Users per 10,000 population 96	0.89	19.00	55.87	498.70

Note: (1) 20 hours of off-peak use for Monthly Estimate of Internet Access Cost, Some data are for nearest year available. Source: ITU (1999) Challenges to the Network: Internet for Development, Geneva; ITU (1998) World Telecommunication Development Report 1998 - Universal Access, Geneva