ICT for Human Development in the Developing World: The Myth and the Reality

ByAnastasios Michailidis

Lecturer, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Poverty…The Numero Uno enemy of the developing world… Half the world – more than three billion people - live on less than two dollars a day.

The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world's countries) is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined.

In 1960, the 20% of the world's people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% - in 1997, 74 times as much.

Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.

Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.

A mere 12 percent of the world's population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.

Poverty…It’s not just that

poor people earn less

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education (Target: Ensure every boy and girl completes primary education)

Goal 3: Promote Gender equality (Target:Eliminate gender inequality in education)

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality (Target: Reduce child mortality by two thirds)

Millennium Development Goals(MDGs)

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger (Targets: Halve the proportion of people whose income is less than US$ 1 a day; Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger)

Goal 7: Ensure environment sustainability (Targets:Integrate principals of sustainable development to country policies and reverse loss of environmental resources; Halve the proportion of people without safe drinking water; Significant improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers)

Goal 8: Establish a Global partnership for development

Millennium Development Goals(MDGs) …contd

Goal 5: Improve maternal health (Target: Reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters)

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases (Target: Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and the incidence of Malaria and other diseases)

A panacea for all woos?“The Simputer can also be extremely useful in applications such as agriculture product marketing, contract farming, keeping track of the inputs, and for tracking the payments to contractors etc. Microcredit schemes find it to be an extremely effective tool, owing to its local-language and SmartCard facility and built-in communication capabilities. Likewise, Simputer kiosks owned by local educated unemployed youth in the villages could be an effective source of income generation by providing e-mail, voice-mail, information access, tele-diagnosis, and other services to the community members.” (From an article on simputers)

Can ICTs help?

… or a worthless tool for the rural poor?

“What the use of the computers yaar? Can computers give milk to even one poor farmer of Andra Pradesh?” Laloo Prasad Yadav (ex-Chief Minister, Bihar)

"Let IT remain the staple for academics and professionals. What will it mean for people in the thousands of miserable villages in this misguided nation? Please, please come out of your ivory tower and see the plight of Indian villages, sans water, sanitation and decent living. Photographs of farmers posing with PCs and fishermen analysing computer printouts may befit a TV ad, but what are you trying to sell?" (Extract from a letter to the editor of a leading newsmagazine, responding to a feature on the digital empowerment of rural India.)

Can ICTs help?

“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for life. ”

An ancient Chinese proverb

Can ICTs help?

..or something in between?

Objective: To empower farmer communities by providing them reliable and timely agriculture related information (market prices, information about fertilisers, crop varieties etc.)

Approach: A computer kiosk managed by a farmer at each village; One kiosk for 600 farmers who can use the system for the latest price and technical information

Beneficiaries: Nearly 1 million farmers in 10,000+ villages

Benefits to community: Better prices, reliable information, Ease in selling their products

Driving Agency: ITC – a private firm

e-Choupale-Choupal India

1

Beneficiaries: Communities in 50% of the villages in Bangladesh. 140,000 Grameen village phones are already there.

Benefits to community: Means of income for phone owners, Communication facilities at the doorstep and at affordable rates

Driving Agency: Grameen Group (a Non Profit Org.)

Grameen Grameen PhonePhone Bangladesh

2Objective: To reduce poverty by the economic empowerment of women in rural Bangladesh

Approach: Run a GSM network; lend money to rural women so that they can purchase mobile phones; Phone owners rent the phones to the rest in the community for taking and receiving phone calls

Objective: To provide an effective micro finance services to the community by the effective use of ICT for maintaining records, collecting and monitoring

Approach: Provide loans in the range of US$ 50 - 150 to the poor through its micro finance network

Beneficiaries: 100,000 villagers in five East African countries

Benefits to community: Fulfillment of financial needs at the village level and at the correct time, better rates

Driving Agency: Pride Africa – a Non Profit Org.

Pride AfricaPride Africa East Africa

3

Objective: To build an e-marketplace for agricultural, chemical and construction products, enables farmers, cooperatives, and small entrepreneurs to do online trading via their cell phones or a website

Approach: Build and maintain the on-line databases, provide access, build Internet kiosks at village levels

Beneficiaries: Thousands of small scale farmers, traders and industrialists

Benefits to community: Better prices, a means for better income

Driving Agency: B2Bpricenow.com (with the help of govt. agencies, a bank and a university)

B2BPricenow.comB2BPricenow.com Philippines

4

Objective: To increase the efficiency and the productivity of the rural diary industry using ICTs

Approach: An electronic equipment that can weigh and analyse milk and also record the transactions, to be used at the collection centres

Beneficiaries: Farmers using the 600 collection centres

Benefits to community: Better prices, more income

Driving Agency: SK Electronics (pvt) – A private firm

AkashgangaAkashganga India

5

Objective: To educate children English and ICTs at the village level and use them to empower the farmer communities

Approach: A Computer school that complements the government schools’ education programme; computers at children's houses

Beneficiaries: The farmer community of the Mahavilachchiya village

Benefits to community: Better opportunities for children, Parents can benefit by the knowledge acquired by the children

Driving Agency: Horizon Lanka – A trust fund

HorizonHorizonSri Lanka

6

Objective: To provide immediate relief to nearly a million of displaced during the tsunami that hit the island in Dec 2004

Approach: A blog-site which was used as the window to the international community in collecting financial aid

Beneficiaries: Nearly 1 million displaced

Benefits to community: Immediate relief to those who have left homeless in the disaster

Driving Agency: Sarvodaya with the help of few volunteers

Sarvodaya.orgSarvodaya.org Country: Sri Lanka

7

The technologies themselves can do nothing. What needs most is the effective participation of the communities (e.g. Akashganga, Sarvodaya.org)

At the rural level, ICTs are for communities, not just for individuals (e.g. e-Choupal, Grameen phone)

It is a myth that ICTs are only for the ‘urban rich’, and not for the ‘rural poor’ (e.g. All)

ICTs are not Alladin’s lamp (e.g. Akashganga, e-Choupal)

Lessons…

ICTs will not necessarily change the lifestyles of the rural communities. Rather they will introduce new methods of doing the same old activities (e.g. Pride Africa, Akashganga)

It is a myth that key economic projects should be launched by the government. The private sector as well as civil society organisations can play a major role in ICT4D projects (e.g. All)

In most of the countries the problems are same. So the solutions too cannot be too different. It is worthwhile learn from each other (B2Bpricenow.com, e-Choupal)

Lessons…

ICTs are not just tools that make money. They uplift the socio economic conditions of rural communities in a broader sense (e.g. Horizon, Grameen Phone)

ICT4D initiatives are far from perfect. There are still enough room for development (e.g. Grameen phone, Pride Africa)

A strong leadership from the village is essential for the success of any ICT4D project (e.g Horizon, e-Choupal)

Lessons…

The way forward

The three metaphors…

River House Tree

It’s time to…

Stop depending too much on the government… Stop thinking the private sector as greedy ‘Mudalalis’ Combine the efforts of the public, private sectors and

community (civil society) together to get the best benefits from the ICT4D projects

Thank You!