Information and Communication Technologies

ICTs provide access to information that can create earnings opportunities, improve access to basic services, or increase the impact of education and health interventions. ICTs also give the poor a medium through which to demand government support and reform. Recent advances in ICT can also provide people with sensory disabilities a means by which to access information and communicate efficiently with the rest of society. Section 2 outlines some of the ways in which the poor are using ICTs to improve their own lives, and some of the ways in which governments can use ICTs to improve their service delivery, especially to the poorest.

Despite the potential links between ICTs and poverty reduction, direct access by the poor to more advanced ICTs in particular is extremely limited. As much as 80 percent of the population of many developing countries listen to radio every week (www.rfd.freeuk.com). Figure 24.3 suggests that even the poorest developing countries also have more televisions per capita than would be suggested by their income levels. But citizens of poor countries have significantly less access to telephones and the Internet than those living in rich countries, while poorer people within poor countries are even further excluded. For example, Rwanda has a population over 6.5 million. In 1998, it had 11,000 telephones—about half the number of telephones as Gibraltar, with a population of 27,000. Within Rwanda, these telephones were almost exclusively concentrated in Kigali. There were 4 telephones per 100 people in the capital city, compared to 4 per 10,000 in the rest of the country.

Statistics for the Internet usage further illustrate this point. For example, in 1998, Bangladesh had a population of 125 million, with just over 1,000 Internet users. The availability of local content on the Internet is a further pointer to the dominance of industrial countries: a recent host survey shows that Africa generates only 0.4 percent of global content. Excluding South Africa, the rest of the continent generates a mere 0.02 percent.

Usage of the Internet in particular is dominated by a tiny educational elite. Ninety-eight percent of Ethiopian Internet users had a university degree—in a country where 65 percent of the adult population is illiterate. Finally, women have less access to ICTs than men. Only 38 percent of the population polled in urban Latin America who use a computer and the Internet are women. The numbers are even more skewed in Africa: a survey of African users found that 86, 83, and 64 percent of Internet users in Ethiopia, Senegal, and Zambia, respectively, were male.

There are ways to rapidly increase access through aggregating the poor’s demand for services, however. There are also ways of providing intermediate access to the Internet using more widely available ICTs such as the radio. Section 3 discusses barriers to ICT rollout across countries, while Section 4 addresses methods for increased access, including sector reform, pro-poor regulatory policies, and universal access funds. Section 4 also discusses methods of maximizing the poverty reduction impact of government investment in ICTs.

Finally, this chapter will not explore the use of stand-alone computers in any detail, despite the fact that they have a long record of providing tools for communication, education, and public financial management in low-income countries. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize that any approach to ICT use in poverty reduction has to be broad-based in the tools used as well as in interlinkages.

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