The economic justification for giving the poor better access to ICTs is that up-to-date and reliable information about prices and availability of
resources can be more easily disseminated to areas where the poor are more likely to be concentrated.
The poor receiving the information are then better able, as both producers and consumers,
to participate in effective markets.
The immediate consequence should be income gains for participants,
and the ability to better spend their incomes.
Over the long term, enhanced access to information should
enable producers to significantly improve their practices. Such improvement lays the path to economic growth.
A comparison of villages with and without access to telephones shows that the mean price levels of three
of the four basic commodities studied is lower in the villages with access to a telephone.
The variation in prices for each commodity (fish, pork, eggs and vegetables) is much higher (as measured
by their standard deviations) in the villages without access to a telephone.Other analysis of the same
village household data over time period show that where telephones were added, dramatic increases in
income within a two-year period resulted for the households in these villages.
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Historical Evidence
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Historical evidence within countries and cross-countries shows that improved communications leads to more than
a one-time lifts in income for the poor.
Better communication can encourage isolated producers to adopt better
practices and technologies to improve their productivity.
A second generic approach to the use of ICT in development can also be identified.
This is one where ICT plays
a supporting or supplementary role to meeting a primary objective.
This approach starts with a more
multidimensional perspective on poverty reduction, acknowledging the importance of better access to services
such as education and health.
Access to government services in a transparent way with low transaction costs is
another way in which ICT can play a key supporting role in development.
Most e-development projects don't have
clear objectives.
The "if we build it, they will come" mentality still dominates technology projects.
The "wow"
factor still hasn't gone away, and the technology remains the ends rather than the means of many projects…
Without clear objectives, it isn't clear how to measure results.
There are very few exante attempts to figure
out what the point of ICT projects should be, let alone to quantify the results.In the end, this means a lot
of anecdote and not much analysis…or even material to analyze.
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