ICTS and Rural Development: Review of the Literature, Current Interventions and Opportunities for Action

"There is a discussion on the role that ICTs potentially have to play in rural areas of the developing world. Its stated aim is to look beyond the current 'digital divide' debate, which focuses on information disparities to assess the potential role of ICTs in the context of current rural development paradigms.

"The first section considers some alternative approaches that are being pioneered to harness ICTs for development goals including private sector, public sector and NGO-based initiatives. This leads on to a discussion of changing approaches to technology transfer drawing on lessons from agricultural extension experience to illustrate how ICTs could be harnessed for rural development.

"The concept of building partnerships at the community level based around information exchange is explored in the second section, using ICTs to improve systems for the exchange of information sources that already exist locally and also providing established information intermediaries with the facilities to enhance their capacity for information sharing. The paper looks at how simple and 'off the shelf technologies, rather than large scale expensive infrastructure, could have a greater role in future rural development strategies through the integration of available technologies and the diverse institutional and knowledge landscapes that exist in developing countries.

"The paper concludes that there are numerous, well established barriers to improving information exchange. Knowledge capture, the high costs of information access and infrastructure constraints all affect the equitable distribution of information in rural areas. However, technological advances in ICTs have reduced the cost and increased the quantity and speed of information transfer dramatically. This is set to continue and the technologies are already being designed to accommodate a wide range of user choices. To pursue 'universal access' and one size fits all applications to 'bridge the digital divide' is to ignore the real potential of ICTs to be used locally, in order to enable those individuals and institutions that are the priorities of rural development strategies to access the information that is relevant to their own multi-dimensional livelihoods. The need for a concerted effort to build knowledge partnerships and to engage the private sector and technology drivers in the pursuit of rural development goals is paramount if ICTs are to have a role in future strategies."