Introduction: The ICT/poverty nexus in Africa

Julian May, Timothy M. Waema, and Elise Bjåstad

While some views hold that information and communication technologies (ICTs) improve access to global markets and create conditions that enhance economic growth, others point to a growing digital divide. ICTs are argued to further entrench inequalities and to potentially lead to social exclusion. As such, ICTs can be defined as a process, and not simply as products. This is because socio-economic choices have a bearing on the final outcome, are implicitly or explicitly made in the process of technological innovation. This chapter reviews the literature on ICT and development and proposes that one way of resolving the link between ICT, development, and inequality is to see the digital divide not as the root cause but rather as a symptom of inequality and poverty. The implication is that access to ICTs cannot be a solution to poverty in and of itself, but can at best be adopted as a tool in poverty reduction initiatives.

Keywords: poverty reduction, information and communication technologies, Africa, policy, pro-poor growth

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been hailed by some as the solution for developing countries, one that provides the opportunity to leapfrog stages of development and enter directly into what has been labelled the information age. ICTs are said to enable developing countries to gain access to global markets and create conditions that enhance economic growth. However, others are more pessimistic, pointing to the growing digital divide that excludes some countries and regions unable to tap into the global marketplace, and makes the distance to those operating within the global network increasingly large. Seen through this perspective, ICTs simply represent a new way in which inequalities are further entrenched, a new source of social exclusion. Exactly how ICTs can contribute to poverty reduction remains elusive.

This chapter provides the context within which the rest of the chapters should be read, defining what is meant by ICT and reviewing what is known about the link between ICTs, growth, and poverty reduction. Although the link between ICTs and poverty has frequently been suggested, the mechanisms through which this link takes place have yet to be systematically interrogated. The chapter describes the sustainable livelihoods framework, which brings together a multi-dimensional approach to poverty with the assets and activities used by households in order to obtain the resources that they need. In this approach, ICTs are taken to represent a new asset and a new form of deprivation, and the chapter advances the theorization of 'digital poverty', defined as 'the lack of goods and services based on ICT' (Barrantes, 2007a: 30). Thus digital poverty can be included as the sixth dimension of poverty in addition to the five interrelated dimensions of financial, assets, physical, human, and social.

The chapter continues by providing the socio-economic and ICT context of the four East and two Southern Africa countries covered in this book, namely Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Namibia, and South Africa. It then offers the research questions that link these chapters.

Defining ICTs

It is not always clear what the concept of information and communication technologies or ICTs really refers to. Some theorists appear to equate ICTs with new technologies such as computers and the internet (Langmia, 2005) or deal with computers and internet connectivity alone when discussing ICTs (Polikanov and Abramova, 2003). However, the concept can be wider than this. In a document prepared by Batchelor and Scott (2005) for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this point is elaborated:

While the common use of ICTs tends to refer to the newer technologies of phone and internet, the term ICT is best used to also include more traditional communication media such as radio and television. Digital convergence is gradually bringing devices to the market that include the traditional media (phones with radio, media centres with computing capability and television), which will increasingly blur the distinction between old and new ICTs. (Batchelor and Scott, 2005: 11)

Hence, there is a common distinction between old/traditional and new/ modern ICTs, although these lines are increasingly blurred. ICTs can also be defined in terms of their qualities or the set of tasks they can perform. The OECD panel of statistical experts have defined ICTs as '... the set of activities that facilitate, by electronic means, the capturing, storage, processing, transmission and display of information' (de Alcantara, 2001: 3). This definition captures the set of attributes associated with ICTs, rather than listing the various devices possessing these attributes, and is as such perhaps a more useful definition. This is even more so due to the digital convergence discussed by Batchelor and Scott (2005), in which phones can also be radios and mini-computers, while computers can be TVs, radios, and phones.

More than two decades ago, Lorentzen (1988) developed a theoretical framework for understanding technological innovation, which still has much to offer when trying to understand the concept of ICT and the role of ICTs in socio-economic development. She defines technology as a process, and not simply a thing that can be bought and used. This is because socio-economic choices, which have a bearing on the final product, are implicitly or explicitly made in the process of technological innovation. This makes technology a social product.

ICT, globalization, and development

Rapid developments in ICTs over the last two decades have prompted the question of not only what role these can play in development, but also of whether developing countries can in fact cope without them. As a way of...