Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Examples of ICT-based development programmes include:
•
The Grameen Bank's funding of mobile phone exchanges, operated
by rural women in rural Bangladesh, although evidence suggests
that the poorest households are still unable to use these services.
•
Wireless-enabled mobile phones in Senegal that help farmers obtain
market prices for fruit and vegetables.
•
Indian online public sector services, including rural employment
schemes that foster self-governance through transparency. However,
illiteracy is a still a major barrier in realizing the potential for such
schemes.
In order to further global development agendas, ICTs will need to be
adapted to suit local pockets, operate in a wide range of environmental
conditions, support multiple language translation and develop more
locally suitable content. NGOs are playing a major role in promoting
the use of mobile phones in their social development projects and in
building partnerships with global IT corporations to deliver low-cost
initiatives (see Chapter 5.2), although state support remains essential
for delivering infrastructure and addressing issues of regulation and
governance.
The openness of global digital infrastructure means that countries
in the global South may finally have the capacity to access and adapt
ICT to suit their own agendas (Boas et al., 2005). Despite the so-called
mobile revolution taking place within low-income communities, how-
ever, the digital divide still exists on a range of spatial and social
scales. Although it is not yet possible to predict the precise outcome
brought about by digital ICT, the largest gaps in the global South tend
to be between young, affluent, urban men and older, poor, rural
women. The ultimate challenge will be to find ways of diffusing new
technologies throughout disadvantaged rural communities, empower-
ing them to drive local development agendas and reducing informa-
tion poverty.
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key
points
•
The new information economy has provided new labour market
opportunities in the global South, but the impacts on poorer com-
munities in the global South have been widely contested.
