Keynote Lectures
Same Language Subtitling for Mass Literacy: What Aishwarya Rai can do that Arjun Singh Cannot!
Same Language Subtitling (SLS) is the idea of subtitling audio-visual content in the "same" language as the audio. This simple intervention embedded in Bollywood-style film song programmes on TV, has already introduced regular reading practice into the lives of over 200 million "early-literate" people in India, in their own language. Cost? One US Dollar gives weekly reading practice to 10,000 people. Fist conceived in 1996, SLS is on air, nationally, in 10 different states/languages. Several research studies and an ongoing longitudinal study in five states have consistently found strong support for mass literacy skill improvement resulting from media exposure to SLS. Data further shows that SLS is overwhelmingly popular and increases program ratings. With a vantage point of 10 years, this presentation will look back at the project’s successes and failures in terms of innovation, research and national policy change. It will also map out a vision for the next 10 years, as the project is poised to scale-out to other countries and new directions, such as "Anibooks" for children on old and new ICTs.
The New Global Order of Poverty Management, or Why Everybody Loves Microfinance
This talk analyzes the emergence of a "kinder and gentler" regime of international development, one that dares to imagine the "end of poverty." It examines the significance and popularity of microfinance as a poverty-alleviation strategy. The talk also delineates competing visions and best practices of microfinance, contrasting the "Washington consensus" with what might be called a "Bangladesh consensus." It thereby highlights the battle of ideas through which development is shaped and negotiated.
Empowering 800 Million People through Low-cost IT
In this talk, the speaker will share with the international colleagues emerging efforts in China to enable half of the population of Chinese citizens to access information technology. He will summarize status and trends of information technology in China, the main technology challenges and non-tech issues, the newly formed e-Nation strategy for China of 2006-2020, and low-cost IT R&D efforts at Institute of Computing technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Papers
Integrating Social Development and Financial Sustainability: The Challenges of Rural Kiosks in Kerala
This paper examines the social and political challenges related to the implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) kiosk projects for rural development in India. Specifically, the paper focuses on the Akshaya project, a franchise of rural computer-service kiosks, which was implemented in Kerala as a public-private sector collaboration. The Akshaya project has the twin goals of social development through increased access to computers for rural people and financial viability through market-driven entrepreneurship. Using interview and participant observation methods, we examine the challenges that state actors and entrepreneurs face in simultaneously addressing social and financial sustainability. The preliminary evidence suggests that there is a tension between these goals at a macro level (within the state) and a micro level (for entrepreneurs and potential consumers) that makes it difficult to run a financially self-sustaining ICT kiosk project that also meets social development goals. The paper demonstrates that the implementation of ICTs for development is not simply a technical process of delivering services to the poor, but is a highly political process that involves tradeoffs and prioritization of particular goals to attain sustainability. Branding this project is a challenge for the state and entrepreneurs due to consumer perceptions of what development is, with particular expectations of state provided services, versus what business is.
COMMON-Sense Net: Improved Water Management for Resource-Poor Farmers via Sensor Networks
We describe the on-going design and implementation of a sensor network for agricultural management targeted at resource-poor farmers in India. Our focus on semi-arid regions led us to concentrate on water-related issues. Throughout 2004, we carried out a survey on the information needs of the population living in a cluster of villages in our study area. The results highlighted the potential that environment-related information has for the improvement of farming strategies in the face of highly variable conditions, in particular for risk management strategies (choice of crop varieties, sowing and harvest periods, prevention of pests and diseases, efficient use of irrigation water etc.). This leads us to advocate an original use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). We believe our demand-driven approach for the design of appropriate ICT tools that are targeted at the resource-poor to be relatively new. In order to go beyond a pure technocratic approach, we adopted an iterative, participatory methodology.
The Livestock Guru: Transmitting demand-led information to decision-makers and the poor
The application of ICTs to meet development objectives has increased dramatically in recent years, nevertheless, there is a little overall evidence regarding the impact of these tools on the poor. Therefore, the following paper describes the creation and assessment of the Livestock Guru, a multi-media, interactive programme for poor livestock keepers in India and Bolivia. Learning outcomes were explored among 305 farmers in 17 communities across the two nations. The study also compared the impact of the software with more conventional media such as videos and written extension material. The authors found that the uptake of new knowledge was highly related to the specific topic involved. Not surprisingly, the level of challenge to existing beliefs also affected learning. Nonetheless, by utilising visual cues and referents which supported traditional knowledge frames, the software messages showed greater levels of knowledge than messages delivered by more traditional means.
How the Telecommunication Market in Developing Countries Differ from That in Developed Countries
We examine the difference of telecommunication market between developed countries and developing countries by using adopter categorization which divides consumers into five categories: Innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggard. The results indicate that the size of innovators in developing countries is smaller than that in developed countries; on the contrary, the size of early adopters in developing countries is larger than that in developed countries. The time interval of early majority and late majority in developing countries is smaller than that in developed countries. The analysis suggests that the strategy of MNCs need to dynamically change when adopter category enters into a new phase along the new product diffusion life cycle.
Multiple Mice for Computers in Education in Developing Countries
A distinct feature observed in computer use in schools or rural kiosks in developing countries is the high student-to-computer ratio. It is not unusual to see more than five children crowding around a single display, as schools are rarely funded to afford one PC per child in a classroom. One child controls the mouse, while others are passive onlookers, without operational control of the computer. Learning benefits appear to accrue primarily to the child with the mouse, with the other children missing out. The obvious technical solution is to provide each child with a mouse and cursor on screen, thus effectively multiplying the amount of interaction per student per PC for the cost of a few extra mice. To our surprise, both the concept and the implementation appear to be unique to date, for the specific application to computers in education in resource-strapped communities, with previous work restricting studies to two mice, or for largely non-educational applications. We have developed software that allows multiple coloured cursors to co-exist on the monitor, along with two sample games with some educational content. Initial trials with both single-mouse and multiple-mice scenarios suggest that children are more engaged when in control of a mouse, and that more mice increases overall engagement. Our results suggest new areas of research in pedagogy for computers in education.
E-governance services through Telecentres - Role of Human Intermediary and issues of Trust
Studies on telecentres have shown that the centres can become socially relevant only when they provide services in accordance with the needs of the local community. The studies have also shown the importance of a local intermediary in making telecentres successful. The paper shows how trust between citizens and intermediaries at various levels affect the way e-governance services are delivered through telecentres. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the sociology of governance and taking an institutionalist perspective, this paper highlights how the institutional membership of the intermediary is critical for an engaging relationship between citizens and providers for providing services. The paper is based on an empirical study of Akshaya telecentre project in Kerala.
Mobile phones and Economic Development: Evidence from the Fishing Industry in India
There is considerable speculation about the correlation between investments in telecommunications and economic development. Mobile phones, by virtue of their role as carriers and conduits of information, ought to lessen the information asymmetries in markets, thereby making rural and undeveloped markets more efficient. This research tests this assumption using a case-study from India, where the fishing community in the south-western state of Kerala has adopted mobile phones in large numbers. We find that with the wide-spread use of mobile phones, markets become more efficient as risk and uncertainty are reduced; there is greater market integration; there are gains in productivity and in the Marshallian surplus (sum of consumer and producer surplus); and price dispersion and price fluctuations are reduced. The potential efficiencies are, however, subject to easy access to capital, without which the market remains less efficient than it could be. Finally, the quality of life of the fishermen improves as they feel less isolated, and less at risk in times of emergencies.
Text-Free User Interfaces for Illiterate and Semi-Literate Users
We describe work toward the goal of a user interface designed such that even novice, illiterate users require absolutely no intervention from anyone at all to use. Our textfree user interface is based on many hours of ethnographic design conducted in collaboration with a community of illiterate domestic labourers in three Bangalore slums. An ethnographic design process was used to understand what kind of application subjects would be interested in, how they respond to computing technology, and how they react to specific UI elements. We built two applications using these principles, one for job search for domestic labourers, and another for a generic map that could be used for navigating a city. The resulting designs are based on key lessons that we gained through the design process. The paper describes the design process, the design principles which evolved out of the process, the final application design, and results from initial user testing. Our results confirm previous work that emphasizes the need for semi-abstracted graphics and voice feedback, but we additionally find that some aspects of design for illiterate users that have been previously overlooked (such as a consistent help feature). Results also show that the text-free designs are strongly preferred over standard text-based interfaces by the communities which we address, and that they are potentially able to bring even complex computer functions within the reach of users who are unable to read.
Changed governance or computerized governance? Computerized property transfer processes in Tamil Nadu (India)
This paper reports on the first large-scale e-government project in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Called STAR (Simplified Transparent Administration of Registration), this project uses ICTs in the administrative processes involved in transfer of ownership of real estate. A World Bank study (Tamil Nadu Governance Challenges published in October 2004) identified a bloated government workforce, poor levels of transparency and accountability, high levels of corruption and the poor quality of public services as the significant governance challenges faced by Tamil Nadu.
Tamil Nadu, however, has the advantage of a high-quality ICT infrastructure built for promoting IT and IT-enabled services industries. E-government is generally believed to have the capacity to increase productivity, promote higher levels of transparency and accountability, and contribute to increased quality of public services. It is interesting, therefore, to examine how the government of Tamil Nadu is using ICTs to meet its governance challenges.
The Registration Department of the government deals with registration of doc">uments relating to sale, mortgage, lease of real estate properties, providing title search reports and similar functions. Before STAR, the department followed procedures unchanged since colonial times. The department had a reputation of being corrupt, arbitrary and unfriendly.
The paper reports the results of a study of the objectives, implementation, funding, and actual working of STAR, as well as a survey of stakeholders on the impact of this project. Based on these, it discusses the effect that key policy choices made have on the impact of e-government projects.
Augmenting Rural Supply Chains with a Location-Enhanced Mobile Information System
In recent years, there has been increased interest in the market potential of rural communities in the developing world. In the developing world, the lack of information and communications infrastructure has left companies with manual paper-based information methods as the only means of analyzing and aggregating data. This primitive approach to rural supply chain management creates a barrier to efficiency and a barrier to entry for many companies. In this paper we discuss a field study conducted with a company involved in the marketing, sale, and distribution of products in rural India. We describe the participants in this company's rural supply chain, highlighting inefficiencies in the information and material flow. We show how a technology-based solution could help optimize distribution routes and reduce inefficiency. By knowing the location and details of transactions, the company can better direct rural marketing strategies and manage human and material resources. We present the high-level design of this system and enumerate the possible technologies that can be used to determine a user’s location via a mobile device, including GPS, GSM triangulation and Placelab using GSM [1]. To assess the potential of GSM-based methods, we describe the results of an experiment we conducted to determine the extent of GSM coverage along common rural sales routes. Our results indicate that GSM-based methods are sufficient for some purposes, but can not be used to determine the exact position of all rural transactions, especially those that occur in rural villages. We discuss scanning location-specific barcodes as a possible way of localizing transactions to individual villages and customers.
The Missing Piece: Human-Driven Design and Research in ICT and Development
ICTD projects are usually driven along the three axes of technological innovation, development programs or new market creation. These drivers have to be complemented by a focus on the people served by ICT, and their needs. In this paper, we argue for the importance of human-driven design and research (HDDR) to take into account the four human dimensions of ICT: local practices; participatory design processes; socio-cultural contexts, and political conditions. Building on our ethnographic and design research on the LINCOS project in Costa Rica and Hewlett-Packard’s e-Inclusion program, we show how Lincos’ success was impeded by its inattention to human design features, the deployment of a neoliberal discourse of community appropriation, and the market-driven focus of e-Inclusion. We conclude by situating ICTD in the larger context of human development, and with reflections on what constitutes sustainable, successful ICTD projects.
Innovative ICT Tools for Information Provision in Agricultural Extension
aAQUA is an online multilingual, multimedia Agricultural portal for disseminating information from and to the grassroots of the Indian agricultural community. aAQUA simultaneously addresses two major challenges in farmer outreach programs - geographic reach and customized delivery. It answers farmers queries based on the location, season, crop and other information provided by farmers. aAQUA makes use of novel database systems and information retrieval techniques like intelligent caching, offline access with intermittent synchronization, semantic-based search, etc. Agricultural content repositories (Digital Library), Agri-price information (Bhav Puchiye), farmer schemes and various operations support databases (aAQUA-QoS) have also emerged from the experience of aAQUA deployments. aAQUA's large scale deployment provides avenues for researchers to contribute in the areas of knowledge management, cross- lingual information retrieval, and providing accessible content for rural populations. Apart from Agriculture, aAQUA can be configured and customized for Expert advice over mobile networks and the internet in Education, Healthcare and other domains of interest to a developing population. This paper will showcase the utility of various component databases built into aAQUA to enhance the QoS delivered to rural populations.
Computing Devices for All: Creating and Selling the Low-Cost Computer
In the past decade, several projects have explored the possibility of enabling human development for economically underserved populations by giving people direct access to modern computing technology. The main economic and distributional hurdle in the access of such provision has been the prohibitive cost of computing devices. The quest for lowering this bar has resulted in research into solutions aimed at modifying existing technology to reduce the cost through innovation with the software, hardware, and distribution processes. Some common threads are manifested across such projects, both in terms of the approaches to building new technologies, and the subsequent outcomes. Using two important case studies we generate some hypotheses about the possibilities and barriers to new technology development for poor populations.
Speech Recognition for Illiterate Access Information and Technology
In rural Tamil Nadu and other predominantly illiterate communities throughout the world, computers and technology are currently inaccessible without the help of a literate mediator. Speech recognition has often been suggested as a key to universal access, but success stories of speech-driven interfaces for illiterate end users are few and far between. The challenges of dialectal variation, multilingualism, cultural barriers, choice of appropriate content, and, most importantly, the prohibitive expense of creating the necessary linguistic resources for effective speech recognition are intractable using traditional techniques. This paper presents an inexpensive approach for gathering the linguistic resources needed to power a simple spoken dialog system. In our approach, data collection is integrated into dialog design: Users of a given village are recorded during interactions, and their speech semi-automatically integrated into the acoustic models for that village, thus generating the linguistic resources needed for automatic recognition of their speech. Our design is multi-modal, scalable, and modifiable. It is the result of an international, cross-disciplinary collaboration between researchers and NGO workers who serve the rural poor in Tamil Nadu. Our groundwork includes user studies, stakeholder interviews and field recordings of literate and illiterate agricultural workers in three districts of Tamil Nadu over the summer and fall of 2005. Automatic speech recognition experiments simulating the spoken dialog systems' performance during initialization and gradual integration of acoustic data informed the holistic structure of the design. Our research addresses the unique social and economic challenges of the developing world by relying on modifiable and highly transparent software and hardware, by building on locally available resources, and by emphasizing community operation and ownership through training and education.
Social Entrepreneurship as Critical Agency: A study of Rural Internet kiosks
My paper looks at rural internet kiosks as small businesses run by owners/operators who display good entrepreneurial spirit and skills that match kiosk offerings to local needs, creating opportunities in constrained commercial environments. Kiosk operators display enough imagination to keep businesses afloat recasting information technologies to accommodate the growing demand for image /visual consumption. We argue for considering the rural internet kiosk not simply as an information booth but as entrepreneurial space to tap several commercial possibilities.
ICT usage and its impact on profitability of SMEs in 13 African Countries
This paper reports on a small and medium enterprise (SME) Survey carried out by the ResearchICTAfrica (RIA) in 14 African countries. It argues that the negative return on investment reported in the literature can be attributed to the failure to distinguish between the formal and informal sectors. This paper demonstrates that informal SMEs have a higher profitability than formal ones. It further shows that ICTs are input factors for informal as well as formal SMEs. The paper argues that there is still demand for fixed line phones amongst SMEs, but that mobile phones have become the default communications tool because fixed lines are either too expensive or not available. The primary policy recommendation arising out of this is that applications for SMEs need to be developed using mobile phones.
Posters
E-Karaoke Learning for Gender Empowerment in Rural India
A folksongs karaoke product has been created to increase usage of subtitled media to enhance literacy and technology use, particularly among girls in rural India. This entails generating and proliferating popular local folksongs with social and cultural themes of interest to girls, accompanied by the award-winning Same Language Subtitling (SLS) feature. In this paper, the prime goal is to discuss possible implications of this novel technology content on girls’ socialization, education, and activism. Based on initial findings from a pilot test of this product in schools, private and public in rural India, I propose that this product has the potential to raise literacy among girls through musical enculturation and entertainment in rural India. By linking folksongs to computers, I argue that this association can shape, transform and/or (re)configure spaces for/by girls in rural India through interaction with technology in ways meaningful to them. Thereby, I problematize the transposition of “western” perspectives of gender and technology onto the rural terrain as understood within a development discourse.
Human Capital as a Basis of Comparative Advantage Equations in Services Outsourcing: A Cross Country Comparative study
International outsourcing of services has come to occupy an increasingly important part of international trade. Analytically services outsourcing is the export of services by a country to the outsourcing nation. Given this, the pattern of trade in these services would be decided in line with country specific comparative advantage equations. Since services are typically intensive in skilled labour and educated manpower, what matters for a country’s comparative advantage in services is its resource base in terms of skilled and educated manpower. This is a cross country study which uses the intuitive logic of the Hecksher Ohlin model to determine comparative advantage for a sample of developed countries such as the US, that essentially constitute outsourcers, and developing nations such as India and China that carryout outsourcing . Different definitions of human capital are compared to identify comparative advantage. A key conclusion is that for services outsourcing, the definition of human capital needs to be restricted to secondary and particularly tertiary students rather than literacy. This is further validated by the significance of size of tertiary students in cross country equations estimating business service exports. Secondly, what matters for comparative advantage is the absolute size of the human capital base rather than in percentage terms.
Cultural Assessment for Sustainable Kiosk Projects
Kiosk/telecenter projects, which provide access to information technologies and related services, have become an important vehicle for delivering the benefits of ICTs to the developing world. As more of these projects are implemented, there is a real need to evaluate their long-term impacts. Assessments, however, are often restricted to economic and technical factors which, though important, by themselves privilege objects and models over people and situated use. Beginning with the premise that successful and sustainable kiosk projects are those that adapt to local contexts and cultures, this paper presents a holistic model for assessment that centers on cultural factors. We argue that understanding cultural factors allows kiosk projects to respond to local histories, needs, and values in a way that ultimately enhances the long-term viability of change. After discussing some challenges that many kiosks currently face with respect to a holistic, culture-centered assessment, we present a brief review of models for ‘rapid’ ethnography which are drawn from applied anthropology. Finally, we propose a focused and practical framework for holistic analysis to inform program development.
Mobile phone in Côte d’Ivoire: Uses and Self-fulfilment
The widespread uptake of mobile phone technology among Côte d’Ivoire’s most disadvantaged populations demonstrates that even within the context of socio-political and economic turmoil - as is the case in Côte d’Ivoire- individuals will combine digital devices with ingenuity or 'tactics' (de Certeau, 1990) to ‘progress’. In other words, people’s improvement is not necessarily linked to the social and economic structures of their environment. This paper explores: 1) the various uses of the mobile phone in Côte d’Ivoire; 2) how typical mobile phone uses have proven effective in improving individual lives in three areas: economic life, professional life, and social relations. The concept of uses is framed here by de Certeau’s conception which suggests that individuals are never deprived of their ingeniousness. Subscribing to this view, Jean-Godefroy Bidima noted that whatever might be the level of alienation or hostility which an individual is subjected to, the consubstantial emergence of the subject moves him to auto-engender himself and outwit the constraints he faces. In the Ivorian context, the outworking of this concept leads to new perceptions of the mobile phone and generates polyvalent meanings among populations.
Technologies and Business Models that Work in Developing Countries
The innovative adaptation of advanced and "appropriate technologies" in developing countries offers valuable insight into the need for new design parameters to increase the diffusion of technological innovations to the poor. This adaptation process also highlights how the challenges of infrastructure and distribution can be overcome, as well as how prevailing business models can be adapted to foster market creation at the bottom of the pyramid. This paper draws on the evidence from nominations to the Tech Museum Awards and lessons learned from on-the-ground social entrepreneurs to suggest a possible roadmap for increasing technology deployability and useability, and for increasing the rate of future technology diffusion in developing countries.
ICT for Poverty Alleviation: A Study on Bangladesh
Bangladesh is now one of the world leaders in using telecommunication (mainly phone) for poverty alleviation. Village Pay Phone (VPP) Program,an NGO led initiative has been hailed as one of the first program to use telephone for poverty alleviation. The success of this program led to low-income entrepreneur both in rural and urban areas of Bangladesh to take similar kind of initiative. Studies on VPP program show it can reduce poverty in rural areas. This paper focuses on the performance of the enterprises, which are not in VPP program. We conclude that these initiatives are equally effective in alleviating poverty
Political Economy and ICTs for Development: India’s Space Program, 1975-2000
At its inception, the Indian space program aimed to assist in national socio-economic development. Between 1975 and the end of the 1980s, India built and launched satellites to satisfy ambitious development goals, but following the liberalization and globalization of the Indian economy in 1991, the space program became increasingly commercialized. This paper shows how changing national political economy played a critical role in determining if India employed its satellites for development or commercial profit. Understanding this link is critical to ensure the validity of future discussions about the role that ICTs can play in socio-economic development.
An Empirical Investigation of Innovation and Community Development through Information and Communication Technology
Recently, discussion has begun to consider serving the base of the economic pyramid for business and societal benefit. Suggestions for so doing have focused on business model innovation, improving internal capabilities, promoting stronger governance, and providing leapfrog technologies (such as ICT) to promote effective change. We consider the questions of what types of innovation are occurring when businesses and other organizations enter the base of the pyramid and what types of social, economic, and consumer benefits they bring to local communities. We base our findings on an analysis of more than 1,000 cases describing base of the pyramid activities.
Rural Microfinance Service Delivery: Gaps, Inefficiencies and Emerging Solutions
Microfinance, the provision of financial services to poor and under-served communities, has emerged as one of the most promising avenues for stimulating rural economic development through local enterprise. In this paper we will discuss some of the major technology gaps faced by rural microfinance institutions, focusing on areas that are most important for the future growth of the industry. This work builds upon six months of field research, including field studies with eight different microfinance organizations located across Latin America and Asia, and discussions with many other organizations worldwide. Historically it has proved difficult to provide sustainable micro- financial services to remote rural clients. As formal financial institutions begin to look seriously at this market, the microfinance industry faces significant challenges in maturing and scaling to sustainability. We will look at three of the major tasks faced by rural microfinance service providers today - 1) the exchange of information with remote clients, 2) management and processing of data at the institutional level and 3) the collection and delivery of money to remote rural areas. Each of these has been a difficult problem to solve for microfinance institutions worldwide, and may offer opportunities for information technology-based solutions. For each of these 'gaps' we will look at current best practices, examine the role information technology has (or has not) played in overcoming these obstacles, and discuss promising future directions. In this context, we will discuss the use of handheld technologies for rural data collection, experiences in the implementation of MIS systems at the institutional level and current strategies for introducing electronic banking to remote rural areas. For each of these, we will look at the results obtained thus far and the potential ramifications for the long-term growth and sustainability of the sector.
Cell Phone Based Microcredit Risk Assessment using Fuzzy Clustering
One of the key issue in microfinance is credit risk assessment. In this paper, exploiting fuzzy symbolic clustering, we have developed a fast turn around time microcredit risk scoring system. From field studies we identified a large number of parameters for credit risk assessment; most of them were subjective and thus our preference for fuzzy symbolic approach. We have proposed two cell phone based models to execute the developed microcredit risk assessment scheme. Experimental results are presented to validate our approach.
Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) - A Design Challenge?
In this paper, we make the case that ICT projects in the developed and developing world often lead to partial or total failures due to the incomplete assessment of the problem being solved and the metrics used to evaluate solutions. While in the developed world the success of ICT solutions are often determined by the market, with available infrastructure and market mechanisms, in the developing world this ecosystem does not exist thus requiring an understanding of the ecosystem in which ICT solutions are to be applied. Using literature from the design space, and experiences in ICT for development, we elaborate the dimensions of design such as incorporation of stakeholders, incentive structures, and design participation that are critical to successful deployment. We examine some successes and failures in product/solution development in the ICT area to identify the dimensions of good design incorporated by these products and services. With the perspective that ICT for sustainable development issues are ill-structured and 'wicked problems' that have to incorporate all the defined dimensions of design, we propose a model of product and service identification and development that is based on insights from asynchronous computational agent problem solving. We claim that new methods such as the one proposed need to be identified, developed and tested for their effectiveness in the development of products and services that satisfy the needs of human development.
Designing Wireless Sensor Networks as a Shared Resource for Sustainable Development
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a relatively new and rapidly developing technology; they have a wide range of applications including environmental monitoring, agriculture, and public health. Shared technology is a common usage model for technology adoption in developing countries. WSNs have great potential to be utilized as a shared resource due to their on-board processing and ad-hoc networking capabilities, however their deployment as a shared resource requires that the technical community first address several challenges. The main challenges include enabling sensor portability - the frequent movement of sensors within and between deployments, and rapidly deployable systems - systems that are quick and simple to deploy. We first discuss the feasibility of using sensor net- works as a shared resource, and then describe our research in addressing the various technical challenges that arise in enabling such sensor portability and rapid deployment. We also outline our experiences in developing and deploying water quality monitoring wireless sensor networks in Bangladesh and California.
The Global Diffusion Patterns of Successive Technology Generations: Modeling Analog and Digital Wireless Phone Growth
IT is a proven driver of economic growth and social development. Recent large-scale adoption of digital wireless phones among developed and developing countries has driven the expectation that high penetration will eventually pay off in economic returns and social benefits. We examine growth models to discover diffusion patterns of analog and digital wireless phones in the global context. We ask: What models might characterize diffusion growth for analog and digital wireless phones? Do developed and developing countries experience different growth patterns? Do analog and digital technologies follow different diffusion patterns? We use a matched sub-sample of twenty countries, with an equal share of developed countries and other less well-developed countries. We fitted internal, external and mixed influence diffusion models, models that allow asymmetric diffusion patterns around an inflection point for growth, and also models with a flexible inflection point for growth. The results provide a rich source of insights on wireless phone diffusion across its two key technological generations.
Bayesian Networks: An Exploratory Tool for Understanding ICT Adoption
Understanding technology adoption in emerging regions is challenging given the complex interrelations among socioeconomic factors that affect it directly and indirectly. The issue of impact assessment of technology adoption projects, especially the kind implemented in areas where prior technology has been very limited, is highly problematic and open to many methodological difficulties. Ethnographic evaluations have provided insight into the quality of interactions and into conceptions of technology and its adoption, whereas some quantitative analysis has been useful for high-level abstraction. In this paper, we examine the use of Bayesian networks as tools that can be used in revealing the structure of the relationships between demographic, social, and economic factors, and penetration for various technologies. Our hypothesis is that technology adoption cases in emerging regions display unique aggregated characteristics that make Bayesian network-based analysis a useful starting point in defining relationships between variables in project analysis. We compare the usability of Bayesian networks in analyzing two data sets: (1) a detailed survey focusing on 500 respondents across 14 favelas in Rio de Janeiro; and (2) a comprehensive survey of 998 users of the Akshaya tele-kiosk initiative in Kerala, India. Our illustrations show how Bayesian networks can be useful as statistical analysis tools that reveal new hypotheses, suggest unintended correlations in data, and confirm standing hypotheses.
Use of ICTs for Encouraging Participative Development: A Critique of the Indian Experiment
The present fascination of governments with use of ICTs for propelling development has not led to an improvement in the quality of life of a significant number of people. It becomes important to understand the conception of development that gets invoked in the design of such interventions. In this paper, we look at historical trajectories guiding the policy space to gain insights into the current imperatives motivating ICT usage. Justification for using ICTs has often been attributed to its inherent potential for enabling beneficiary participation. However, not many project designs, especially those in India, reflect such a motivation. We try to investigate whether the ICT policy of the Indian government attempts to encourage participatory development with specific reference to the relations between the governments at the centre and the provinces.
Policies for Universal Access to Telecommunications in Rural Areas of Developing Countries - An Institutional Economics Approach
A critical element of most national telecom policy objectives in developing countries is advancing universal access. Due to specific characteristics, rural areas in developing countries are of the most challenging regions. It is widely recognized that there are limits to how well the market can or will function in extending service in these areas. Therefore telecom policy has to intervene in the market to ensure the provision of telecommunications. This paper examines some frequently implemented measures for providing universal access in rural areas: universal access obligations and universal access funds in conjunction with minimum-subsidy competitive auctions. Despite experiencing that results and satisfaction with them are far from uniform across countries, there is no systematic theoretical analysis of relative efficiency and effectiveness of these measures. This article addresses this lack by applying a principal agent model to explore the incentive schemes of the announced mechanisms. This is done by taking into account the impact of economic, institutional and governance characteristics of developing countries. This paper carves out relative advantages of implementing one or another measure depending on the features of existing institutional frameworks. It is shown that successful measures in one institutional setting may be only second best in another. Critical characteristics are high shadow cost of public funds, carrot regulation incentive of output based subsidies, financial and human capacity constraints of regulators and the number of market contacts between regulator and operators. Theoretical analysis is illustrated by some actual universal access experiences in Peru, Bolivia and Uganda.
Rural Telephony: A Socio-Economic Case Study
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has the potential to bring in development to rural areas in the third world. Any deployment of technology however should be backed by a positive economic activity to be sustainable. This paper reports on experience with the economics, as well as the social aspects of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) as a service. In Jan 2003, we established a WiFi link from a site with wired Internet connection to a remote village site. On learning the demand for a telephone facility at the village, we setup a VoIP service. The setup has been running with reasonable success since then. We have collected a wide variety of statistics on the usage of the service. Although we used the relatively low-cost WiFi technology, the expenses have been high. The capital expense is dominated by antenna tower (40m: U.S.$6,600). The WiFi equipment and the solar power system added significantly to the cost too (about U.S. $3,100). The revenue generated from the phone calls has averaged at about $52/month. Hence this service alone may not be sufficient, and other targeted services are necessary to sustain ICT in rural villages. However, on the positive side we think that telephony facility can attract potential ICT users to the setup since people can relate to the service immediately (unlike say, web browsing).
MorfWeb: A New Way of Living the any Web Access
As Internet is being established the dominating communication platform between applications and final users, Web accessibility is becoming more and more important in the information retrieval and services delivery. This paper presents the limitations of the Web standard WCAG and of two interpretations of it in delivering Web resources to users with disabilities. First, an evaluation of these standards underlines their poor contribution to satisfy the goals of users with disabilities, and then, a proposal of simple architectural steps for the design of a website is made based on accessibility as well as usability criteria. This article studies the typical usage scenarios for such users within the Web site of an association with humanistic scopes, and proposes separate interfaces of a polymorphic application that each one of them takes under consideration the physical difficulties a users group may have, its goals and expectations. Finally, various existing tools are presented evaluating their capability to implement web interfaces following the proposed design model.
Kiosk Usage Measurement using a Software Logging Tool
Rural PC kiosks have become prominent recently as a way to impact socio-economic development through computing technology. Despite the significant backing these projects receive from governments and other large organizations, there are very few rigorous studies which measure their actual impact and utility. We have developed and deployed a software PC logging tool that allows us to gain exact quantitative insight into the usage statistics of kiosks on which the tool is installed. In field trials in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, India, we collected over 120 days of software tool logging data from 13 separate kiosks, while we also questioned the kiosk operators during the same period. We show some evidence that the software based logging tool complements the existing survey based and other ethnographic approaches for data collection. We also show that the tool does a better job in gathering certain usage statistics as compared to questioning the kiosk operator.
ICT Strategies for Gender Empowerment: Actionable Approaches and Recommendations
Information and Communications Technologies are generally regarded as new tools that can serve as effective agents of positive economic, social and political change in developing regions. However, the tendency to see these technologies as universally applicable can lead to the unintended reinforcement of male-dominated power structures and the expansion, rather then the narrowing, of traditional gender inequalities that further isolates girls and women. ICT Stakeholders must recognize that they cannot close the digital divide without alleviating the gendered digital divide. Until there is equal access and opportunity for girls and women in ICT programs and policies there will be no equity. This paper tracks the short history of initiatives aimed at empowering women through ICTs and highlights areas of needed research and actionable methods for bringing and keeping gender at the forefront of the ICT for Development agenda.
Impact of the Insertion of Modern Information and Communication Technologies in Brazilian Rural Communities
Information and communication technologies have the potential to overcome age-old barriers of space, time, class, and custom to integrate poor, isolated and disenfranchised rural populations into the mainstream of the larger society. This article describes Gems of the Earth, a rural community telecenter project currently in development in a poor, but once prosperous, region of Brazil. The study analyzes the impact of the telecenters on the lives of these communities. Preliminary results point to the creation of new habits and customs, with initial signs of a return to sustainable development.
A Fragile Link: Disaster Relief, ICTs and Development
When disasters strike and aid agencies pour in to help the survivors they are increasingly making use of advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs). For remote areas of developing countries, this use of ICTs may be the community’s first exposure to these technologies. And while the role of these ICTs is primarily linked to disaster response and recovery, in certain situations they can be transitioned for use in development programs. This paper discusses the crucial factors in design and deployment of relief ICTs that are likely to influence their ultimate use as tools for development. Derived from cases developed through secondary data, the factors are broken into those related to communication technology transfer and those related to information technology transfer. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.
Same Language Subtitling for Mass Literacy: What Aishwarya Rai can do that Arjun Singh Cannot!
Same Language Subtitling (SLS) is the idea of subtitling audio-visual content in the "same" language as the audio. This simple intervention embedded in Bollywood-style film song programmes on TV, has already introduced regular reading practice into the lives of over 200 million "early-literate" people in India, in their own language. Cost? One US Dollar gives weekly reading practice to 10,000 people. Fist conceived in 1996, SLS is on air, nationally, in 10 different states/languages. Several research studies and an ongoing longitudinal study in five states have consistently found strong support for mass literacy skill improvement resulting from media exposure to SLS. Data further shows that SLS is overwhelmingly popular and increases program ratings. With a vantage point of 10 years, this presentation will look back at the project’s successes and failures in terms of innovation, research and national policy change. It will also map out a vision for the next 10 years, as the project is poised to scale-out to other countries and new directions, such as "Anibooks" for children on old and new ICTs.
The New Global Order of Poverty Management, or Why Everybody Loves Microfinance
This talk analyzes the emergence of a "kinder and gentler" regime of international development, one that dares to imagine the "end of poverty." It examines the significance and popularity of microfinance as a poverty-alleviation strategy. The talk also delineates competing visions and best practices of microfinance, contrasting the "Washington consensus" with what might be called a "Bangladesh consensus." It thereby highlights the battle of ideas through which development is shaped and negotiated.
Empowering 800 Million People through Low-cost IT
In this talk, the speaker will share with the international colleagues emerging efforts in China to enable half of the population of Chinese citizens to access information technology. He will summarize status and trends of information technology in China, the main technology challenges and non-tech issues, the newly formed e-Nation strategy for China of 2006-2020, and low-cost IT R&D efforts at Institute of Computing technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Papers
Integrating Social Development and Financial Sustainability: The Challenges of Rural Kiosks in Kerala
This paper examines the social and political challenges related to the implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) kiosk projects for rural development in India. Specifically, the paper focuses on the Akshaya project, a franchise of rural computer-service kiosks, which was implemented in Kerala as a public-private sector collaboration. The Akshaya project has the twin goals of social development through increased access to computers for rural people and financial viability through market-driven entrepreneurship. Using interview and participant observation methods, we examine the challenges that state actors and entrepreneurs face in simultaneously addressing social and financial sustainability. The preliminary evidence suggests that there is a tension between these goals at a macro level (within the state) and a micro level (for entrepreneurs and potential consumers) that makes it difficult to run a financially self-sustaining ICT kiosk project that also meets social development goals. The paper demonstrates that the implementation of ICTs for development is not simply a technical process of delivering services to the poor, but is a highly political process that involves tradeoffs and prioritization of particular goals to attain sustainability. Branding this project is a challenge for the state and entrepreneurs due to consumer perceptions of what development is, with particular expectations of state provided services, versus what business is.
COMMON-Sense Net: Improved Water Management for Resource-Poor Farmers via Sensor Networks
We describe the on-going design and implementation of a sensor network for agricultural management targeted at resource-poor farmers in India. Our focus on semi-arid regions led us to concentrate on water-related issues. Throughout 2004, we carried out a survey on the information needs of the population living in a cluster of villages in our study area. The results highlighted the potential that environment-related information has for the improvement of farming strategies in the face of highly variable conditions, in particular for risk management strategies (choice of crop varieties, sowing and harvest periods, prevention of pests and diseases, efficient use of irrigation water etc.). This leads us to advocate an original use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). We believe our demand-driven approach for the design of appropriate ICT tools that are targeted at the resource-poor to be relatively new. In order to go beyond a pure technocratic approach, we adopted an iterative, participatory methodology.
The Livestock Guru: Transmitting demand-led information to decision-makers and the poor
The application of ICTs to meet development objectives has increased dramatically in recent years, nevertheless, there is a little overall evidence regarding the impact of these tools on the poor. Therefore, the following paper describes the creation and assessment of the Livestock Guru, a multi-media, interactive programme for poor livestock keepers in India and Bolivia. Learning outcomes were explored among 305 farmers in 17 communities across the two nations. The study also compared the impact of the software with more conventional media such as videos and written extension material. The authors found that the uptake of new knowledge was highly related to the specific topic involved. Not surprisingly, the level of challenge to existing beliefs also affected learning. Nonetheless, by utilising visual cues and referents which supported traditional knowledge frames, the software messages showed greater levels of knowledge than messages delivered by more traditional means.
How the Telecommunication Market in Developing Countries Differ from That in Developed Countries
We examine the difference of telecommunication market between developed countries and developing countries by using adopter categorization which divides consumers into five categories: Innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggard. The results indicate that the size of innovators in developing countries is smaller than that in developed countries; on the contrary, the size of early adopters in developing countries is larger than that in developed countries. The time interval of early majority and late majority in developing countries is smaller than that in developed countries. The analysis suggests that the strategy of MNCs need to dynamically change when adopter category enters into a new phase along the new product diffusion life cycle.
Multiple Mice for Computers in Education in Developing Countries
A distinct feature observed in computer use in schools or rural kiosks in developing countries is the high student-to-computer ratio. It is not unusual to see more than five children crowding around a single display, as schools are rarely funded to afford one PC per child in a classroom. One child controls the mouse, while others are passive onlookers, without operational control of the computer. Learning benefits appear to accrue primarily to the child with the mouse, with the other children missing out. The obvious technical solution is to provide each child with a mouse and cursor on screen, thus effectively multiplying the amount of interaction per student per PC for the cost of a few extra mice. To our surprise, both the concept and the implementation appear to be unique to date, for the specific application to computers in education in resource-strapped communities, with previous work restricting studies to two mice, or for largely non-educational applications. We have developed software that allows multiple coloured cursors to co-exist on the monitor, along with two sample games with some educational content. Initial trials with both single-mouse and multiple-mice scenarios suggest that children are more engaged when in control of a mouse, and that more mice increases overall engagement. Our results suggest new areas of research in pedagogy for computers in education.
E-governance services through Telecentres - Role of Human Intermediary and issues of Trust
Studies on telecentres have shown that the centres can become socially relevant only when they provide services in accordance with the needs of the local community. The studies have also shown the importance of a local intermediary in making telecentres successful. The paper shows how trust between citizens and intermediaries at various levels affect the way e-governance services are delivered through telecentres. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the sociology of governance and taking an institutionalist perspective, this paper highlights how the institutional membership of the intermediary is critical for an engaging relationship between citizens and providers for providing services. The paper is based on an empirical study of Akshaya telecentre project in Kerala.
Mobile phones and Economic Development: Evidence from the Fishing Industry in India
There is considerable speculation about the correlation between investments in telecommunications and economic development. Mobile phones, by virtue of their role as carriers and conduits of information, ought to lessen the information asymmetries in markets, thereby making rural and undeveloped markets more efficient. This research tests this assumption using a case-study from India, where the fishing community in the south-western state of Kerala has adopted mobile phones in large numbers. We find that with the wide-spread use of mobile phones, markets become more efficient as risk and uncertainty are reduced; there is greater market integration; there are gains in productivity and in the Marshallian surplus (sum of consumer and producer surplus); and price dispersion and price fluctuations are reduced. The potential efficiencies are, however, subject to easy access to capital, without which the market remains less efficient than it could be. Finally, the quality of life of the fishermen improves as they feel less isolated, and less at risk in times of emergencies.
Text-Free User Interfaces for Illiterate and Semi-Literate Users
We describe work toward the goal of a user interface designed such that even novice, illiterate users require absolutely no intervention from anyone at all to use. Our textfree user interface is based on many hours of ethnographic design conducted in collaboration with a community of illiterate domestic labourers in three Bangalore slums. An ethnographic design process was used to understand what kind of application subjects would be interested in, how they respond to computing technology, and how they react to specific UI elements. We built two applications using these principles, one for job search for domestic labourers, and another for a generic map that could be used for navigating a city. The resulting designs are based on key lessons that we gained through the design process. The paper describes the design process, the design principles which evolved out of the process, the final application design, and results from initial user testing. Our results confirm previous work that emphasizes the need for semi-abstracted graphics and voice feedback, but we additionally find that some aspects of design for illiterate users that have been previously overlooked (such as a consistent help feature). Results also show that the text-free designs are strongly preferred over standard text-based interfaces by the communities which we address, and that they are potentially able to bring even complex computer functions within the reach of users who are unable to read.
Changed governance or computerized governance? Computerized property transfer processes in Tamil Nadu (India)
This paper reports on the first large-scale e-government project in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Called STAR (Simplified Transparent Administration of Registration), this project uses ICTs in the administrative processes involved in transfer of ownership of real estate. A World Bank study (Tamil Nadu Governance Challenges published in October 2004
Augmenting Rural Supply Chains with a Location-Enhanced Mobile Information System
In recent years, there has been increased interest in the market potential of rural communities in the developing world. In the developing world, the lack of information and communications infrastructure has left companies with manual paper-based information methods as the only means of analyzing and aggregating data. This primitive approach to rural supply chain management creates a barrier to efficiency and a barrier to entry for many companies. In this paper we discuss a field study conducted with a company involved in the marketing, sale, and distribution of products in rural India. We describe the participants in this company's rural supply chain, highlighting inefficiencies in the information and material flow. We show how a technology-based solution could help optimize distribution routes and reduce inefficiency. By knowing the location and details of transactions, the company can better direct rural marketing strategies and manage human and material resources. We present the high-level design of this system and enumerate the possible technologies that can be used to determine a user’s location via a mobile device, including GPS, GSM triangulation and Placelab using GSM [1]. To assess the potential of GSM-based methods, we describe the results of an experiment we conducted to determine the extent of GSM coverage along common rural sales routes. Our results indicate that GSM-based methods are sufficient for some purposes, but can not be used to determine the exact position of all rural transactions, especially those that occur in rural villages. We discuss scanning location-specific barcodes as a possible way of localizing transactions to individual villages and customers.
The Missing Piece: Human-Driven Design and Research in ICT and Development
ICTD projects are usually driven along the three axes of technological innovation, development programs or new market creation. These drivers have to be complemented by a focus on the people served by ICT, and their needs. In this paper, we argue for the importance of human-driven design and research (HDDR) to take into account the four human dimensions of ICT: local practices; participatory design processes; socio-cultural contexts, and political conditions. Building on our ethnographic and design research on the LINCOS project in Costa Rica and Hewlett-Packard’s e-Inclusion program, we show how Lincos’ success was impeded by its inattention to human design features, the deployment of a neoliberal discourse of community appropriation, and the market-driven focus of e-Inclusion. We conclude by situating ICTD in the larger context of human development, and with reflections on what constitutes sustainable, successful ICTD projects.
Innovative ICT Tools for Information Provision in Agricultural Extension
aAQUA is an online multilingual, multimedia Agricultural portal for disseminating information from and to the grassroots of the Indian agricultural community. aAQUA simultaneously addresses two major challenges in farmer outreach programs - geographic reach and customized delivery. It answers farmers queries based on the location, season, crop and other information provided by farmers. aAQUA makes use of novel database systems and information retrieval techniques like intelligent caching, offline access with intermittent synchronization, semantic-based search, etc. Agricultural content repositories (Digital Library), Agri-price information (Bhav Puchiye), farmer schemes and various operations support databases (aAQUA-QoS) have also emerged from the experience of aAQUA deployments. aAQUA's large scale deployment provides avenues for researchers to contribute in the areas of knowledge management, cross- lingual information retrieval, and providing accessible content for rural populations. Apart from Agriculture, aAQUA can be configured and customized for Expert advice over mobile networks and the internet in Education, Healthcare and other domains of interest to a developing population. This paper will showcase the utility of various component databases built into aAQUA to enhance the QoS delivered to rural populations.
Computing Devices for All: Creating and Selling the Low-Cost Computer
In the past decade, several projects have explored the possibility of enabling human development for economically underserved populations by giving people direct access to modern computing technology. The main economic and distributional hurdle in the access of such provision has been the prohibitive cost of computing devices. The quest for lowering this bar has resulted in research into solutions aimed at modifying existing technology to reduce the cost through innovation with the software, hardware, and distribution processes. Some common threads are manifested across such projects, both in terms of the approaches to building new technologies, and the subsequent outcomes. Using two important case studies we generate some hypotheses about the possibilities and barriers to new technology development for poor populations.
Speech Recognition for Illiterate Access Information and Technology
In rural Tamil Nadu and other predominantly illiterate communities throughout the world, computers and technology are currently inaccessible without the help of a literate mediator. Speech recognition has often been suggested as a key to universal access, but success stories of speech-driven interfaces for illiterate end users are few and far between. The challenges of dialectal variation, multilingualism, cultural barriers, choice of appropriate content, and, most importantly, the prohibitive expense of creating the necessary linguistic resources for effective speech recognition are intractable using traditional techniques. This paper presents an inexpensive approach for gathering the linguistic resources needed to power a simple spoken dialog system. In our approach, data collection is integrated into dialog design: Users of a given village are recorded during interactions, and their speech semi-automatically integrated into the acoustic models for that village, thus generating the linguistic resources needed for automatic recognition of their speech. Our design is multi-modal, scalable, and modifiable. It is the result of an international, cross-disciplinary collaboration between researchers and NGO workers who serve the rural poor in Tamil Nadu. Our groundwork includes user studies, stakeholder interviews and field recordings of literate and illiterate agricultural workers in three districts of Tamil Nadu over the summer and fall of 2005. Automatic speech recognition experiments simulating the spoken dialog systems' performance during initialization and gradual integration of acoustic data informed the holistic structure of the design. Our research addresses the unique social and economic challenges of the developing world by relying on modifiable and highly transparent software and hardware, by building on locally available resources, and by emphasizing community operation and ownership through training and education.
Social Entrepreneurship as Critical Agency: A study of Rural Internet kiosks
My paper looks at rural internet kiosks as small businesses run by owners/operators who display good entrepreneurial spirit and skills that match kiosk offerings to local needs, creating opportunities in constrained commercial environments. Kiosk operators display enough imagination to keep businesses afloat recasting information technologies to accommodate the growing demand for image /visual consumption. We argue for considering the rural internet kiosk not simply as an information booth but as entrepreneurial space to tap several commercial possibilities.
ICT usage and its impact on profitability of SMEs in 13 African Countries
This paper reports on a small and medium enterprise (SME) Survey carried out by the ResearchICTAfrica (RIA) in 14 African countries. It argues that the negative return on investment reported in the literature can be attributed to the failure to distinguish between the formal and informal sectors. This paper demonstrates that informal SMEs have a higher profitability than formal ones. It further shows that ICTs are input factors for informal as well as formal SMEs. The paper argues that there is still demand for fixed line phones amongst SMEs, but that mobile phones have become the default communications tool because fixed lines are either too expensive or not available. The primary policy recommendation arising out of this is that applications for SMEs need to be developed using mobile phones.
Posters
E-Karaoke Learning for Gender Empowerment in Rural India
A folksongs karaoke product has been created to increase usage of subtitled media to enhance literacy and technology use, particularly among girls in rural India. This entails generating and proliferating popular local folksongs with social and cultural themes of interest to girls, accompanied by the award-winning Same Language Subtitling (SLS) feature. In this paper, the prime goal is to discuss possible implications of this novel technology content on girls’ socialization, education, and activism. Based on initial findings from a pilot test of this product in schools, private and public in rural India, I propose that this product has the potential to raise literacy among girls through musical enculturation and entertainment in rural India. By linking folksongs to computers, I argue that this association can shape, transform and/or (re)configure spaces for/by girls in rural India through interaction with technology in ways meaningful to them. Thereby, I problematize the transposition of “western” perspectives of gender and technology onto the rural terrain as understood within a development discourse.
Human Capital as a Basis of Comparative Advantage Equations in Services Outsourcing: A Cross Country Comparative study
International outsourcing of services has come to occupy an increasingly important part of international trade. Analytically services outsourcing is the export of services by a country to the outsourcing nation. Given this, the pattern of trade in these services would be decided in line with country specific comparative advantage equations. Since services are typically intensive in skilled labour and educated manpower, what matters for a country’s comparative advantage in services is its resource base in terms of skilled and educated manpower. This is a cross country study which uses the intuitive logic of the Hecksher Ohlin model to determine comparative advantage for a sample of developed countries such as the US, that essentially constitute outsourcers, and developing nations such as India and China that carryout outsourcing . Different definitions of human capital are compared to identify comparative advantage. A key conclusion is that for services outsourcing, the definition of human capital needs to be restricted to secondary and particularly tertiary students rather than literacy. This is further validated by the significance of size of tertiary students in cross country equations estimating business service exports. Secondly, what matters for comparative advantage is the absolute size of the human capital base rather than in percentage terms.
Cultural Assessment for Sustainable Kiosk Projects
Kiosk/telecenter projects, which provide access to information technologies and related services, have become an important vehicle for delivering the benefits of ICTs to the developing world. As more of these projects are implemented, there is a real need to evaluate their long-term impacts. Assessments, however, are often restricted to economic and technical factors which, though important, by themselves privilege objects and models over people and situated use. Beginning with the premise that successful and sustainable kiosk projects are those that adapt to local contexts and cultures, this paper presents a holistic model for assessment that centers on cultural factors. We argue that understanding cultural factors allows kiosk projects to respond to local histories, needs, and values in a way that ultimately enhances the long-term viability of change. After discussing some challenges that many kiosks currently face with respect to a holistic, culture-centered assessment, we present a brief review of models for ‘rapid’ ethnography which are drawn from applied anthropology. Finally, we propose a focused and practical framework for holistic analysis to inform program development.
Mobile phone in Côte d’Ivoire: Uses and Self-fulfilment
The widespread uptake of mobile phone technology among Côte d’Ivoire’s most disadvantaged populations demonstrates that even within the context of socio-political and economic turmoil - as is the case in Côte d’Ivoire- individuals will combine digital devices with ingenuity or 'tactics' (de Certeau, 1990) to ‘progress’. In other words, people’s improvement is not necessarily linked to the social and economic structures of their environment. This paper explores: 1) the various uses of the mobile phone in Côte d’Ivoire; 2) how typical mobile phone uses have proven effective in improving individual lives in three areas: economic life, professional life, and social relations. The concept of uses is framed here by de Certeau’s conception which suggests that individuals are never deprived of their ingeniousness. Subscribing to this view, Jean-Godefroy Bidima noted that whatever might be the level of alienation or hostility which an individual is subjected to, the consubstantial emergence of the subject moves him to auto-engender himself and outwit the constraints he faces. In the Ivorian context, the outworking of this concept leads to new perceptions of the mobile phone and generates polyvalent meanings among populations.
Technologies and Business Models that Work in Developing Countries
The innovative adaptation of advanced and "appropriate technologies" in developing countries offers valuable insight into the need for new design parameters to increase the diffusion of technological innovations to the poor. This adaptation process also highlights how the challenges of infrastructure and distribution can be overcome, as well as how prevailing business models can be adapted to foster market creation at the bottom of the pyramid. This paper draws on the evidence from nominations to the Tech Museum Awards and lessons learned from on-the-ground social entrepreneurs to suggest a possible roadmap for increasing technology deployability and useability, and for increasing the rate of future technology diffusion in developing countries.
ICT for Poverty Alleviation: A Study on Bangladesh
Bangladesh is now one of the world leaders in using telecommunication (mainly phone) for poverty alleviation. Village Pay Phone (VPP) Program,an NGO led initiative has been hailed as one of the first program to use telephone for poverty alleviation. The success of this program led to low-income entrepreneur both in rural and urban areas of Bangladesh to take similar kind of initiative. Studies on VPP program show it can reduce poverty in rural areas. This paper focuses on the performance of the enterprises, which are not in VPP program. We conclude that these initiatives are equally effective in alleviating poverty
Political Economy and ICTs for Development: India’s Space Program, 1975-2000
At its inception, the Indian space program aimed to assist in national socio-economic development. Between 1975 and the end of the 1980s, India built and launched satellites to satisfy ambitious development goals, but following the liberalization and globalization of the Indian economy in 1991, the space program became increasingly commercialized. This paper shows how changing national political economy played a critical role in determining if India employed its satellites for development or commercial profit. Understanding this link is critical to ensure the validity of future discussions about the role that ICTs can play in socio-economic development.
An Empirical Investigation of Innovation and Community Development through Information and Communication Technology
Recently, discussion has begun to consider serving the base of the economic pyramid for business and societal benefit. Suggestions for so doing have focused on business model innovation, improving internal capabilities, promoting stronger governance, and providing leapfrog technologies (such as ICT) to promote effective change. We consider the questions of what types of innovation are occurring when businesses and other organizations enter the base of the pyramid and what types of social, economic, and consumer benefits they bring to local communities. We base our findings on an analysis of more than 1,000 cases describing base of the pyramid activities.
Rural Microfinance Service Delivery: Gaps, Inefficiencies and Emerging Solutions
Microfinance, the provision of financial services to poor and under-served communities, has emerged as one of the most promising avenues for stimulating rural economic development through local enterprise. In this paper we will discuss some of the major technology gaps faced by rural microfinance institutions, focusing on areas that are most important for the future growth of the industry. This work builds upon six months of field research, including field studies with eight different microfinance organizations located across Latin America and Asia, and discussions with many other organizations worldwide. Historically it has proved difficult to provide sustainable micro- financial services to remote rural clients. As formal financial institutions begin to look seriously at this market, the microfinance industry faces significant challenges in maturing and scaling to sustainability. We will look at three of the major tasks faced by rural microfinance service providers today - 1) the exchange of information with remote clients, 2) management and processing of data at the institutional level and 3) the collection and delivery of money to remote rural areas. Each of these has been a difficult problem to solve for microfinance institutions worldwide, and may offer opportunities for information technology-based solutions. For each of these 'gaps' we will look at current best practices, examine the role information technology has (or has not) played in overcoming these obstacles, and discuss promising future directions. In this context, we will discuss the use of handheld technologies for rural data collection, experiences in the implementation of MIS systems at the institutional level and current strategies for introducing electronic banking to remote rural areas. For each of these, we will look at the results obtained thus far and the potential ramifications for the long-term growth and sustainability of the sector.
Cell Phone Based Microcredit Risk Assessment using Fuzzy Clustering
One of the key issue in microfinance is credit risk assessment. In this paper, exploiting fuzzy symbolic clustering, we have developed a fast turn around time microcredit risk scoring system. From field studies we identified a large number of parameters for credit risk assessment; most of them were subjective and thus our preference for fuzzy symbolic approach. We have proposed two cell phone based models to execute the developed microcredit risk assessment scheme. Experimental results are presented to validate our approach.
Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) - A Design Challenge?
In this paper, we make the case that ICT projects in the developed and developing world often lead to partial or total failures due to the incomplete assessment of the problem being solved and the metrics used to evaluate solutions. While in the developed world the success of ICT solutions are often determined by the market, with available infrastructure and market mechanisms, in the developing world this ecosystem does not exist thus requiring an understanding of the ecosystem in which ICT solutions are to be applied. Using literature from the design space, and experiences in ICT for development, we elaborate the dimensions of design such as incorporation of stakeholders, incentive structures, and design participation that are critical to successful deployment. We examine some successes and failures in product/solution development in the ICT area to identify the dimensions of good design incorporated by these products and services. With the perspective that ICT for sustainable development issues are ill-structured and 'wicked problems' that have to incorporate all the defined dimensions of design, we propose a model of product and service identification and development that is based on insights from asynchronous computational agent problem solving. We claim that new methods such as the one proposed need to be identified, developed and tested for their effectiveness in the development of products and services that satisfy the needs of human development.
Designing Wireless Sensor Networks as a Shared Resource for Sustainable Development
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a relatively new and rapidly developing technology; they have a wide range of applications including environmental monitoring, agriculture, and public health. Shared technology is a common usage model for technology adoption in developing countries. WSNs have great potential to be utilized as a shared resource due to their on-board processing and ad-hoc networking capabilities, however their deployment as a shared resource requires that the technical community first address several challenges. The main challenges include enabling sensor portability - the frequent movement of sensors within and between deployments, and rapidly deployable systems - systems that are quick and simple to deploy. We first discuss the feasibility of using sensor net- works as a shared resource, and then describe our research in addressing the various technical challenges that arise in enabling such sensor portability and rapid deployment. We also outline our experiences in developing and deploying water quality monitoring wireless sensor networks in Bangladesh and California.
The Global Diffusion Patterns of Successive Technology Generations: Modeling Analog and Digital Wireless Phone Growth
IT is a proven driver of economic growth and social development. Recent large-scale adoption of digital wireless phones among developed and developing countries has driven the expectation that high penetration will eventually pay off in economic returns and social benefits. We examine growth models to discover diffusion patterns of analog and digital wireless phones in the global context. We ask: What models might characterize diffusion growth for analog and digital wireless phones? Do developed and developing countries experience different growth patterns? Do analog and digital technologies follow different diffusion patterns? We use a matched sub-sample of twenty countries, with an equal share of developed countries and other less well-developed countries. We fitted internal, external and mixed influence diffusion models, models that allow asymmetric diffusion patterns around an inflection point for growth, and also models with a flexible inflection point for growth. The results provide a rich source of insights on wireless phone diffusion across its two key technological generations.
Bayesian Networks: An Exploratory Tool for Understanding ICT Adoption
Understanding technology adoption in emerging regions is challenging given the complex interrelations among socioeconomic factors that affect it directly and indirectly. The issue of impact assessment of technology adoption projects, especially the kind implemented in areas where prior technology has been very limited, is highly problematic and open to many methodological difficulties. Ethnographic evaluations have provided insight into the quality of interactions and into conceptions of technology and its adoption, whereas some quantitative analysis has been useful for high-level abstraction. In this paper, we examine the use of Bayesian networks as tools that can be used in revealing the structure of the relationships between demographic, social, and economic factors, and penetration for various technologies. Our hypothesis is that technology adoption cases in emerging regions display unique aggregated characteristics that make Bayesian network-based analysis a useful starting point in defining relationships between variables in project analysis. We compare the usability of Bayesian networks in analyzing two data sets: (1) a detailed survey focusing on 500 respondents across 14 favelas in Rio de Janeiro; and (2) a comprehensive survey of 998 users of the Akshaya tele-kiosk initiative in Kerala, India. Our illustrations show how Bayesian networks can be useful as statistical analysis tools that reveal new hypotheses, suggest unintended correlations in data, and confirm standing hypotheses.
Use of ICTs for Encouraging Participative Development: A Critique of the Indian Experiment
The present fascination of governments with use of ICTs for propelling development has not led to an improvement in the quality of life of a significant number of people. It becomes important to understand the conception of development that gets invoked in the design of such interventions. In this paper, we look at historical trajectories guiding the policy space to gain insights into the current imperatives motivating ICT usage. Justification for using ICTs has often been attributed to its inherent potential for enabling beneficiary participation. However, not many project designs, especially those in India, reflect such a motivation. We try to investigate whether the ICT policy of the Indian government attempts to encourage participatory development with specific reference to the relations between the governments at the centre and the provinces.
Policies for Universal Access to Telecommunications in Rural Areas of Developing Countries - An Institutional Economics Approach
A critical element of most national telecom policy objectives in developing countries is advancing universal access. Due to specific characteristics, rural areas in developing countries are of the most challenging regions. It is widely recognized that there are limits to how well the market can or will function in extending service in these areas. Therefore telecom policy has to intervene in the market to ensure the provision of telecommunications. This paper examines some frequently implemented measures for providing universal access in rural areas: universal access obligations and universal access funds in conjunction with minimum-subsidy competitive auctions. Despite experiencing that results and satisfaction with them are far from uniform across countries, there is no systematic theoretical analysis of relative efficiency and effectiveness of these measures. This article addresses this lack by applying a principal agent model to explore the incentive schemes of the announced mechanisms. This is done by taking into account the impact of economic, institutional and governance characteristics of developing countries. This paper carves out relative advantages of implementing one or another measure depending on the features of existing institutional frameworks. It is shown that successful measures in one institutional setting may be only second best in another. Critical characteristics are high shadow cost of public funds, carrot regulation incentive of output based subsidies, financial and human capacity constraints of regulators and the number of market contacts between regulator and operators. Theoretical analysis is illustrated by some actual universal access experiences in Peru, Bolivia and Uganda.
Rural Telephony: A Socio-Economic Case Study
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has the potential to bring in development to rural areas in the third world. Any deployment of technology however should be backed by a positive economic activity to be sustainable. This paper reports on experience with the economics, as well as the social aspects of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) as a service. In Jan 2003, we established a WiFi link from a site with wired Internet connection to a remote village site. On learning the demand for a telephone facility at the village, we setup a VoIP service. The setup has been running with reasonable success since then. We have collected a wide variety of statistics on the usage of the service. Although we used the relatively low-cost WiFi technology, the expenses have been high. The capital expense is dominated by antenna tower (40m: U.S.$6,600). The WiFi equipment and the solar power system added significantly to the cost too (about U.S. $3,100). The revenue generated from the phone calls has averaged at about $52/month. Hence this service alone may not be sufficient, and other targeted services are necessary to sustain ICT in rural villages. However, on the positive side we think that telephony facility can attract potential ICT users to the setup since people can relate to the service immediately (unlike say, web browsing).
MorfWeb: A New Way of Living the any Web Access
As Internet is being established the dominating communication platform between applications and final users, Web accessibility is becoming more and more important in the information retrieval and services delivery. This paper presents the limitations of the Web standard WCAG and of two interpretations of it in delivering Web resources to users with disabilities. First, an evaluation of these standards underlines their poor contribution to satisfy the goals of users with disabilities, and then, a proposal of simple architectural steps for the design of a website is made based on accessibility as well as usability criteria. This article studies the typical usage scenarios for such users within the Web site of an association with humanistic scopes, and proposes separate interfaces of a polymorphic application that each one of them takes under consideration the physical difficulties a users group may have, its goals and expectations. Finally, various existing tools are presented evaluating their capability to implement web interfaces following the proposed design model.
Kiosk Usage Measurement using a Software Logging Tool
Rural PC kiosks have become prominent recently as a way to impact socio-economic development through computing technology. Despite the significant backing these projects receive from governments and other large organizations, there are very few rigorous studies which measure their actual impact and utility. We have developed and deployed a software PC logging tool that allows us to gain exact quantitative insight into the usage statistics of kiosks on which the tool is installed. In field trials in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, India, we collected over 120 days of software tool logging data from 13 separate kiosks, while we also questioned the kiosk operators during the same period. We show some evidence that the software based logging tool complements the existing survey based and other ethnographic approaches for data collection. We also show that the tool does a better job in gathering certain usage statistics as compared to questioning the kiosk operator.
ICT Strategies for Gender Empowerment: Actionable Approaches and Recommendations
Information and Communications Technologies are generally regarded as new tools that can serve as effective agents of positive economic, social and political change in developing regions. However, the tendency to see these technologies as universally applicable can lead to the unintended reinforcement of male-dominated power structures and the expansion, rather then the narrowing, of traditional gender inequalities that further isolates girls and women. ICT Stakeholders must recognize that they cannot close the digital divide without alleviating the gendered digital divide. Until there is equal access and opportunity for girls and women in ICT programs and policies there will be no equity. This paper tracks the short history of initiatives aimed at empowering women through ICTs and highlights areas of needed research and actionable methods for bringing and keeping gender at the forefront of the ICT for Development agenda.
Impact of the Insertion of Modern Information and Communication Technologies in Brazilian Rural Communities
Information and communication technologies have the potential to overcome age-old barriers of space, time, class, and custom to integrate poor, isolated and disenfranchised rural populations into the mainstream of the larger society. This article describes Gems of the Earth, a rural community telecenter project currently in development in a poor, but once prosperous, region of Brazil. The study analyzes the impact of the telecenters on the lives of these communities. Preliminary results point to the creation of new habits and customs, with initial signs of a return to sustainable development.
A Fragile Link: Disaster Relief, ICTs and Development
When disasters strike and aid agencies pour in to help the survivors they are increasingly making use of advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs). For remote areas of developing countries, this use of ICTs may be the community’s first exposure to these technologies. And while the role of these ICTs is primarily linked to disaster response and recovery, in certain situations they can be transitioned for use in development programs. This paper discusses the crucial factors in design and deployment of relief ICTs that are likely to influence their ultimate use as tools for development. Derived from cases developed through secondary data, the factors are broken into those related to communication technology transfer and those related to information technology transfer. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.
