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ICT and Society

ICTs and Development

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Development • Does Development Exist?• Two ideas are central to the notion of

development. – One is the belief that development describes the

– political, economic and social condition of Western countries.

– The other one, is the assumption that any country which follows a set of policy recommendations that are thought to have led to the present condition of Western societies, will attain a condition similar to them.(Macamo E., 2005)

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Development

• The argument goes: Developing countries must commit themselves to human rights and to a free market economy, they must uphold the rule of law, be fair in their political processes, train their workforce, give education to the young, bring succour to the suffering poor, observe gender equality, the rights of minorities, etc

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Perspectives

• Modernization:– In the Modernization discourses of the 1950s and 1960s

communication scientists were arguing that the transfer of Western communication technologies such as newspapers, radio stations and televisions, would give an enormous and enduring burst to development in the South. Those technologies would lead southern countries onto a pathway to industrialization and modernization, where the ultimate goal was to become a westernized country (Nulens, 2003).

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Perspectives • As these modernization theories failed in the 1950s and 60s,

many began to criticize them. • The modernization theory, in its 1960s version had claimed that

the developing countries should imitate the successful model of the industrialized world, and the mass media were the vehicles for transferring western ideas to the South.

• The idea was that with the mass media, people in these developing countries could be influenced by manipulating their attitudes and behaviors, and once these traditional societies changed their attitudes to those of the western world, the development divide could be overcome. The mass media was therefore the instruments that could be used to do this since information and communication were seen as the missing link to development

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• Economic Development• The argument is that countries of the

industrialized North have a high Gross National Product (GNP) compared with the South.

• The GNPs of the developing countries would be computed and with them the standard of living.

• Development policies would then be designed to assist these developing countries attain the high GNP and hence ‘catch up’ with the North.

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• Development is thus viewed as the growth of the GNP, rise in personal incomes, industrialization, technological advance, Social Modernization

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Perspectives • In the notion and discourses of development

there is always an implicit message of “catch up” with the industrial north which is a desirable thing.

• Developing countries have played ‘catch up’ and their policies are thus formulated

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• Development as Freedom (Sen, A., 2001)• Process of expanding real freedoms that people enjoy• Viewing development in terms of expanding substantive

freedoms directs attention to the ends that make development important, rather than merely to some of the means that play a prominent part in the process

• Development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom: Poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or overactivity in repressive states

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• Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means

• Freedom refers to the processes that allows freedom of actions and decisions, and the actual opportunities that people have, given their personal and social circumstances

• Development is thus seen as the expansion of capabilities that people have to lead the kind of lives they value, and have reason to value

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Perspectives • Human Development• Human development is a process of enlarging people's

choices. In principle, these choice can be infinite and change over time. But at all levels of development, the three essential ones are for people to lead a long and healthy life, to acquire knowledge and to have access to resources needed for a decent standard of living.

• If these essential choices are not available, many other opportunities remain inaccessible.

• But human development does not end there. Additional choices, highly valued by many people, range from political, economic and social freedom to opportunities for being creative and productive, and enjoying personal self respect and guaranteed human rights.

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Perspectives

• Human development has two sides: the formation of human capabilities such as improved health, knowledge and skills - and the use people make of their acquired capabilities - for leisure, productive purposes or being active in cultural, social and political affairs. If the scales of human development do not finely balance the two sides, considerable human frustration may result.

• According to this concept of human development, income is clearly only one option that people would like to have, albeit an important one. But it is not the sum total of their lives. Development must, therefore, be more than just the expansion of income and wealth. Its focus must be people.

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Measures of Human Development • Human Development Reports, since the first in 1990, have published

the human development index (HDI) as a composite measure of human development.

• Since then three supplementary indices have been developed: the human poverty index (HPI), gender-related development index (GDI) and gender empowerment measure (GEM).

• The concept of human development, however, is much broader than the HDI and these supplementary indices. It is impossible to come up with a comprehensive measure—or even a comprehensive set of indicators—because many vital dimensions of human development, such as participation in the life of the community, are not readily quantified.

• While simple composite measures can draw attention to the issues quite effectively, these indices are no substitute for full treatment of the rich concerns of the human development perspective.

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Measures of Human Development• Human development index• The HDI measures the overall achievements in a

country in three basic dimensions of human development— longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living. It is measured by life expectancy, educational attainment (adult literacy and combined primary, secondary and tertiary enrolment) and adjusted income per capita in purchasing power parity (PPP) US dollars. The HDI is a summary, not a comprehensive measure of human development.

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Different Approaches to Poverty Reduction

• Human poverty index– While the HDI measures overall

progress in a country in achieving human development, the human poverty index (HPI) reflects the distribution of progress and measures the backlog of deprivations that still exists. The HPI measures deprivation in the same dimensions of basic human development as the HDI.

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Measures• HPI-1• The HPI-1 measures poverty in developing countries. It focuses on

deprivations in three dimensions: longevity, as measured by the probability at birth of not surviving to age 40; knowledge, as measured by the adult illiteracy rate; and overall economic provisioning, public and private, as measured by the percentage of people not using improved water sources and the percentage of children under five who are underweight.

• HPI-2• Because human deprivation varies with the social and economic

conditions of a community, a separate index, the HPI-2, has been devised to measure human poverty in selected OECD countries, drawing on the greater availability of data. The HPI-2 focuses on deprivation in the same three dimensions as the HPI-1 and one additional one, social exclusion. The indicators are the probability at birth of not surviving to age 60, the adult functional illiteracy rate, the percentage of people living below the income poverty line (with disposable household income less than 50% of the median) and the long-term unemployment rate (12 months or more).

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MeasuresGender-related development index• The gender-related development index (GDI) measures

achievements in the same dimensions and using the same indicators as the HDI, but captures inequalities in achievement between women and men. It is simply the HDI adjusted downward for gender inequality. The greater is the gender disparity in basic human development, the lower is a country’s GDI compared with its HDI.

Gender empowerment measure• The gender empowerment measure (GEM) reveals whether women

can take active part in economic and political life. It focuses on participation, measuring gender inequality in key areas of economic and political participation and decision-making. It tracks the percentages of women in parliament, among legislators, senior officials and managers and among professional and technical workers—and the gender disparity in earned income, reflecting economic independence. Differing from the GDI, it exposes inequality in opportunities in selected areas.

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ICT for Development (ICT4D - Claims• Telehealth• E-learning• System for Community Health personnel• System for accessing health information• System for Agricultural best practices• System for marketing information• E-commerce systems to enable poor rural populations

market their products• Knowledge for Development

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Some Donor Initiatives

• Infodev– http://www.infodev.org

• Development Gateway– http://www.developmentgateway.org/

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Information Gateway• Furthermore, ‘information gaps’ (knowledge about attributes) may also

widen within developing countries where ‘a few fortunate few surf the World Wide Web while others remain illiterate (World Bank. 1998, pp. 14).

• To tackle this lack of knowledge, the World Bank established the ‘Global Development Gateway’, which they call a ‘proactive policy that fosters network development in emerging economies’, with the key objective of using the internet ‘as a tool to reduce poverty and support sustainable development’ (World Bank, 2000, pp 3,5).

• The Development Gateway (a high-profile, high-budget $ 7 Million project (Aslam 2001) ), which according to the World Bank is the ‘premier web entry point on poverty and sustainable development’ is a database about aid agency projects, listings of organizations working on development, an online bookstore, edited selections of analysis and links on 130 policy issues, franchised Country Gateway websites, and sub-sites operated by other, approved, organizations and networks, Thompson, 2004.

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Discourses • A clear dichotomy between the developed and the developing world.

• The focus is on how to overcome this clear divide, through development.

• We see the responsibility for being ‘left behind’ largely accorded to the developing countries. Only those “with courage and willingness” are able “to make use of the iceberg” rather than crash into it.

• This theme runs throughout the ICT and development discourse – the responsibility for non-access to the information society is accorded to developing countries.

• Such claims do not take account of the complex global policy issues, of trade regulations that favour the developed countries and of the array of problems faced by many developing countries, which compete with ICT development for scarce resources.

• It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that rather than ICTs being the “most critical question facing the developing world” that for many countries feeding their population or dealing with HIV/AIDS is perhaps more critical.

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• The perspective represented assumes that ICTs are neutral tools for development, which is itself presented as an apolitical construct (see also Schech, 2002).

• There is however a tension within the ICT and development discourse between those who see ICTs as the development saviour and those who are more sceptical and who do attempt to draw attention to the politics within which a country’s development efforts are embedded

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Information Poor• Central to the claims that we now live in a global information society

is the social construction of a category of people known as ‘information-poor’. While there are technology divides internationally and within countries, focussing on the concept of ‘information-poverty’ as the new form of poverty in the information society creates a risk that the provision of ICTs is seen to combat other forms of poverty and oppression with deep structural roots. Instead, the lack of access to ICTs should be seen as an additional facet of being poor in today’s world.

• Further, assuming that people are ‘information-poor’ because they do not have access to the specific forms of information that are made available through ICTs, devalues the information and the knowledge that poor people do have. This has been a criticism of development approaches for the past two decades, and attempts to avoid devaluing local knowledge is a fundamental starting point of participatory approaches to development (Chambers, 1999), but it seems that within the ICT and development discourse this is not an issue

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– Information and Knowledge– Throughout the ICT and development discourse

information and knowledge (terms which are often used interchangeably) are commonly confounded with availability of technology.

– But we need to question whether lack of access to ICTs implies an information or knowledgeless context, or rather just the absence of certain forms of information.

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– We should recognise the existence of a digital-divide between those who have access to this particular technology and those who do not, but when this is extended unquestioningly to imply information or knowledge divides the problem of technological determinism takes hold.

– While ICTs may provide a means of accessing certain types of information that might be needed and might not be available, the concern is that we need to be careful not to overlook the information that is available, and may not require ICTs for dissemination, so that we can also make use of this valuable resource in development efforts.

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• In addition, exactly what is meant by the terms information and knowledge is seldom specified in the ICT and development texts showing a lack of a conceptualization of the contested nature of knowledge and of the existence of various knowledge systems and practices (see Marglin, 1990; Hobart, 1993; Heeks, 2002).

• Also important is the fact that information is generated in and for a specific context and this does not mean that it is relevant or needed in another context.

• Within the ICT and development discourse, the terms information and knowledge are sometimes used very broadly and other times quite specifically depending on the argument being made.

• It is most common for an economic definition of information and knowledge to be assumed although government information, health information, agricultural information etc. are also mentioned (for further examples see Queau, 2000; World Development Report, 1999; Report of the meeting of high-level panel of experts on ICT, 2000).

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