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ICT and Society

ICTs and Poverty Reduction

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The Poor

• Majority of the poor in the world are found in the developing countries:

• Majority live in South Asia, where by 2003: – more than a third of the population lacked access to sanitation, – one quarter suffered hunger, – one fifth of the children were out of primary school, – almost 10% of children were dying before age five,

• Sub-Saharan Africa where by 2003:– half of the population lived in extreme poverty, – one third suffered from hunger, – one sixth of the children died before age five, – 57% primary enrolment and – only a third of those enrolled finishing primary school) (UNDP,

2003).

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• Other regions, especially Latin America and the Caribbean, are fairing much better but still some of their populations are poor (Latin America and the Caribbean have human development indicators approaching levels in rich countries, while East Asia and the pacific has only 11% of the population suffering from hunger).

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• In regions suffering from poverty, the incidence of poverty is not uniform across all the groups; some groups suffer more deprivation than others:

• there seems to be a gender angle to poverty with the proportion of the poor being higher among the women than men – In poor households women shoulder more workload than the men,– are less educated, and – have less access to remunerative activities. – They face all manner of cultural, social, legal, and economic

obstacles that men – even poor men – do not. – Also, research data on health, nutrition, education and labour

participation show that women are severely disadvantaged .

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• People discriminated at because of their social position at the local, regional or national level – e.g. marginalized castes; ethnic, racial or religious groups;

refugees; indigenous people; nomads and pastoralists; and migrants

• There also those who experience discrimination within the household, – e.g. female children, children in households with many children,

daughters-in-law,

• those with long-term or severe health problems and highly challenging disabilities and impairments.

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• Next are the people living in remote rural areas (especially where arable land is scarce, the agricultural productivity is low and droughts, floods and environmental degradation is common), urban ghettos, and regions where prolonged violent conflict and insecurity have occurred.

• There are also those experiencing deprivation because of their stage in life, e.g. older people, children and widows.

• There is also a tendency to have large households, households with no fit male adult (especially if the women have small children to care of or are culturally discouraged from taking paid employment) being poor.

• Other groups include the landless or those who have land but without ownership rights, those who may own land that is unproductive and lies outside irrigated areas, or those with access to land that is owned by the community or is common property (World Bank, 1990; Narayan and Nyamwaya, 1996; UNDP, 1997; UNDP 1990; Hulme and Shepherd, 2003).

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Poverty• “Poverty has multiple and complex causes.

– The poor are not just deprived of basic resources. They lack access to information that is vital to their lives and livelihoods: information about market prices for the goods they produce, about health, about the structure and services of public institutions, and about their rights. They lack political visibility and voice in the institutions and power relations that shape their lives. They lack access to knowledge, education and skills development that could improve their livelihoods. They often lack access to markets and institutions, both governmental and societal, that could provide them with needed resources and services. They lack access to, and information about, income earning opportunities.” (Marker, McNamara and Wallace, 2002 for DFID)

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• From the above, it is clear that poverty is not just about income or consumption; it has many dimensions. According to the 1997 Human Development Report, – “…poverty means that opportunities and choices most

basic to human development are denied – to lead a long, healthy, creative life and to enjoy a decent standard of living, freedom, dignity, self-respect and the respect of others” (UNDP, 1997).

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• This report gives a summary of the three common perspectives of poverty: – Income Perspective: A person is poor if, and only if, her income

level is below the defined poverty line. An example is the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target which seeks to half the number of the people in the world below the poverty line (the poverty line is defined as living on less than US $ 1.0 a day)

– Basic Needs Perspective: Poverty is deprivation of material requirements for minimally acceptable fulfillment of human needs, including food, basic health, education, and other essential services.

– Capability Perspective: poverty represents the absence of some basic capabilities to function - a person lacking the opportunity to achieve some minimally acceptable levels of these functionings (‘beings’ and ‘doings’).

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Poverty is Multidimensional • Poverty has many dimensions and not just income or commodity as

the emphasis has tended to be in the past• Clark and Hulme (2005) point out the breadth, depth and time

dimensions of poverty. • The breadth of poverty recognizes that poverty is ‘multi-dimensional

and is composed of a range of different capability, rights or need deprivations such as illiteracy, poor health, and physical insecurity, which go well beyond the traditional focus on income, consumption and resources’.

• Depth on the other hand recognizes that poverty in a particular dimension (not necessarily income) has depth and may be far more serious in one case than another. Depth may incorporate headcounts (the number or proportion of people below the poverty line) and a measure of inequality among the poor.

• The time dimension has to do with the duration of poverty (Clark and Hulme, 2005:3 ).

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Poverty is Multidimensional

• Clark and Qizilbash (2005) empirically identified dimensions of poverty (or well-being) that the poor considered core in three poor neighborhoods in South Africa (one township and two rural areas).

• They then established where these ordinary South Africans draw the line between the poor and the non-poor for each of the dimensions.

• They established twelve dimensions as core namely: clean water, health, access to health care, housing, jobs, education, freedom, nutrition, safety, self worth and respect, survival and religion.

• Similarly, Krishna (2005) working in three different states in India, (Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan) established the dimensions that the poor in those states considered important and also established the cut-off for one to be considered poor.

• Though the dimension were similar in the three states (Food, Shelter, ability to pay debt, clothing, sending children to school, renting a small track of land to farm as a share cropper,) different states gave different relative importance of the dimensions and the threshold for one to be considered poor.

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Poverty Reduction • Reasons for Descending into Poverty

– Ill health and high healthcare expenses, Customary expenses on marriage and death feasts. (Empirical Evidence India – Krishnan)

– Ill health and health-related expenses, was heavy funeral expenses, large family size and finally small holdings, together with uneconomic subdivision of land (Empirical Evidence Western Kenya).

– Intergenerational reason where people ‘inherited’ poverty from poor parents because the poor parents could not take them to school, nor leave any land as an inheritance (those who do leave very little land of poor quality),

– Shocks (Natural (climatic) shocks like drought, famine, flooding, cyclones, desertification, reduced rainfall, poor soil quality, crop/livestock shock where crops can fails say due to natural shocks or livestock could be wiped out by disease or drought, armed conflict, civil war, conditions of lawlessness in failed states and dictatorships, etc. Other shocks that can make people descend into poverty include economic shocks (e.g. price depreciation, market failure, lack of markets, depressed economy, and negative growth). Narayan and Nyamwaya (1996)

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Poverty Reduction • Trends (include include population trends, resource trends (including

conflict), national/international economic trends (e.g. declining prices of primary goods, trade barriers to certain regions, subsidy by countries leading to very low prices), trends in governance (including politics), and technological trends.

• Seasonality (includes includes seasonality of prices, of production, of health, and of employment opportunities. (DFID, ).

• Assets ( e.g. possession of or access to liquid assets (disposable items like jewelry, livestock or other assets that people can draw upon from social networks or the public purse) are important if one is to avoid descending into poverty in the event of shocks, trends and seasonality.

• Many poor countries do not have effective public social protection arrangements and this puts a premium on social networks and private liquid assets (Hulme and Shepherd, 2003).

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Different Approaches to Poverty Reduction

• Growth• Pro-poor Growth• Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to Poverty Reduction

– The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) to poverty reduction is a people-centered approach to poverty reduction, where a livelihood ‘comprises the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required for a means of living.

– A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future, while not undermining the natural resource base’ (DFID, 1999).

– DFID goes on to say that ‘adopting the sustainable livelihoods approach provides a way to improve the identification, appraisal, implementation and evaluation of development programs so that they better address the priorities of poor people, both directly and at a policy level’.

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Different Approaches to Poverty Reduction

• Governance and Human Rights Approach– The rights based approach to development and

poverty reduction emphasizes the basic right of the individual to lead a decent life in dignity.

– In this sense, development is about the fulfillment of entitlements and rights.

• Both the rights-based and the sustainable livelihood approach are bottom-up strategies and insist on participation and local ownership.

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Poverty Reduction Approaches of International Development

Organizations• The World Bank Development Reprot, 2000 Recommends:

– Empowerment, Opportunity and Security• The 1997 Human Development Report (HDR) of the UNDP

(UNDP, 1997) proposed a poverty reduction strategy with six priorities for action.

– Empowering women and men – and to ensure their participation in decisions that affect their lives and enable them to build their strengths and assets (economic, social, political, environmental and personal).

– Gender equality for empowering women. – Pro-poor growth in all countries – and faster growth in the 100 or so

developing and transition countries where growth has been falling. – Carefully managing globalization with more concern for global equity. – An enabling environment, [provided by the state], for broad-based

political support and alliances for pro-poor policies and markets. – Special international support for special situations – to reduce the

poorest countries’ debt faster, to increase their share of aid, and to open agricultural, markets for their exports.

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Poverty Reduction Approaches of International Development

Organizations

• Millennium Development Goals and Poverty Reduction

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ICTs for Poverty Reduction: State of the Art Review

• Poverty Reduction as Access to Information.– Behind this premise is the implicit believe that the poor are poor

because of lack of information. – The arguments goes something like 'the poor lack information –

information about market prices for their produce, information about health, information about agricultural best practices, information about weather, information about income-earning opportunities, information about structures and services of public institutions, information about their rights, etc'.

– The claim is that information and knowledge are critical components of poverty alleviation strategies, and that poverty is viewed as being deprived of the information needed to participate in the wider society at the local, national and global level.

– Others would state that poor people need among other things affordable access to information that is vital to their livelihoods.

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– Still others would claim that a knowledge gap is an important determinant of persistent poverty and that developed countries already possess the knowledge required to assure a universally adequate standard of living. This would be buttressed by seeking polices that encourage greater information flows both within and between countries and that one of the best ways to achieve this greater interaction is through the use of ICTs (DFID, 2002; Gerster and Zimmerman, 2003; APDIP, 2005, UNDP-APDIP, 2004; SDC and GKP, 2004; GKP, 2005).

– The implication therefore is that since the poor are poor because of the lack of information, then the way to tackle poverty is to avail them the deprived information, and since ICTs capture, process, store and disseminate information, they are the logical answer to the problem of the poor.

– The caveat of course is that the information only needs to be timely, relevant, in the required form and in the language that the poor community understands (GKP, 2005).

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• This argument then goes further to claim that the poor also produce information which at time is even more important than that coming from outside since the people from the poor community are likely to mistrust outside information and trust locally produced information.

• Further, since outside-sourced information may not be relevant, ICTs can be used to collate it and disseminate it in the local community. Because any information from outside even if needed may not be in the desired form or language, and the poor may not have the needed skills (Information literacy, IT) to access and use it, if not downright illiterate, we can get an intermediary that can access the information from outside, separate the relevant, format it and use ICTs to disseminate it to the locals ( ).

• Poverty reduction strategy is then seen to be around ensuring that information gets to the poor.

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• Strategies will thereafter be specified depending on the media that is most pervasive in the community. Other strategies would include ensuring that infrastructure is in place for information dissemination and come up with strategies through which there would be partnership between the government, private sector and the donor community to facilitate this.

• This at times would extend to the recommendation for ensuring every village is connected say to the Internet, community radio, etc. ( ). Issues of relevance of the information, ensuring there is locally relevant content on the Internet in the language of the community then come in.

• Other issues would include ICT awareness creation, training, establishment of community information centres or telecentres, etc. ( ). Extensions to this would move on to ways that the private sector could be brought in to fund expansion of infrastructure, ways of giving the private sector incentives for this, etc.

• The result would be many initiatives whose primary role would be to give the poor community access to information.

• This then would determine the initiatives to be funded or supported and the policies of some donors and governments.

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• Poverty Reduction as Addressing the Communication Needs of the Poor. – The argument here is that communication is a basic

human need and the poor are no exception. – Further, it has been shown that the poor are willing to

pay a very high percentage of their daily earnings to communicate.

– An example is given of the rapid expansion of mobile telephony in Sub-Saharan Africa, including the poor rural areas, even though the cost of using the mobile phone has been very high (OECD-DAC, 2005).

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– It is also mentioned how that when the poor need to communicate, they will travel far distances to do it and where the communication infrastructure does not exist they will spend money and time to travel and get services which they could have gotten if the communication existed.

– Other needs would include the communication needs of their livelihoods.

– Examples are given of the benefits which accrue to the community when community workers get access to communication facilities, for example where health workers, government workers, agricultural extension workers getting to communicate with far off headquarters

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• Development agents working among the poor (NGOs, Civil society) need communication facilities to enable them expose the needs of the poor people and bring them to the national and international level, network among themselves nationally, regionally and globally in their advocacy work for the poor and to lobby governments and international organizations on behalf of the poor.

• Examples given include the way that NGOs and civil society from the South have been able to use the Internet to network with their counterparts from the North in the process influencing the policies and actions at the global stage on behalf of the poor ( ).

• Further, because poverty is multifaceted, we need a cooperative approach from stakeholders in all sectors of society to combat it.

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• These multidisciplinary actors of national governments (to enable policy and regulation), civil society (connections and grassroots), private sector (technical expertise, business acumen, product and market development), academia (research and dissemination) and networks (knowledge sharing, partnership building) international organizations (international treaties agreements), bilateral and multilateral donors (funding, policy formulation support, expertise) have important roles to play.

• When this multidisciplinary network collaboratively works together, they are able to come up with solutions (more effective and efficient approaches, polices, practices, resource allocations, services, institutions, legislations, etc.) that benefit the poor directly or indirectly. This will work to reduce poverty among the poor. ICTs are communication technologies and they hence they are the infrastructure of choice to facilitate this networking and collaborative working (GPK, 2005).

• In this way then ICTs are tools of poverty reduction. In light of the above, initiatives are designed for facilitating and enhancing this communication. The emphasis on universal access and infrastructure are included in this. The increasing importance of the Internet to facilitate poverty reduction is thus justified. These are some of the issues that are brought out how ICTs can enable poverty reduction.

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• ICTs are Tools of Poverty Reduction– This view brings out the importance of conceptualizing ICTs as a

means to an end, and not the end in themselves. – This is done to avoid situations where some have tended to look at

ICTs from a technological deterministic angle and so tend to overemphasize their importance far and above what in reality they are supposed to do, or look at them as a panacea for all kinds of problems.

– This is partly what happened in the early 1990s where because of the perceived value of ICTs for development, there was an overemphasis on bridging of the digital divide.

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– It is therefore argued that we should not look at ICTs as goals but as tools to reduce poverty.

– The argument further asserts that we should get the needs of the poor and use the ICTs to deal with them.

– Sometimes, when the needs are identified, there is a tendency to evaluate the information and communication aspects (of the needs), and then consider how ICTs can be used to provide the information or communication service to solve the need, or how ICT solutions or infrastructure can be used to meet the need.

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• Poverty Reduction approaches (with ICTs as Tools) – There is a tendency also in the literature to consider the different approaches to

poverty reduction (e.g. growth, pro-poor growth, rights and empowerment) and then consider how ICTs can be used as tools to address the identified processes. Recommendations are thereafter given how ICTs can be used. Other ways is to look at an approach and then give a pilot project that has utilized that approach with positive results and hence they are held up as ways how to reduce poverty ( ).

– The deliverable is a list of how to do it or best practices, applications, infrastructures or content. Other recommendations would be provisions, policies, practices by governments, private sector, donors, civil society, etc (Gester and Zimmerman, 2002; DAC, 2005).

– One omission here is that there is only a passing mention of the poor, if at all, and when it is done, they are interacted with through intermediaries like NGOs or the civil society.

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– The end result usually is a prescriptive list of best practices and policies. There is some cursory mention of the need to make the actual implementation bottom-up and participatory but with no details on how this should be done.

– These approaches give recommendations on best practices and policies but are thin on implementation, how the process is carried out and how the poor will be impacted and how they will benefit. There is need to address this in detail.

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