Information and Communication
Technologies and Large-scale
Poverty Reduction:Lessons from Asia, Africa,
Latin America and the Caribbean
Kitty Warnock; Ravi Wickremasinghe (2005)
This SDC/Panos publication aims to contribute to the global knowledge sharing and learning process and to increase impact and synergies in ICT development and poverty reduction.
The publication highlights that the enabling role of ICT in fighting poverty, especially in national Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) development and implementation is manifold, especially through:
increasing the efficiency of efforts, reaching more people
increasing effectiveness in terms of process, ownership, participation, more interactive communication and better service delivery in education, health etc.
improving productivity and income of micro, small and medium enterprises through better access to markets and information, ICT enhanced micro finance programmes etc.
creating jobs and income through ICT as a sector – producing hardware, software and other components of the ICT infrastructure.
Over the past decade, lessons learned from ICT experience can be summarised around the following themes:
Prioritising poverty reduction
Creating an enabling ICTs policy environment:
Appropriate technology choices
Local Content development and the role of the media
Mobilisation of financial resources and the role of micro credit
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