Costs and Benefits of ICTs for Direct Poverty Alleviation

Abstract

"ICTs (Information and Communications Technologies) are powerful tools for empowerment and income generation in LDCs (Less Developed Countries). The cost effectiveness of different ICTs does vary in an LDC setting, however. This paper will review the characteristics of the ‘average' poor person in developing countries to suggest the potential efficacy of radio, telephony and the Internet as tools of direct poverty alleviation...

"The paper will attempt to quantify the significance of barriers to the use of various ICTs, and some of the costs and benefits of provision. Having discussed these issues, the paper concludes with policy recommendations."

Introduction

"...This paper argues that whilst there is a continued (perhaps growing) role for donors to improve access to a range of ICTs in developing countries, that role probably should not extend to the widespread provision of Internet access - at least in the poorer regions of the least developed countries. The nature of extreme poverty in LDCs - very low incomes, subsistence and unskilled wage labor as the dominant income source, food as the dominant consumption good, low education and high illiteracy, minority language group status and rural location - points to an unsustainably high cost and relatively low benefit of direct Internet service provision through telecentres to the very poor. This might suggest that the push for universal Internet access as a tool for poverty relief is misplaced.

"Instead, the paper argues that access programs focused on the telephone and radio might have a higher benefit-cost ratio and lower overall cost as alternatives to andintermediaries for the Internet in poverty alleviation programs."

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