Title: Avoiding the Digital Divide Hype in Using Mobile Phones for Development
Author: Lindsay Poirier
Source: ICTWorks
Publisher: Inveneo
Date (published): 27/12/2011
Date (accessed): 03/01/2012
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"To all of you digital divide warriors out there – nice work. With over 483 million mobile phone subscriptions in low-income countries - an estimated 44.9% penetration rate, few will deny the success of your efforts to expand mobile technology in the developing world.

Rapid mobile growth rates further exhibit success in dissemination, and stats such as, “There are more mobile phones than toilets in India,“ and “There are more mobile phones than light bulbs in Uganda,” make us smile and feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

While it’s true that, in most cases, these numbers exhibit stimulation in local economies, there are some fuzzy lines when it comes to determining what these numbers mean in terms of mobile phone access and development. The data shows that mobile technology is expanding, but does this necessarily mean that access to technology is coinciding with the expansion?
..."

Title: Technology Is Not the Answer
Author: Kentaro Toyama
Source: The Atlantic
Date (published): 28/03/2011
Date (accessed): 01/04/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Technology is not the answer.

That's the conclusion I came to after five years in India trying to find ways to apply electronic technologies to international development. I was the co-founder and assistant director of Microsoft Research India, a Bangalore computer-science lab, where one of our objectives was to research ways in which information and communication technologies could support the socio-economic development of poor communities, both rural and urban...

In one of our early projects, we worked with a rural sugarcane cooperative a few hours outside of Mumbai. They had a network of village personal computers that allowed the cooperative to report sales results to farmers. To reduce costs, we experimented with a mobile-phone-based system that replaced some of the PCs. Our system was faster, cheaper and better liked by farmers, but when it came time to expand the pilot, we were stymied by internal political dysfunction at the cooperative.

In several projects to design educational technology for schools, we found that teacher and administrator attitudes were the real keys to success. Then, when we connected low-income slum residents with potential employers, limited education and training posed critical barriers. And again, when we used gadgets for microfinance operations, a capable institutional ally was indispensable.

Our successes were due more to effective partners, and less to our technology.

In project after project, the lesson was the same: information technology amplified the intent and capacity of human and institutional stakeholders, but it didn't substitute for their deficiencies. If we collaborated with a self-confident community or a competent non-profit, things went well. But, if we worked with a corrupt organization or an indifferent group, no amount of well-designed technology was helpful. Ironically, although we looked to technology to attain large-scale impact into places where circumstances were most dire, technology by itself was unable to improve situations where well-intentioned competence was absent. What mattered most was individual and institutional intent and capacity"

Title: ICT, Development, and Poverty Reduction: Five Emerging Stories
Authors:Randy Spence, Matthew L. Smith
Pages: 7 pp.
Source:Information Technologies & International Development; Vol 6, Special Edition 2010 (Harvard Forum II Essays)
Publisher:USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
Date (published):18/11/2010
Date (accessed):19/11/2010
Type of information:peer-reviewed article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
„It is worth underlining that this article is mostly about mobile phone access and use, as this is the dominant story of the last decade for people in the bottom or base of the pyramid. This is not to deny the importance of broadband, Internet connection, or computers and devices with computing power much greater than that of mobiles. Initiatives in telecenter development and “one laptop per child,” for example, are important in bringing more complex services to poor people, and have had mixed success and reviews. Unlike mobile phone penetration, these technologies have been driven more by public and nongovernmental organizations than by market supply and demand. What is clear is the importance of increasing mobile phone access and mobile-based services prior to the proliferation of broadband in the BoP, no matter which forms that eventually takes.”

Title: Can Technology End Poverty?
Author:Kentaro Toyama
Source:Boston Review
Date (published):November/December 2010
Date (accessed):09/11/2010
Type of information:article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
„...Technology—no matter how well designed—is only a magnifier of human intent and capacity. It is not a substitute.
...
The myth of scale is the religion of telecenter proponents, who believe that bringing the Internet into villages is enough to transform them.
...
When a village has ready access to a PC, the dominant use is by young men playing games, watching movies, or consuming adult content.
...
My point is not that technology is useless. To the extent that we are willing and able to put technology to positive ends, it has a positive effect. For example, Digital Green (DG), one of the most successful ICT4D projects I oversaw while at Microsoft Research, promotes the use of locally recorded how-to videos to teach smallholder farmers more productive practices. When it comes to persuading farmers to adopt good practices, DG is ten times more cost-effective than classical agriculture extension without technology.
But the value of a technology remains contingent on the motivations and abilities of organizations applying it—villagers must be organized, content must be produced, and instructors must be trained. The limiting factor in spreading DG’s impact is not how many camcorders its organizers can purchase or how many videos they can shoot, but how many groups are performing good agriculture extension in the first place. Where such organizations are few, building institutional capacity is the more difficult, but necessary, condition for DG’s technology to have value. In other words, disseminating technology is easy; nurturing human capacity and human institutions that put it to good use is the crux."

This is a special issue of Boston Review dedicated to ICT4D:
New Democracy Forum: Can Technology End Poverty?

Can Technology End Poverty?
Kentaro Toyama
Many development experts promote information and communication technology (ICT) as a way to relieve global poverty. They should pay more attention to the human beings who use it.

Nicholas Negroponte
You don’t have to take my word for it: laptops work.
(Tues., Nov. 9)

Dean Karlan
We should carefully evaluate technological interventions and only apply what works.
(Wed., Nov. 10)

Archon Fung
We can turn the socioeconomic biases of technology to our advantage.
(Wed., Nov. 10)

Evgeny Morozov
Successfully enacting new ICT strategies requires a philosophical shift toward local, small-scale problems.
(Thur., Nov. 11)

Ignacio Mas
There is no silver bullet for development, but certain ICT projects have shown unique promise. (Mon., Nov. 15)

Nathan Eagle
Mobile phones are not just for talking; they are also tools for work and compensation.
(Mon., Nov. 15)

Jenny C. Aker
We should focus on ICT’s impact on well-being in general.
(Tues., Nov. 16)

Christine Zhenwei Qiang
Demanding that technology transform human behavior is too much to ask.
(Tues., Nov. 16)

Kentaro Toyama responds
For the world’s poorest countries, human capital, not technology, should come first.
(Wed., Nov. 17)

via https://twitter.com/#!/pablarradar

Title: Philippine precision farming gets a mobile upgrade
Author: Joel D. Adriano
Source: SciDev.Net
Date (published): 21/07/2010
Date (accessed): 03/08/2010
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Rice farmers in the Philippines will be able to dial a specialised service on their mobile phones to obtain tailored advice on fertiliser use when they plant their crops in September.

Scientists at the Philippine-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), officials of the Philippine Department of Agriculture, and local private telecommunications firm Globe, have joined together to create the service that will enable poor farmers to tap into sophisticated 'precision agriculture' techniques commonly used in developed countries. These include technologies such as remote sensing, not often available to Asian farmers

Title: UID to bring banking to the poor
Author: Karen Leigh
Source: livemint.com
Publisher: HT Media
Date (published): 25/04/2010
Date (accessed): 03/05/2010
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
New Delhi: India’s plan to offer unique identity (UID) cards to all citizens will bring a range of banking services within reach of millions of poor who currently cannot even open a bank account, says a report released on Friday by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is executing the project.

Facilities such as microfinance are beyond the reach of many poor people in both towns and villages who do not have documentary proof of their identity.

Title: Shower of Aid Brings Flood of Progress
Author: Jeffrey Gettleman
Source: NYTimes.com
Publisher: The New York Times Company
Date (published): 08/03/2010
Date (accessed): 09/03/2010
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Sauri, Kenya — In the past five years, life in this bushy little patch of western Kenya has improved dramatically... Sauri was the first of what are now more than 80 Millennium Villages across Africa, a showcase project that was the dream child of Jeffrey D. Sachs, the Harvard-trained, Columbia University economist...His intent was to show that tightly focused, technology-based and relatively straightforward programs on a number of fronts simultaneously — health care, education, job training — could rapidly lift people out of poverty.

Title: Dispatch from Planet of the Apps: a brave new world for mobile money?
Author: Jim Rosenberg
Publisher: CGAP: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor
Date (published): 17/02/2010
Date (accessed): 18/02/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
...This week at the Mobile World Congress has felt a bit like a live-action version of “Planet of the Apes,” with a few differences. Instead of apes, we have apps. The species rising to power goes by the ticker symbols of GOOG (Google), YHOO (Yahoo!), APPL (Apple)...It is true that the Planet of the Apps only is a reality for the markets where internet enabled phones are available - and for the people who can afford them. Though Vodafone’s just rolled out a new $15 handset. As we heard from Stephen Rasmussen earlier this week, such handsets are getting cheaper, more quickly, meaning internet phones will penetrate more deeply into the markets where the world’s unbanked need access to appropriate financial services.

Title: Mobile technology, gender and development in Africa, India and Bangladesh
Author: Jukka Jouhki
Source: An Anthropologist Goes Techno blog
Date (published): 07/02/2009
Date (accessed): 07/12/2009
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
One problem shared by the poor in all developing countries is lack of affordable access to relevant information and knowledge services. There is widespread consensus that information and communication technologies (ICTs) present the best solution to this problem, with mobile phones showing particular promise. Mobile phones are more affordable than computers, require less infrastructure, do not require the user to have much technological knowledge or even to be able to read and write, and are easy to carry from place to place. They lend themselves to flexible usage (text, voice and two-way communication), do not require special training, and the costs of connectivity are relatively low...Yet the introduction of new technologies does not itself automatically lead to economic growth and increased well-being. Privatization of teleservices has created the institutional problem of how states, service providers and NGOs can co-operate to provide developmental applications in affordable ways...To maximize the potential benefits of mobile technology solutions, closer attention must be paid to poverty’s dynamics, causes, and consequences. Poverty does not result merely from lack of connectedness to the information society, it is also a result of market restrictions, repressive governments, social injustice, and human exploitation. One of the most serious and far-reaching barriers to the eradication of poverty is gender inequality..."
(via http://twitter.com/JukkaJ )

Title: Connected Agriculture Developing Smart, Connected Rural Communities
Author: Bharat Popat, Contributors: James Macauley, Gustavo Menendez-Bernales
Pages: 12 pp.
Publisher: Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG)
Date (published): 17/07/2009
Date (accessed): 27/11/2009
Type of information: research paper
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
To escape poverty, smallholder farmers need to enhance their skills and knowledge, and the entire smallholder-dominant value chain needs to become more competitive. The combined effect of these two factors can improve agricultural productivity and raise the incomes of rural dwellers.
The Internet can play a pivotal role by providing a cost-effective way to deliver information services to a large, dispersed population. Internet technology can deliver knowledge to farmers and planning tools to agribusinesses, and connects the various players in the value chain so they can conduct commerce more efficiently.
Despite the challenges of providing and adopting information and communications technology (ICT), use of the Internet for rural development is about to reach an inflection point. Nations that lead in the deployment and use of Internet technology for agriculture will gain an economic and social advantage.

(via http://twitter.com/e_agriculture and www.e-agriculture.org/ )