Information Society Watch

2006, Maximo Torero & Joachim von Braun.

This article talks about the new book published by Johns Hopkins University Press for IFPRI titled The Potential of Telecommunication. This book, in an attempt to create an understanding about the efficiency and functioning of ICTs and their impacts on low income countries, critically exams five important questions.

2001, Cynthia Hewitt de Alcántara, UNRISD

This paper argues that the digital divide is indicative of the deeper development divide that is characteristic of the present world. The author asserts that promoting development must involve shaping the structures of opportunities to further socio-economic progress, and not merely facilitating access to new devices.

2004, Romeo Bertolini, International Food Policy Research Institute

This brief discusses how Information and Communication Technologies can contribute to overcoming the challenges Africa faces in meeting the first Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people suffering from malnutrition and hunger by 2015. It describes the current situation of ICTs in Africa and the opportunities created by them.

2005, Shoji Nishimoto & Radhika Lal, Commonwealth Finance Ministers Reference Report

In this article the authors make the case for extensive application of ICTs in development to speed up the progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Banking on positive outcomes from across the world, the article shows how ICTs help the poor, especially those in rural areas, access cost-effective services and build sustainable livelihoods.

November 2005, Panos Media Toolkit on ICTs

Panos overviews the birth of the Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF), which intends to lead the way in bridging the digital divide by providing funding for ICTs in developing countries with the support of revenue raised from citizens, local and national public institutions, private sector and civil society. This piece introduces some of the debate around the digital divide and makes clear the need for North-South cooperation and worldwide mobilisation to bridge the digital divide. It gives a more detailed summary of the arguments over funding ICT in development projects and discusses how these arguments are used against and in support of the DSF. Finally, it concludes that the DSF is one innovative way to bring about local-global partnerships for the provision of new technologies in developing countries.

2006, Barbara Huddleston, Ergin Ataman, Mirella Salvatore and Mario Bloise, Food and Agriculture Organisation

This report explains how georeferenced information can be used to bring greater precision to the understanding of spatially-related factors underlying poverty and food insecurity, and discusses the role of the Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping System (FIVIMS) in promoting greater use of geospatial information. A new georeferenced database for analysing poverty and environment links – the Food Insecurity, Poverty and Environment Global GIS Database (FGGD) – is introduced and early efforts to make greater use of map products for monitoring poverty and food insecurity indicators are reviewed.

2003, Ajit Maru and Karin Ehrle, International Service for National Agricultural Service

This paper explores whether the North and the South will have different frameworks and evolutional paths for ICT use in agricultural research and development. The study is informed by the iNARS initiative, which consisted of discussions in an electronic forum, and country reports on ICT use from developing and developed countries. It compares and contrasts these elements in the context of agricultural research in the North and the South, and shows that new intermediaries are needed to maintain linkages between research and practice.

2007, Dan Breznitz, Yale University Press

This book argues that even with intensified globalisation and fragmentation of production, the state has a significant role to play in economic development. The rapid development of the IT industry in Taiwan, Ireland and Israel suggests that less developed countries can successfully host rapid innovation based industries and that multiple models of economic development are available to developing countries.

2007, IT for Change

This is a report of an international workshop conducted by IT for Change in January 2007 in Bangalore, India. The workshop proposed to examine the policy options for development in the information society by bringing together policy advocates, leading thinkers and researchers in both fields.

2007, Yeuzhi Zhao, International Journal of Communication

This article explores the paradoxes in the ‘digital revolution’ that China has witnessed during the last decade or so. The author describes the enormous social and cultural tensions that have been engendered by the aggressive launching of a state-led, market oriented, and technologically-driven “digital revolution” in the context of regressive developments in the social domain. The resulting developmental framework of a single nation state has posed profound challenges in governance, and thus necessitated the state’s relentless efforts in maintaining social stability through a fortified regime of information and communication control.