New models to serve and empower the poor

Where communication facilities are available, the poor rapidly embrace them. Where schools offer courses in ICT or use ICT to make educational content more interesting, parents are often supportive since they see it as a source of upward mobility and recognise its potential to ensure more effective learning. Where ICT makes available critical information, financial services, and reduces the maze of bureaucracy, people benefit in terms of reduced time and resources that need to be expended. Where ICT facilitates access to information about new economic opportunities and helps avail of them, small and medium sized enterprises and cooperatives demonstrate interest. Where ICT access is available, it helps to stimulate investment. But it is not just a question of facilitating economic and social development, community radio and related technologies are, for example, also proving useful in facilitating participation and strengthening the voice of communities.

In many instances, at least in urban areas, the communication needs of the poor are acknowledged and telephony markets – formal and informal – are emerging to serve them. However, rural areas and sparsely populated communities still tend to be underserved. The main obstacle is simple. Installation costs are often higher because of lack of developed infrastructure such as roads and electricity. Sparser populations and low levels of income mean that conventional approaches appear to be economically unattractive, whether for market-driven or more traditional public sector providers who are now unable to benefit from cross-subsidies to roll-out services.

The technology-development landscape is continuously evolving not only in terms of market dynamics and technology opportunities but also in terms of permitting new approaches to meeting the development and communication needs of the poor and under-served communities.

This report and its accompanying case studies consider one of these evolving options to address the problem particularly at the level of last-mile or last-inch access: an innovative combination of community-driven enterprises and the new wave of wireless and related technologies that together may have the potential to extend networks and offer new services to poor communities and to empower them to develop solutions that are more focused on their development needs. While a lot of attention is being paid to wireless and related cost-effective technologies, the focus has been mainly on connectivity and perhaps not enough on how this might permit new approaches to development at the local level that could also be effective in empowering communities.

The report concludes that these emerging options could make a significant difference to network access, delivery of services and economic and social opportunities for poorer rural communities. They can drive down costs and make maximum use of community resources, enabling the emergence of new business/development models that are both more economically sustainable and more empowering than anything else available. Furthermore, a high degree of community control can significantly enhance the viability and development impact of ‘hybrid’ public/private/community networks and service solutions.