Information and Communication Technologies for Development International Development Efforts

O n a planet with 1.2 billion Internet users, a far less fortunate 1.2 billion people survive on less than a dollar a day. The same technology that has transformed our lives—the lives of the wealthiest people on the planet— remains out of reach and irrelevant for the poorest. As if in sudden recognition of this stark gap, we have witnessed in the past decade an explosion in projects that apply information technology to support socioeconomic development. What is the value of a PC in a rural school? How do you design an interface that an illiterate migrant worker can use? Can computing technology have a positive impact on a farmer earning a dollar a day? These are just a few questions that scholars and practitioners have begun to explore with increasing creativity and ambition. Often dubbed “information and communication technologies for development” and abbreviated ICTD or ICT4D, this field involves multiple sectors—governments, academia, small start-ups, large corporations, intergovernmental organizations, nonprofits, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—and draws interest from multiple disciplines: anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, design, engineering, and computer science to name a few. As with many multidisciplinary fields, the boundaries are amorphous and the goals many, but we can nevertheless identify core components that define the field. To begin, let’s consider the “D” or “development” in ICTD.