25/02 2007

Information technology in a development context

Blogpost by David Arbirk

Information technology can be vitally important for the development, economic as well as social, in Africa and other third world regions. I don't believe that information technology or any other technology can spur a development path, that significantly differs from the known model of industrialisation - there are no easy solution to the tough accumulation of capital - but information technology can help the development process by significantly lowering information, communication and transaction costs, which all poses great barriers for economic development in the poor regions of today's world.

This is the introduction to my new blog about the benefits and challenges that new information technology brings to the debate about third world development. My focus will be on Africa, especially eastern Africa, where I have lived and travelled and the technological perspective centers around the huge possibilities on the internet. My name is David Arbirk, I am 25 years of age and studying for a master degree in development economics at the University of Copenhagen. I hope to blog every second week, but since this is the first post I can't point to any promising track record. And now to the rest of the introduction.

As all good blog posts this one started out with some outrageous claims which I can spend the rest of the blog discussing. I will focus on one question: "Can information technology spur development by lowering costs of transaction?" My answer is yes - a big yes. We, hopefully, all agree that this is how information technology has expanded the economic activity in the developed world. Information technology is besides the continual lowering of physical transport costs the most important factor behind the explosion of international trade, which has driven the world economy the last 30 years. The integration of the global economic activity has greatly expanded the global production and consumption possibilities and one of the key factors behind this is the ease and "cheapness" of information access and human interaction without not limited by location. This effect of information technology is maybe even more outspoken within countries in the rich parts of the world, and state of the art solutions today make it possible for new companies to be virtually global from the onset. So the technology is great, but isn't the third world lacking behind exactly because of the lack of access to technology in general?

My answer will be that the access to information technology in general is posed by fewer barriers set against for instance industrial transformation technology, and information technology therefore is easier adoptable in a third world context. There are pitfalls and challenges, but information technology is a good point of departure for the technological transformation of some of the poorest societies on the globe. An example illustrates all this:

Mobile phones in Africa

The introduction and spread of mobile phones in Africa is an example of a brilliant success. If you need a taxi in the small village of Mugumu in Tanzania you just send a text message and you are served right away. It is nearly unbelievable how useful the small and cheap service like text messaging can transform social and economic activity. Just few years ago, poor people had no way of communicating, that they needed something and request that the soon to visit uncle could bring it from the regional capital where it is cheaper and available. This is possible now, because one in nine Africans have a mobile subscription, which means that a lot of people have access to mobile messaging via a local subscriber. Mobile connection have become so valuable, useful and spread across the continent that credit points in some places used as a de facto substitute currency. Everybody the small farmer, businessman, women, youngsters and the elderly head of the family now has access to communication across large physical boundaries. This is a small revolution on a continent, where traditional lifestyles still prevails in most rural areas.

Every revolution has good and bad sides. The spread of mobile technology is actually an obstacle to the spread of internet access because the technology only depends on a limited solution with respect to band width. The spread of the mobile infrastructure can thus rely on radio relies of a kind, that cannot support use of internet services. One of the reasons the internet was able to expand sp rapidly in many developed countries during the 90'ties was unutilised capacity in existing infrastructure, the phone line cobber wires. Many places in Tanzania have a very good mobile connection to the rest of the world, but will have to wait long for something that just resembles a decent internet connection. But maybe the strong demand for communication technology the mobile revolution has offset will be able to drive innovation and distribution in this field as well?

Source: textually.org

Though the mobile example is an example of the spread of communication technology it demonstrates two features that applies in many information technology cases in general:

The underlining hardware is becoming cheap enough for wide spread in development countries
The recent focus on user interface and user experience means, that new and powerful technology can be introduced in third world context nearly as easily as in the rest of the world. Surprisingly enough, the general level of education may not be as great a divide when it comes to information technology (?).

It is my intension that this blog will return to these important questions again and again, doing so in the light of actual relevant and concrete solutions for the development context. A lot (most?) information infrastructures and technologies has not yet matured to be implementable in low cost and low skill environments and there is an important debate about the direction and dilemmas of this "maturing". For now, here is a small teasing list of what just may be subjects of future posts:

OLPC
OpenOffice
E-commerce
Internet communication
Email solutions
Typo3 (the engine behind this site)
and much much more...

Welcome, please join the debate under the swahili translation.