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 The paper is based on the findings and experiences of the Rural e-Services Project in India (ReSPI) which resulted in designing of Knowledge Help Extension Technology Initiative (KHETI).

ReSPI was an action research project to bridge the socio-economic divide digitally. The project has demonstrated that a right approach with appropriate mix of methodologies and social context could lead the designing of  Information Communication Technology (ICT) solutions.

In the after math of the project and development of KHETI Technology, claims could be made that designing of Information Communication Technology solutions are very much possible with so called ‘less privileged groups’ using participatory interaction design methodologies and treating users as co-designers.

The paper describes strengths and challenges in the participatory designing processes of KHETI as an M-Agriculture system and examines how it addresses the problems of local poor farmers by recognising their socio-economic realities.

This  paper reports on the availability, use and information seeking behaviour of  a farming community with specific reference to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It fills a research gap by examining what people do with a medium when they have access to it, rather than looking at barriers surrounding the use of ICTs and digital divide issues arising due to differential access and capabilities. The study was conducted in a state in North India, and  provides insights into intentions and factors surrounding the use of various media by farmers. It highlights the socio-cultural context within which information seeking and use 

The most widespread information and communication technology (ICT) in developing countries today is the mobile phone. The majority of people in the least developed countries still live in rural areas and their livelihood depends on the primary industries. This study investigates the use of mobile phones among farmers in rural Tanzania in order to supply empirical data on the developmental role of this technology. The results show that the improved access to communication and information that mobile phones represent affects the entire cyclic farming life during the year and has resulted in considerable changes in the entire livelihood constructs, increased opportunities and reduced risks for rural farmer.

From June to September 2011, Agro-Insight conducted a scoping study for SDC, GFRAS and SAI Platform on the production, dissemination and use of farmer training videos in developing countries, with a focus on sustainable agriculture. Literature was consulted, the internet screened, experts and users consulted and a global on-line survey launched in English, French and Spanish.

There is a general consensus that farmers need good agricultural training videos, but they do not browse the web in search of them. For watching videos they rely mainly on outside agencies. Only about 20% of all respondents have never used video to train farmers and have never searched the web for agricultural videos. Many of those didn’t know where to look for videos, hadn’t found videos on the right subject or hadn’t found videos in their local language.

Mobile is one of the technologies discussed, but not the only. The study cites some mobile-based programs and notes current limitations to mobile video for farmers.

This report tackles ICT4D under three key headings: information, communication and participation. While not ignoring negatives, the report primarily explores, through the lens of Cambridge activities in ICT4D, the positive impacts and ongoing challenges of ICT4D: its ability to provide access to valuable information, to create meaningful two-way dialogues, to reach remote and excluded communities, and to empower the excluded to participate in their own development and societies.

There are still significant barriers preventing people in the Global South from accessing ICTs. But with the ongoing, rapid growth in mobile phone use and network connectivity across the world, the parameters are changing. We need to keep adapting to this environment in order to succeed. We must also ensure that the poorest and most disadvantaged are not left behind.

We have also seen challenges and progress that still need to be made in harnessing ICTs to achieve positive and lasting development outcomes. Technology can only ever be one ingredient in this process, but it can be a potent one. A key strength of ICT4D lies in the potential for participation, especially as technologies become more and more interactive.

This report focuses on the opportunity to improve agricultural productivity using mobile services, highlighting the opportunity to bring new investment to a key group: smallholder farmers. Mobile telephony could have significant potential to help the poorest farmers towards greater food and income security.

Only in recent years that mobile communications technology has been widely accepted as an enabler of sustainable growth. In developing markets, where the deployment of mobile telecommunications networks has surpassed traditional fixed-line technology, the mobile telecoms industry is well-placed as an enabler of higher performance in the value chain. There is a distinct need for market-led opportunities, and the opportunity for mobile operators to deliver these is significant.

The mobile services studied here enable companies to access and interact directly with different participants in the value chain, helping to build visibility of issues, capacity and quality. They will support company sustainability objectives, and in particular, progress towards the UN Millennium Development Goals by helping to reduce poverty, improve health and increase funding for education.

This report aims to stimulate the necessary engagement between mobile operators, governments, NGOs and businesses to realize these opportunities and explore others.

The Information Economy Report 2011 demonstrates that effective use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in both the private and the public sector can significantly contribute to and accelerate progress in private sector development (PSD).

Governments and their development partners should take a holistic and comprehensive approach to leveraging ICTs in PSD, although a review of PSD strategies indicates that this is often not the practice. Similarly, donor strategies often refer to the use of ICTs in PSD in a peripheral manner only, if at all. On its own, new technology will have limited effects on PSD. However, when carefully integrated into policies and processes, ICTs can reduce business costs, promote transparent, rules-based systems, and improve communication between the public and private sector.

Governments need to work with the private sector to create an investment climate and a business environment that encourage the use of ICTs within private firms as well as in government. The potential of ICTs can then be realized, through adequate infrastructure and skills, and a commitment by governments to making markets work effectively. In some areas, there is already considerable experience and evidence to guide policy initiatives. In other areas, where opportunities for ICTs to contribute to PSD have emerged only in the past few years (as in the case of mobile money services), more analysis and testing of different business models is needed to assess potential and identify best practices.

This document presents the conclusions of the study “Leveraging ICT for the BoP” sponsored by AFD-Proparco, Ericsson, ICCO, France Telecom-Orange, and TNO and conducted by Hystra and Ashoka from October 2010 to June 2011.

This study aimed to learn from “what works” in terms of full projects (as opposed to technologies) combining both an economically viable model and socio-economic impacts on their end-users, in the field of ICT for development (ICT4D). This work is thus based on the screening of existing projects led by various types of actors (social entrepreneurs, NGOs, private companies…), in 4 sectors of “development” where ICT has already shown it could play a key role: healthcare, education, agriculture, and financial services. 15 of the most ground breaking market-based business models, with a proven scale and results on the ground showing that ICT can be a lever improving the living standards of the BoP, are analysed in depth in the report to support the main conclusions.

Globally, huge investments are made in ICT as an undisputed and essential component of almost all activities – state and corporate. It is also an integral part of international development cooperation. The rapid spread of ICT – particularly the internet and mobile telephony – is making information available instantly and at low cost to a degree unprecedented in history. It can be used to seek, receive, create and impart information by anyone, at any time and for any purpose. The innovative use of the media has created new forms of citizen journalism which give space to a diversity of voices. In this way, ICT enhances freedom of expression and the right to information, and increases the possibilities for citizen´s participation in decision making processes.

This report examines the potential of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for advancing democracy and empowerment, with a special focus on Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Access to and the strategic use of ICTs have been shown to have the potential to help bring about economic development, poverty reduction, and democratisation – including freedom of speech, the free flow of information and the promotion of human rights. Based on signs of current democracy deficits in the case study countries, it is crucial that ICTs be made central to development cooperation and to approaches to advance democracy in the three countries.

Across both urban and rural populations, the predominant tool for communication is the mobile phone, while access to the internet is largely limited to urban areas. The high cost of international internet connectivity – itself a consequence of dependence on satellite connectivity in Uganda and Tanzania especially – means that even within urban areas internet connectivity is the purview of a small well-to-do elite.

This report uses AudienceScapes data from a nationally representative survey of Zambia to focus on how people of various social groups access and use mobile communications. The report also showcases how the AudienceScapes survey data can help members of the development community to design and implement more effective programs in technological access, communications and information empowerment.

Beyond measuring basic access and use levels, this report works to answer several key research questions regarding the role of mobile phones in economic and social development in Zambia. These include but are not limited to; what is the potential for SMS-based information services as a development tool, is the mobile market beginning to reach disadvantaged parts of the population, what are the continued barriers to mobile phone access and use, who is using mobile money and is their greater market potential for these services?

We explore the potential of using camera phones and pico projectors in rapid creation and presentation of digital content in a development context. A camera phone based content authoring application was designed and deployed with three different user populations in the domains of classroom education and health care.

Our findings show that despite the variations in education levels, cultural background, and technology exposure, users successfully created and presented different forms of digital content using the camera phone and pico projector.

Agriculture can serve as an important engine for economic growth in developing countries, yet yields in low-income countries have lagged far behind those in developed countries for decades. One potential mechanism for increasing yields is the use of improved agricultural technologies, such as fertilizers, seeds and cropping techniques. Public-sector programs have attempted to overcome information- related barriers to technological adoption by providing agricultural extension services.

While such programs have been widely criticized for their limited scale, sustainability and impact, the rapid spread of mobile phone coverage in developing countries provides a unique opportunity to facilitate technological adoption via information and communication technology (ICT)-based extension programs.

This article outlines the potential mechanisms through which ICT could facilitate agricultural adoption and the provision of extension services in developing countries. It then reviews existing programs using ICT for agriculture, categorized by the mechanism (voice, text, internet and mobile money transfers) and the type of services provided. Finally, we identify potential constraints to such programs in terms of design and implementation, and concludes with some recommendations for implementing field-based research on the impact of these programs on farmers’ knowledge, technological adoption and welfare.

Fueled by renewed enthusiasm about the potential of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are implementing ambitious projects with mobile technology components in the developing world in a phenomenon commonly referred to as “Mobiles-for-development” or “M4D.”

A participatory approach that responds to the needs and realities of local communities is widely recognized as a necessary component of a successful M4D intervention. However, project failure-especially in sub-Saharan Africa- remains the norm, pointing towards the need for more thorough enumeration of best practices and more rigorous impact evaluation on the part of field-based practitioners. This thesis calls for greater attention to be given to the role of human capacity, which is a precondition for participation in M4D interventions but which also tends to be deficient in rural, poor communities. A greater focus on capacity would entail both assessing capacity- in terms of physical resources and human capabilities- at the local level and including capacity-building in project activities when necessary.

This study employs the human development and capabilities approach and the case study and participant observation methods to examine the efforts of the American NGO Tostan to integrate mobile technology into its non-formal education and empowerment program in rural Senegal. The findings of this study underscore the decisive role played by local capacity and intent and by effective, locally based intermediary organizations, conceptualized in this paper as grassroots support organizations (GSOs), that support the acquisition of the human capabilities needed to harness the empowering potential of mobile technology and other ICTs.

Besides the work of Jensen (2007), there is little quantitative evidence on the impact that mobile telephony has had on household welfare. In considering the rural household welfare, the possibility is open of finding impacts of information that is accessed via mobile phone in several markets where rural households are usually inserted: agricultural product markets, agricultural services markets, agricultural byproducts; but also in labor markets that often supplement income diversification strategies of these households.

Using a database collected to measure the impact of mobile telephony in the welfare of rural households in Puno, Peru, this paper seeks to focus attention on the markets for agricultural products and by-products. The aim is to measure the contribution that has the use of mobile telephony in the profits resulting from the development of agricultural activities, using econometric techniques associated with quasi-experimental methods of impact assessment. How much does the mobile phone contribute to agricultural earnings? What is the differential impact of mobile phone use vis-a-vis scale variables such as farm size or the number of cattle, or diversification, as the total number of crops, or vertical integration, as the production of agricultural products, on the results of farming?

We expect to find different impacts depending on the type of use of mobile telephony, ie if used for information to affect the agricultural production function or is used to make marketing decisions. The results can help justify public policy efforts to include mobile telephone service as a basic service as well as the development of specific mobile livelihood services for farmers from the mobile communication technology, yet absent in Latin America.

‘Aarogyam’ is a Sanskrit word which means "complete freedom from illness”. Aarogyam is an ICT based responsive system which ensures and involves active participation of all key stakeholders viz. local administration, health facilities and doctors, frontline health workers (ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activists), ANM (Auxiliary Nurse Midwife), and AWW (Angan Wadi Workers)), village heads and beneficiaries, to ensure that a pregnant woman is provided with ANC, PNC and complete immunization throughout the continuum of care.   Aarogyam maintains a village wise database of all the beneficiaries (pregnant/lactating women, children up to 5 years) of an area, which gets continually updated with new data generating on the field with the help of front line health workers. The database thus generated is the backbone of the software system used by Aarogyam. This system generates automated alerts in the form of vernacular voice calls/SMS to the beneficiary thus enabling the beneficiary with vital information at their door step.   The system not only provides beneficiary with the information to be acted upon but also ensures that the services are delivered to the beneficiary by generating automated alerts (vernacular voice calls/SMS) for the ANM and Block level health officials, informing them of due services in their area.  

In this paper we argue that mobile banking offers the opportunity to diminish the financial exclusion suffered by the poor by offering access to credit and to savings which are key tools capable of transforming the livelihoods of the poor as well as the efficiency of the market. However, mobile phones need a complete ecosystem that supports its application to a functioning mobile banking service.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to existing knowledge of mobile money across the value chain by providing insight into the mechanisms of m-money, the value propositions within the business of m-banking and what is preventing its swifter adoption and usage in the developed world. We develop a taxonomy of the key drivers of the business model which provides insights for assessing the replicability of these models in other countries. We focus on models developed in Kenya and the Philippines and explore what is lacking for a widespread adoption in Latin American countries, such as Mexico, in order to observe what is preventing the creation and usage of m-money models for the BoP.

At the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration, committing nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and address pressing challenges of hunger, gender inequality, illiteracy, and disease. The year 2015 has been affirmed as the deadline for reaching these Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets.

The goal is to show how an integrated approach to community-level development can translate the international MDG agreements into ground-level breakthroughs throughout rural sub-Saharan Africa. Villages are located in deeply impoverished rural areas that were considered hunger hotspots—with at least 20% of children malnourished. Sites were selected to reflect a diversity of agro-ecological zones, representing a range of challenges to income, food production, disease ecology, infrastructure, and health system development.

The Millennium Villages Project is a ten-year initiative spanning two five-year phases. The first phase focuses on achieving quick wins, especially in staple crop production and disease control, and on establishing basic systems for integrated rural development that help communities escape the poverty trap and achieve the MDGs. The Project involves the coordinated community-led delivery of a locally tailored package of scientifically proven interventions for agriculture, education, health, and infrastructure. Over the first five-year phase, interventions are delivered at a modest cost, totaling approximately $120 per capita per year, of which MVP brings about half to complement funds from the host government, the local community, and other partners. The second five-year phase will focus more intensively on commercializing the gains in agriculture and continuing to improve local service delivery systems in a manner that best supports local scale-up.

Drawing on ideas from the sustainable livelihoods approach to poverty reduction and the concept of technology appropriation, this article discusses findings from a mixed methods study exploring mobile phone use in Ghana. The results suggest that most respondents value their phone for the connectivity it affords with a variety of personal and professional contacts. In this sense, the mobile phone is not an overt means of poverty reduction for respondents but an integral part of their lives, in which it serves multiple functions. The study contributes empirical data to the emerging body of research on mobile phone communication in African countries

If communications and high-tech companies are to achieve their growth targets over the next few years, they must look to the emerging economies. These markets, with large populations, hold great promise. Although many consumers in these areas live in rural areas and rely on more limited means, their disposable income has risen in recent years. Many such consumers have become more confident about the future, and are now willing to buy aspirational products such as mobile phones and services, even on credit.

To achieve high performance in this environment, companies must understand the key mobile trends as they evolve in developing economies. They must develop a deeper understanding of the mobile value proposition to emergingmarket consumers as well as their distinctive service needs. New distribution networks must be created. Content, products and services need to be tailored to local populations. These challenges will require new models of collaboration to succeed in a more complex ecosystem.

This qualitative case study describes the social appropriation of mobile phones among low-income communities in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) by asking how favela (slum) residents appropriate cell phones. Findings highlight the difficulty these populations encounter in acquiring and using cell phones due to social and economic factors, and the consequent subversive or illegal tactics used to gain access to such technology.

Moreover, these tactics are embedded in and exemplars of the cyclic power relationships between high- and low-income populations that constitute the unique use of mobile technologies in these Brazilian slums. The article concludes by suggesting that future research on technology in low-income communities focus instead on the relationship of people to technology rather than a dichotomization of their access or lack thereof.

Enthusiasm amongst international development agencies about harnessing the potential of Information and communications technologies (ICTs) for development has waned as observers have recently questioned the Impact and sustainability of such interventions. By presenting the findings of research specifically designed to measure Impact on livelihoods, Strengthening Rural Livelihoods offers new evidence for the development benefits of ICTs.

The book presents an overview of SIX research projects within the 'Knowledge Networking for Rural Development In Asia Pacific' (ENRAP) research programme. It asks if ICTs enabled farmers to sell beyond local markets and at better prices, and whether there have been social gains in linking geographically disparate households and social networks.

Using a control trial approach In four out of the SIX project case studies, and critically assessing the pros and cons of this methodology including the ethical Implications, the authors have provided significant new Insights Into how to overcome the challenges of mainstreaming lCTs Into rural livelihoods and more effectively measuring its effects. This book will appeal to academics, civil society organizations, practitioners and students who are Interested In what works and what doesn't work when applying ICTs to rural livelihoods.