Thanks to Sam Lanfranco for a refreshing perspective. I agree with much of what Sam says regarding the reasons for the ICT & poverty reduction research/evidence vacuum.
I would like to add an additional point, and draw on the insights of Tom Wolfe on the social context of self promotion. In looking at the art world of New York in the 70's, in his book "The Painted Word", Wolfe realized that the *writing* about art had overtaken art... "without a theory to go with it, I can't see the painting". At the risk of biting the hand that feeds... How about, "without a donor commissioning a written piece on its ICT initiative, I can't see the ICT initiative". Wolfe helped us understand that people can make something interesting happen, but if no one writes about that interesting happening, it will not attract attention, and it will certainly not attract additional support or money. The written word is the key to the flow of money, social status, recognition, etc... There is so much in the world of ICT & poverty reduction that is hardly written about. If a donor does not fund an initiative, it is very unlikely to receive written attention - or research attention. The lack of research attention means that we know so little about which development interventions might yield the most significant poverty reduction results. What gets little written or research attention? Many ICT initiatives from national NGOs that barely reach the donor radar screen. Many of the ICT initiatives that are in the realm of the private sector, yet yield positive impacts on poverty reduction, receive so little attention - especially research attention - because no donor is involved. Some examples of what we do not read very much about, and for which impact assessment research is sorely lacking: - the impact of voice telephony on rural livelihoods and poverty reduction The telephone is such a "boring" ICT compared to computer and Internet-based tools. - the poverty reduction impact of basic email access through services such Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc. Likely more impact here than all donor ICT projects combined. - the poverty reduction impact of "knowledge management" services provided freely through Yahoo! Groups and related commercial services. For example, there are well over 1,000 agriculture/farm oriented discussion groups on Yahoo - a large number of which have been initiated by people in Asia, Latin America, the Pacific, using local languages and fonts. Anyone can start a discussion group in a few minutes, for free (try that with Dgroups). Just two examples - the Centre for Information on Coconut Lethal Yellowing (CICLY) <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CICLY/> - a clearing house for information about lethal yellowing and similar diseases of coconuts and other palms - generates messages from across the globe; litkaji <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/litkaji/> a group from Indonesia with 142 members (generating 134 messages so far this month) focused on communication about agricultural research - all in Bahasa. - thousands of indigenous web information services and portals developed independent of donor funding, but which have poverty reduction impacts. Pakissan.com a private sector web portal for the agricultural sector of Pakistan is but one example - and, like so many others, Pakissan goes unnoticed by the Development Gateway. - hundreds of indigenous ISPs operated by local entrepreneurs in developing countries. - thousands of individual websites enabled by services like GeoCities, indigenous ISPs - thousands of small scale entrepreneurs who re-sell phone services, - thousands of small scale entrepreneurs who start up telecentres (and who often have to compete with the donor versions), - dozens of private sector telecom operators who develop very creative business approaches to serving rural and remote areas to generate additional profit - the people who slog away on telecom policy and regulatory reform in their countries and whose written words can make such dramatic improvements in telecom investments, rural & remote telecom coverage, etc. - bootstrap telecom equipment manufacturers in developing countries who design and adapt equipment to meet the price sensitive, geographic, regulatory, and consumer characteristics unique to their contexts - add your example here... A question - what can/should donors do to leverage the ICT and poverty reduction impacts of initiatives through which they cannot take full or direct credit such as the ones described above? Positive examples are donors and multi-lateral financial institutions (e.g. World Bank, CIDA, ITU, DFID) that sponsor important work on telecom policy and regulatory reform - the results of which help provide the fertile ground for many of the above initiatives. The results of their efforts do not provide for immediately sexy stories or photo opportunities, but the impacts can be huge. Another question - how can we stimulate more research into the above examples, regardless of whether a donor was directly involved or not???? Without such research, how can we make effective judgements on ICT and poverty reduction investments? A while back I was able to convince the late Tony Zeitoun of CIDA to fund a case study assessment work on Grameen Telecom's VillagePhone initiative - see <www.telecommons.com/villagephone/index.html>. Tony took a chance - CIDA had absolutely zero involvement with the initiative, but saw an opportunity to learn. At that point in time, Grameen Telecom was not receiving any donor funding - it was a creative joint venture between Telenor of Norway and the Grameen Bank. No donors were writing about Grameen Telecom. The case study that Tony supported is today one of the more highly cited research pieces on ICT and poverty reduction - and one of the few that attempts to probe that impact in detail. Tony deserves full credit for stepping outside the bounds of what his organization funds. We need to see more of this. Don Richardson Director TeleCommons Development Group Stantec Consulting 361 Southgate Drive Guelph, Ontario N1G 3M5 Canada Tel: 519-836-6050; Fax: 519-836-2493 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: www.telecommons.com or www.stantec.com ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>