Poverty
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For more than two decades the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has held the promise of making the world a fairer place. Indeed many people believe that this is a promise being fulfilled as the increasing availability of computing and communication devices, the power of the Internet and social networking platforms rapidly transform the way we live and the societies we live in. While the individual and social transformational capacity of ICT is immense, many millions of desperately poor people living in remote rural areas of the world live their lives in total ignorance of what the Internet is, what computers are and the potential they hold. They are excluded from the global information and communication revolution, but it is perhaps for these very people that ICT development could bring the most significant and profound social transformation. While there have been many successes stories in attempts to bridge this gap and connect the rural poor, it is only relatively recently that the potential for ICT to have a wide-spread transformational affect on the livelihoods of the bottom billion, has become a reality. Within the last two or three years there have been some remarkable developments in many of the poorer countries of the world. With the rapid growth of private sector investment in mobile communication, many poor and remote communities now have cell phone and Internet access. There has also been a rapid increase in the availability of low-cost ICT devices and the solar technology to power them. These developments have now brought ICT within the reach of poor communities. UNU-IIST believes that the role of ICT in sustainable development has reached a tipping point where it is poised to take centre-stage in global efforts to eliminate poverty. Leveraging off open-source software and cloud services, UNU-IIST sees the potential for ICT to empower people at the grass-roots level to use the connectivity and knowledge the Internet provides. It believes it can develop appropriate ICT solutions so that poor people can create their own paths out of poverty and platforms for real-time information sharing that can be used to protect the most vulnerable groups. But to effectively develop these solutions, ICT researchers need to work directly with poor communities in researching and developing ICT solutions. UNU-IIST is engaging in field based projects so that researchers, students and volunteers have the opportunity to experience the reality of rural village life and effectively focus their work on the practical challenges of poverty reduction. |
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