Fighting rural poverty: The role of ICTs
 

Information and communication technology (ICT) is powerful tool for rural development

IFAD is a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to eradicating rural poverty in developing countries. Seventy-five per cent of the world's poorest people - 800 million women, children and men - live in rural areas and depend on agriculture and related activities for their livelihoods. Through low-interest loans and grants, IFAD works with governments to develop and finance programmes and projects that enable rural poor people to overcome poverty themselves.

Information and communication technology (ICT) is a powerful tool for rural development. However, before ICTs can make a meaningful contribution to improving the lives of rural poor people, certain conditions have to be met. These relate to ownership, local content, language, culture and appropriate technology. Access to ICTs becomes important only once these conditions have been met.

IFAD's approach to the use of ICTs to support development initiatives is to focus on people and not technology.

A learning and sharing initiative

Through photography, video and text, IFAD is piloting documenting the learning and change that takes place during the life of the First Mile Project.

The challenge is to capture, communicate and archive the project's impact in ways that are thorough, meaningful and accessible to audiences both inside and outside IFAD. A thematic approach is being used to document pre-existing conditions, processes, outcomes and emerging lessons. The thematic areas are:

  • overall conditions for meaningful use of ICTs by rural poor people
  • geographic, economic and cultural isolation
  • learning and its impact on livelihoods of rural poor people
  • responsiveness to community demand

These and other related issues will be the focus of a panel discussion sponsored by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) during the World Summit on the Information Society, on Thursday 17 November 2005. The panel discussion, Eradicating rural poverty by connecting rural communities, will be held from 9 to 11 am in Meeting Room Béja at the Parc des expositions du Kram (Kram PalExpo), Tunis, Tunisia.

We anticipate that new ideas will emerge from the discussion on how to increase the positive impact of ICTs in rural areas of developing countries, and on how to ensure that ICTs can contribute in meaningful, substantive and sustainable ways to the eradication of rural poverty and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

In Tunis, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) will present version zero of the rural poverty portal. Powered by IFAD, the portal is a web site where rural poor people, policy-makers, donors, research institutes, non-governmental organizations and other development partners can share information about eradicating poverty. The portal also provides space for discussion.

On the rural portal you can:

  • browse information by topic, region or country
  • read about what works in rural development projects - and what doesn't
  • listen to farmers, development practitioners and decision-makers as they explain the challenges of rural poverty eradication
  • join an electronic community committed to making rural poverty history.

The goals of the portal are to position rural poverty as a global, regional and national priority, and streamline the search for information, providing access to millions of links from a single entry point.

 

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