Development as Freedom in a Digital Age: Experiences from the Rural Poor in Bolivia

What impact do new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have on people living in poverty in developing countries? Can ICTs make a real difference in the lives of the poor and thus enhance their well-being? Under what conditions can information technology empower poor communities? What are some of the challenges and pitfalls facing local communities in using technology innovations? How can we evaluate the impact that new technologies have on the well-being of poor communities?

This book tackles these questions by developing a new approach for evaluating the impact of ICT programs on poor people’s economic, human, and social development. It looks at the effects of new technologies on well-being in a holistic manner.

Key findings:

Enhancing people’s informational capabilities is the most critical factor determining the extent to which ICTs can enhance their well-being. The expansion of people’s informational capabilities not only has intrinsic value for their well-being but also, and even more important, has an essential role to play in strengthening their capabilities in multiple dimensions of their lives. Analysis has shown that informational capabilities, similar to literacy, play a catalytic role in expanding poor people’s human and social capabilities and thus enhancing their ability to engage with the formal institutions in the economic, social, and cultural spheres of their lives. In this sense, ICTs can act as important agents for social change, both for individuals and for local communities.

Analysis also demonstrated that there are important differences in the extent to which informational capabilities expand people’s human and collective capabilities in the political, economic, organizational, and social dimensions of their lives. There is no direct, causal relationship between ICTs and poverty reduction. The relationship is much more complex and indirect in nature, whereby the impact on people’s well-being depends to a large extent on a dynamic and iterative process between people and technology within a specific local, cultural, social, and political context.

A critical condition for ICTs to enhance poor people’s well-being is to go beyond simply providing access and promoting the use of ICTs and instead to enhance their meaningful use. ICTs receive meaning only if people use and enact them for a specific purpose and if local communities can exert control over their use by interpreting and appropriating them for their own specific sociocultural realities. The most immediate and direct impact of ICT programs on people’s well-being is the personal empowerment of the most marginalized groups, such as indigenous women, whereby the newly acquired ICT capabilities provide women with a sense of achievement and pride, significantly strengthening their self-esteem. With regard to both the political and economic dimensions, there exists only a very limited relationship between the enhancement of a person’s informational and human capabilities. In both dimensions, the role that ICTs play in enhancing people’s well-being is significantly limited by the broader structural barriers of extreme poverty and social exclusion of poor communities in Bolivia.

Using quantitative and qualitative information, the study confirms two hypotheses proposed. First, intermediary organizations that introduce ICTs into local communities play a crucial role in determining the effects of ICTs on poor people’s well-being. Thus a key recommendation for evaluating the impact of ICTs on well-being is to place the process of how ICTs are being introduced at the center of the analysis. For ICT programs, it is essential that community members not only gain the technical skills to make meaningful use of technology but also gradually take ownership of these technologies. Local communities need to control the process of introducing and appropriating ICTs into their communities. Second, ICTs have to be appropriated by local communities in order to enhance their well-being. However, tension exists between the first and second hypotheses, as the central role that intermediaries play in the process of introducing ICTs can create dependency for marginalized groups.

Summary