lives a life that is more 14^th century than 21^st century because their countries have been excluded from the benefits of globalization and because, within their countries, these citizens are excluded from the services, opportunities, and resources that we in the global North take for granted.

Social exclusion has prevented the bottom billion from accessing basics like health care, education, and government services. Many of these functions are information-based or information-enabled. IT therefore has a central role to play. For example, it can disinterme-diate the sometimes-corrupt gatekeepers who stand between poor citizens and the meeting of their social development needs.

Political exclusion has helped perpetuate bad governance in bottom-billion countries. Our Western mentalities have tended to simplistically condense the solution into elections. But Paul Collier argues these have been the least effective part of the governance fixes for the most-troubled nations. Instead, he says, we should be seeking greater transparency: helping citizens hold their governments to account.

Transparency is all about information flows, so IT is crucial, and we already have some pointers about new ways in which it can be used. In West Africa, the notion of government surveillance has been turned on its head to create citizen “sousveillance”: monitoring democratic processes and reporting on them using short message service and taking cellphone pictures as evidence.

In East Africa, open information systems are being used to publicize how much government spending should be getting through to the “front line” of development. Combined with citizen report-back, in one case this raised the amount reaching schools from 20% of allocation to 90%.

2

And IT is integral to a new form of openness and engagement: e-participa-tory budgeting, which provides online citizen discussion and decision making on how part of the government budget will be spent. Projects so far find thousands of people participating, and many more involved via friends and other IT-savvy intermediaries.

Perhaps most important of all is economic exclusion. It should be axiomatic that the main difference between the

We tend to assume
that it has little
or no role in these
countries. in fact it
does already and
will in the future have
much to offer.

world’s poorest and everyone else is… they have less money. We need to ensure, in harnessing IT for the bottom billion, that a strong priority is given to applications that help create wealth. To do this, IT must address the exclusion of poor individuals and poor nations from markets.

IT can generate new market opportunities. Flying somewhat under the radar of government and donor agencies, IT can help directly create new microenter-prises for the poor. Ongoing research at the University of Manchester suggests this is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the bottom billion: it involves those who set up their own Internet kiosks, those who stand on street corners selling cellphone calls, those who sell pre-paid cellphone cards and phone covers, and many other business ideas.

IT can offer access to new sources of finance. Organizations like Kiva use Web microfinance portals to make a direct link between individual sponsors in the global North, and microentrepre-neurs in the bottom billion. In a less organized way, individuals in poor communities are turning their cellphones into mobile wallets. Relatives overseas remit money in the form of airtime. This arrangement is increasingly accepted by storeowners, colleges, health centers, and other organizations as an alternative form of currency.

And IT can improve opportunities for trade. By offering access to prices in different consumer markets, IT can increase incomes for the poor. We now have evidence indicating that the more remote the farmer or microentrepre-neur, the greater the benefit of IT. ⁸ As the IT base diffuses into the bottom bil-

lion, it also offers the prospect of digital trade; something especially valuable given that these nations are disproportionately landlocked. One small but quickly growing element of this is “IT social outsourcing”: the offshoring of IT services work like digitization and data entry with a combined commercial and developmental intent. Evidence from initial projects suggests this can furnish not just new incomes but new skills and confidence to those involved. ⁵

Perhaps I can best summarize all this by pointing to the psychological exclusion that we in the global North sometimes practice. We tend to exclude the bottom-billion countries from our worldviews and from our informatics work. We tend to assume that IT has little or no role in these countries. In fact it does already and will in the future have much to offer. We also tend to conceive of the bottom-billion citizens as non-us-ers. In fact they are not only increasingly active users but they are in some sense innovators; constantly developing new applications and new business models with the technology but also looking for ideas and support from global partners like us.

 

References

1. bahl, V. White space networking and the commoditization of pervasive internet access. Paper presented at Wireless4D 2008, (karlstad, sweden, December 2008).

2. collier, P. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. oxford university Press, oxford, u.k., 2007.

3. Denton, a. Policy priorities to connect africa. Paper presented at the 1st international mobiles for Development conference, (karlstad, sweden, December 2008).

4. Donner, j. et al. stages of design in technology for global development. IEEE Computer 41, 6 (june 2008), 34–41.

55. heeks, r.b. and arun, s. it social outsourcing as a development tool. Development informatics group, iDPm, university of manchester, u.k.,

2007; http://www.womenictenterprise.org/it%20 socialoutsourcing%20kerala%20Paper.doc.

6. ict statistics Database, international telecommunication union, geneva, 2009; http://www. itu.int/itu-D/icteye/indicators/indicators.aspx.

7. konkel, a. and heeks, r.b. challenging conventional views on mobile telecommunications investment: evidence from conflict zones. Development informatics group, iDPm, university of manchester, u.k., 2008; http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/ publications/wp/di/short/di_sp09.pdf.

8. muto, m. and yamano, t. the impact of mobile phone coverage expansion on market participation: Panel data evidence from uganda. Journal of JBIC Institute 37 (2008), 48–63; http://www.jica.go.jp/jica-ri/publication/ archives/jbic/report/review/pdf/37_05.pdf.

 

Richard Heeks ( [e-mail]) is Professor of Development informatics in the institute for Development Policy and management at the university of manchester, u.k.

copyright held by author.

24 communicAtionS of the Acm | APriL 2009 | voL. 52 | no. 4