Information Communication Technology and Poverty Alleviation

Promoting Good Governance in the Developing World

Jack J. Barry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367665968
• eBook ISBN: 9780429996191
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Despite global economic disparities, recent years have seen rapid technological changes in developing countries, as it is now common to see people across all levels of society with smartphones in their hands and computers in their homes. However, does access to Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) actually improve the day-to-day lives of low-income citizens? This book argues that access to the internet can help alleviate poverty, improve development outcomes, and is now vital for realizing many human rights.

This book posits that good governance is essential to the realization of inclusive pro-poor development goals, and puts forward policy recommendations that aim to mitigate the complex digital divide by employing governance as the primary actor. In making his argument, the author provides a quantitative analysis of developing countries, conjoined with a targeted in-depth study of Mexico. This mixed method approach provides an intriguing case for how improvements in the quality of governance impacts both ICT penetration, and poverty alleviation. Overall, the book challenges the neoliberal deterministic perspective that the open market will "solve" technology diffusion, and argues instead that good governance is the lynchpin that creates conducive conditions for ICTs to make an impact on poverty alleviation. In fact, the digital divide should not be considered binary, rather it is a multifaceted problem where income, education, and language all need to be considered to address it effectively.

This book will be useful for researchers/students of development, communication technologies, and comparative politics as well as for development practitioners and policy makers with an interest in how modern technology is impacting the poor in the developing world.

1 Introduction

The ICT and poverty conundrum

Introduction

In the summer of 2012 I undertook an adventurous research expedition across Western, Central, and Southern Mexico. I had two primary goals: the first was to talk to people from all walks of life about their use of technology for economic and political purposes, and the second was to investigate how people were getting online, whether it was via personal devices, internet cafés, or government sponsored telecenters. Over the course of my research I talked with many people, ate great food, and stayed with generous families in the metropolitan centers of Guadalajara, Puebla, Mexico City, and in several rural indigenous villages in Oaxaca. By way of introduction to this work, I will highlight two individuals I met whose experiences and practices online provide a glimpse into the ways the internet has infiltrated everyday life in Mexico.

I met Carlos at the Guadalajara Language Center, located in the heart of the Tlaquepaque neighborhood of Guadalajara. He was there to practice his English and I was there to work on my Spanish before heading out into the Mexican countryside. We quickly formed a bond, meeting to talk politics many times over my three-week stay. Carlos, a middle-aged taxi driver who resided on the outskirts of Guadalajara with his wife and two children, had recently returned from a five-year stint living apart from his family as an undocumented immigrant in California. Happy to be reunited with his family in Mexico, he was also eager to go back to the U.S. and make money for his family, this time as a documented immigrant. In Guadalajara he made a middle-class income, but had to work long hours with no overtime pay or consistent salary. Some days he would make decent money, driving, usually business class people, around the city—especially to and from the airport—but on days when business was slow he was unable to recoup his expenses.

Carlos told me that he did not utilize the internet much in his work, but used it a few times a day, primarily to check the news, particularly political news, as he was incensed about the recent presidential election victory of the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s candidate Enrique Peña Nieto. Carlos saw the 2012 election as fraudulent, due to voting irregularities and alleged vote buying by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)—the party accused of providing money cards and grocery vouchers in exchange for votes. Carlos said that he searched the internet for news on fraud in the election, and for updates about protests against the outcome of the election. Primarily orchestrating the protests was Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Peña Nieto’s opponent from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). In the days following the election, Obrador pressured the Mexican government to do something about the alleged election fraud of the PRI: it was clear that Carlos sided with Obrador. Carlos also used the internet to get news of the upstart, internet-fueled movement Yo Soy #132 (I am student #132). Yo Soy #132 staged protests, information sessions, and meetings around the country, focusing its critique on Mexican mainstream media’s favoring of Peña Nieto and the PRI. Carlos told me about a Yo Soy #132 protest march that would be taking place in Guadalajara during my stay—which was being ignored by the mainstream televised media. I attended the large protest, which was a joyous but politically poignant event in downtown Guadalajara, culminating in a six-mile march across the city (finding out only after the fact that it was technically illegal for foreigners to even attend protest marches in Mexico).

Citing the dearth of information available on mainstream Mexican TV and other government-sponsored media, Carlos said that it was much easier for him to follow alternative news about politics, including the Yo Soy #132 movement online. Thus, he saw an opening of news, domestic and international, basic information, and government services due to the internet. With his middle-class income, Carlos could afford access at home, which allowed him to surf the web at his leisure. Although he could not afford the internet on a smartphone, he was very impressed with its mapping ability, as I used mine to help him navigate the confusing streets of Guadalajara in his taxi when he drove me back to the neighborhood I was staying in. A mobile phone with internet capability on the go would have certainly been helpful for him on the job, as avoiding the legendary traffic jams of Guadalajara would be advantageous, but it also would have allowed Carlos greater access to the latest information on the developing political situation in his country.

An individual on the other end of the spectrum, at least in terms of cultural environment, was Tonantzin, a young indigenous woman of Mixe descent. Tonantzin lived in the rural village of San Maria Tlahuitoltepec, located in the heart of the Oaxacan highlands. Tlahuitoltepec is three hours from Oaxaca City; reachable only via winding mountainous roads, with curves so acute foreigners were advised to take anti-seasickness pills before beginning their ride. Possessing a population of 4,000, the vast majority of Tlahuitoltepec’s residents are of Mixe indigenous heritage, with the primary tongue of the village being the Mixe language. Despite its apparent isolation—15 minutes down a bumpy dirt road from the nearest paved road and plagued by a daily dose of electrical blackouts— the village had five internet cafés and one CCA (Centros Comuitarios de Aprendizaje)—a government sponsored free internet café with instructional services open to the public on how to use the internet, computers, and printers. At the time of our meeting, Tonantzin was a recent college graduate from the local state university of Oaxaca; currently living between Oaxaca City and her family’s home in Tlahuitoltepec, she was looking for reliable work in the white collar sector. I employed her as my translator to interpret the Mixe language into Spanish; despite her aspirations to find permanent work as a translator, Tonantzin was not conversant in English.

A frequent internet user, Tonantzin accessed the web multiple times a day both at the CCA and the internet cafés of Tlahuitoltepec. She did not have a smartphone, using instead a small, low cost, flip phone for calls and texts. In 2012, owning a smartphone was unusual among poor, working class, and even middle-class Mexicans, even more so among the indigenous, yet its associated high data charge priced many of them out of the market across Mexico. She said she did not mind accessing the internet outside the home, as her family could not afford access and they also lacked a stable supply of electricity—as blackouts would occur for stretches daily. Tonantzin said she mainly used the internet to read local stories, regional news from Oaxaca City, and national political news, but she noted that she primarily employed it to stay in touch with her friends from university and to look for work. In fact, the only reason I met her was her efficient, and timely, use of email. A friend of a friend familiar with the area put me in touch with Tonantzin, recommending her as a translator of the Mixe language. After making initial contact via email while still in Guadalajara, Tonantzin remained in touch with me via email until I reached the village of Tlahuitoltepec weeks later. After I finished my interviews in the village I asked her about her plans for the future and she said that she was applying for jobs in Oaxaca City—all via the internet while residing in Tlahuitoltepec. For her, the internet was a vital personal and professional connector. She used it effectively, and despite living in a village where electrical blackouts were daily occurrences and the internet line into the village frequently failed, the internet remained a compelling, and consistent enough, mode of communication to use it extensively in her daily life.

For both Tonantzin and Carlos, the internet is important to get information about politics, and especially to look for work. Despite their successful use of the web in many ways, Carlos’ lack of internet access on the go for work and Tonantzin’s lack of access in the home indicate just some of the ways in which access to the internet can be compromised. The importance of the internet to the daily lives of Carlos and Tonantzin, and millions more across the developing world, is evident yet currently many of the world’s poor are consistently denied access. In fact, according to 2017 data just about 50 percent of the world’s seven billion are internet users. In general, two types of denial of access take place: (1) denial by cost to the private consumer—when no public option is available; and (2) denial by law and public policy. And at the same time the evidence is overwhelming that people around the world, regardless of their income are demanding access to the internet.

The internet is a dynamic and multifaceted technology that is the primary actor in this book; how it is related to other communication technologies is an important place to begin. Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are defined here in broad terms as technologies that enhance communication processes over great distances, specifically measured by internet, mobile phone, computer, radio, and television penetration rates. The broad influence of ICTs proves to be difficult to discern on various aspects of development, society, and politics. Here my focus is on assessing the impact of access to the internet and ICTs on the poor, a rather understudied topic in the developing world context. Clearly, people are being denied access, but does it really matter? Do ICTs help the poor pull themselves out of poverty? Can ICTs be harmful? Are new digital technologies, such as the internet and mobile phones, hindering the poor’s economic and political opportunities? Is internet access a human right? These are the overarching questions that will be addressed in this book.

Historically there have been two oppositional viewpoints expressed by scholars investigating the questions above: one optimistic and one skeptical. There is an emerging strong contingent of technology enthusiasts composed of scholars who are excited about potential positives of the ICT/poverty relationship. This optimistic view purports that ICTs will bring “light” to developing economies and open up the “black box” of corrupt governments. These scholars point to an abundance of examples of increased ICT use benefiting the poor (Dyson 1997; Friedman 2006; Schmidt and Cohen 2013). One is the story of small scale fishermen in India checking market prices via their mobile phones and moving to more productive markets for the first time in their fishing history as a result. Another is poor people in Mexico using communal CCAs that provide free use of the internet, along with instructional classes on how to use it, to pursue education opportunities otherwise not available to them. Furthermore, as seen in the Arab Spring, the power of the internet is quite evident for enhancing political mobilization as well. Although it should also be noted that despite the obvious influence various ICTs have had in mobilizing the Arab Spring protests across the Middle East—leading to the subsequent fall of seemingly entrenched authoritarian leaders Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and Moammar Gaddafi of Libya—the impact of these technologies on the everyday lives of the poor remains a point of contention.

Despite readily supplied examples of success there is also a darker side to the story. More skeptical scholars, with far less rosy outlooks, point out that acquiring ICT access requires substantial investment in time, resources, education, and human capital. These requirements encourage consolidation of businesses, increase economic inequality (Berman, Bound, and Machin 1998; Autor, Katz, and Krueger 1998), and squeeze the poor out of work (Kenny 2006). For instance, although the internet has the ability to transfer more information than any technology before it, putting vast swaths of information to productive use also requires certain degrees of infrastructure, human capital, education, literacy, and technical skills, which are often lacking in developing countries (Heeks 2002, 2012). Compounding these required investments is the hurdle faced by the poor regarding language on the Web. Many potentially useful websites for the poor are not translated into minority languages. Yet over half of the world’s poor—defined as those living under $2 per day—speak a minority language, which are often conspicuously absent from the Web.¹ Due to their more extensive resources, larger companies, farms, and upper classes are able to harness the informational power of new ICTs in ways that the poor cannot. Economic consolidation, spurred by investment in ICTs, can be seen in the vast regional ICT disparities in India, and across diverse countries in Latin America and Africa (Kenny 2006). In areas of the world where starvation is prevalent, disease runs rampant, and access to clean water is rare, the decision to fund investment in ICTs can seem a bit premature. After all, how useful is access to the internet to someone who is faced with more harrowing difficulties, such as providing food for one’s family?

To begin the investigation of this vexing intellectual quandary, the following section will pin down a few important definitions—and provide a brief explanation of the central puzzle this book addresses. I focus on ICT related technology— defined above—instead of technology per se. A broad definition of technology often encompasses ICT, yet its relationship with development is quite different. For instance technology was central to India’s Green Revolution of the 1960s, but this technology was agricultural and did not involve ICTs. This non-ICT type of technology will not be studied in depth here; yet this is not to say it is unimportant for development outcomes. From here on the term “technology” will refer to technological change, broadly conceived—and unless stated otherwise this includes ICTs. Also, the focus on poverty will be on the poor in developing nation states rather than the poor in developed states. I employ a broad-spectrum definition for what constitutes a developing country: any nationstate with per capita GDP below $20,000 in adjusted 2016 dollars.

Exploring the impact of ICTs on the poor and determining effective policy to mitigate challenges they face in utilizing ICTs is the main goal of this book. Although grossly simplifying, the question this book addresses can be boiled down to one sentence: why are there contradictory, inconclusive, and even baffling findings in the literature of the impact of ICTs on poverty over the last 25 years? In fact, despite the media’s attention to the “glitz and sparkle” of technology, from the latest unveiling of Apple’s hippest new gadget or the creative headquarters created ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: the ICT and poverty conundrum
• 2 Theoretical development: Enter governance
• 3 Quantitative analysis: A bird’s eye view
• 4 Case study Mexico: Technological bubbles and black holes
• 5 Where governance and human rights meet: An exploration of Mexico’s constitutional amendment declaring internet access a human right
• 6 Don’t be evil: In the digital age access to the internet should be a human right
• Conclusion
• Index