ICT, Development, and Poverty Reduction: Five Emerging Stories

Six years later, much has changed. Trends highlighted atthe Harvard Forum and elsewhere have progressed, and many have accel-erated. Communication and the networking enabled by information andcommunication technologies (ICTs) are proving to be economically, socially,and politically transformative. Their central roles as enablers of opennessand innovation are striking. The spread and appropriation of ICTs havebeen a key dimension of globalization, pushing societies to build commu-nications systems and manage them well, and to develop infrastructureand the capacity to use it. ICT regulation and policies have improved inmany countries, often in response to good research and advocacy.The most striking change, however, has been explosive growth inmobile phone access and use in all regions, with private—and in somecases, nonproat—operations supplying access to people at the “bottomof the pyramid” (BoP) by way of very low-margin, high-volume businessmodels.