Beyond technology: making information work for livelihoods

David J. Grimshaw

'Farmers can access market prices with a mobile phone, but if there is no road, how do they use that information?'

(IFAD, 2003: 15)

The introduction to the book provides the reader with an overview of the six research projects within a research programme called 'Knowledge Networking for Rural Development in Asia Pacific' (ENRAP 2009). The role of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in development is first explored. The chapter then goes on to discuss the role of ICT to support livelihoods in the rural context of developing countries. A discussion of the livelihoods framework provides the overall conceptual framework that has been used by each of the projects. Some of the problems of using this framework in the context of an ICT intervention are elaborated and ICTs are positioned as having a functional role.

This volume attempts to do something new by reporting on a research programme that was specifically designed to measure impact on livelihoods. In five out of six chapters the methodology employed is derived from that used successfully in medicine: a control trial. The pros and cons of this methodology are discussed, including some of the ethical implications of using the method in a development intervention. The chapter concludes with an overview of each of the projects featured in the book.

The wider context

We all have visions. The vision at the heart of this book is that the communications and knowledge sharing capabilities of information and communications technologies (ICTs) will enhance the livelihoods of the rural poor. This is a big vision and sceptical readers will immediately wonder how computers or other technologies can deliver clean water, irrigation, improved yields, education, maternal health, etc.

All these 'things' or technologies depend on 'know how' or knowledge to make them work. ICTs can facilitate the exchange or sharing of knowledge. Thus in the language that we develop later in the chapter, this book is about the functional role of ICTs in promoting rural livelihoods. Knowledge and information cannot be easily pinned down; in fact some have described the process as 'trying to nail jelly to a wall'. How do we measure the impact of knowledge and information on livelihoods? Many attempts have been made to measure the impact, often using case studies that were never designed as research projects; rather, they were development interventions.

This volume attempts to do something new by reporting on a research programme that was specifically designed to measure impact on livelihoods. In five out of six chapters the methodology employed is derived from that used successfully in medicine. A medical intervention, typically the trial of a new therapeutic drug, is assessed by a randomized control trial. Broadly, the idea here is to have two groups: an intervention group that takes a prescribed drug and a control group that takes a placebo. The results from the two groups are then analysed. In the sixth project, based in China, the impact of the intervention is analysed via a survey. All the projects yield both quantitative and qualitative data.

The application of these approaches to ICT4D interventions has not been systematically applied previously. The reader should be aware of some inherent problems that are presented. First, unlike a prescribed drug that can be given to someone in a measured dose and where others are excluded, information when given to one person can be shared at little or no cost. This is what economists call a zero marginal cost of production. Secondly, information needs to be timely, accurate, verifiable and relevant for its use to be transformative. In practice many imperfections can be either knowingly or unknowingly introduced.

The contribution that this book makes to the field of ICT4D is twofold. First, there is a contribution to the literature on ICTs for rural livelihoods that each of the chapters makes by contributing to the known evidence in the field. Secondly, there is a contribution to impact methodology.

The role of ICTs in development

Many international initiatives have been established to harness ICTs for development on a global scale, in particular since the publication of the World Development Report on Knowledge for Development (World Bank, 1998). These include the Global Knowledge Partnership (founded in 1997), the DOT-Force (created in 2000) and the UN ICT Task Force (created in 2001). The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has hosted an international summit on the Information Society in 2003, the second phase of which took place in 2005. These initiatives aimed to build partnerships between civil society, the public and the private sectors to harness ICTs for development (Chapman et al., 2003).

One of the outcomes of The World Summit on the Information Society held in Geneva in December 2003 was a declaration of principles, one of which stated that: 'We strive to promote universal access with equal opportunities for all to scientific knowledge and the creation and dissemination of scientific and technical information, including open access initiatives for scientific publishing'.

(WSIS, 2003: 28)

In the same declaration a further principle is around the issues of intellectual property rights and knowledge sharing:

'... the wide dissemination, diffusion, and sharing of knowledge is important to encourage innovation and creativity. Facilitating meaningful participation by all in intellectual property issues and knowledge sharing through full awareness and capacity building is a fundamental part of an inclusive Information Society'.

(WSIS, 2003: 42)

'The ultimate goal of using ICTs for human development is to empower people to actively shape the world around them, enabling solutions that promote economic prosperity with equity, fostering democracy that is socially just and opening new opportunities for the realization of our full human potential'.

(Gomez et al., 2003)

These high aspirations for ICT contributing to development were largely shaped in an era when the internet, as delivered via telecentres, was the predominant model. Driven by a wish to improve access to knowledge and information the telecentre approach has since been criticized for failing to deliver benefits to poor people. Changes of the availability of technology, most evidently the mobile phone, have enabled access to information for a wide range of rural poor people. Customization of information and knowledge and their delivery via easy-to-use interfaces are found to be key success factors.

Low-income countries have fewer telephone lines, mobiles, computers and internet hosts. Mobile penetration rates reached 68% in developing countries at the end of 2010 (ITU 2010). Despite these statistics there is some encouraging news in the fact that the number of mobile phones has now overtaken land line phones in Africa. This shows that where there is an appropriate new technology it can 'leapfrog' earlier technologies.

There is a consensus that ICTs can play an important role in development, for example by connecting people to more accurate and up-to-date information, equipping them with new skills or connecting them to an international market. However, there is concern that the 'digital divide' is increasing the gap between the 'information haves and have nots' and this is the preoccupation of many of the initiatives established to address ICTs for development. In recent years many studies have been published, particularly by practitioners in the development field, on the use of ICTs for development. The term 'ICTs for development' incorporates a variety of different uses of ICTs: for health, e-governance, agriculture, advocacy and many more.

ICTs for development projects have been criticized for failing to build on existing systems or work in a participatory way. Critics argue that 'top down' projects, driven by the donor agenda, fail to achieve local ownership (Gumicio Dagron, 2001; Lloyd Laney, 2003). The concept of the 'design-reality gap' (Duncombe and Heeks, 1999) highlights the distinction between the context in which an ICT project or application is designed and the context of its use in developing countries.

Although ICTs have been applied to development for the past 15 years, the technology itself has not remained static over that period: there has been continual innovation in terms of hardware, software and applications. It is possible to conceptualize this distinction between innovation and applications as shown in Figure 1.1. Using the diagram helps us to place the work of the ENRAP projects as being applications in the domain of agriculture (right-hand side of the diagram). However, some contributions are made to the left-hand side of the diagram, for example, the chapter concerning agricultural price transparency in Sri Lanka tests business models that are innovative and if successful will lead to sustainable change benefiting rural people's livelihoods.

Figure 1.1 shows a mind map of the current ICT4D landscape where two streams of research activity are distinguished. The purpose of drawing this distinction is to highlight two approaches of researching and gathering evidence about the effectiveness of ICTs. Mainstreamed activities are shown on the right-hand side; these are applications of ICT where the evidence base for action is robust. In recognition of the innovative nature of ICT (as new technologies and business models emerge) the left-hand side of the diagram shows areas of research that need to be pursued independently of the application areas. As with any classification or taxonomy the two categories are not always mutually exclusive.

Why ICTs for livelihoods?

The notion of an 'application of ICT' has inherent within it the idea that the domain of knowledge, in this case agriculture, is the key to success. In other words it is the value of the information and knowledge that is transformative. Information is the resource that can be transmitted, but knowledge is in two parts: first the existing framework of understanding of the recipient or provider of information; and secondly, the new knowledge that can be assimilated as a result of the ability to transmit information (and whether ICT is an effective tool to convert information into knowledge). The ICT is a way of delivering that information. Taking such a starting point gives an emphasis to knowledge about agriculture and in particular an understanding of the ways in which poor people can improve their agricultural and nonagricultural activities in rural areas.

Using the livelihoods approach provides a framework for thinking about ICT interventions and research that is primarily focused on the needs of poor farmers rather than on the technology. It also serves to remind us of the inherent complexity of poverty (World Bank, 2007). The framework was used as a basis for the ENRAP series of projects as the following extract from the programme describes.

'Agriculture remains the predominant rural livelihood in the Asia-Pacific region. Although rural livelihoods are not exclusive to agriculture-based activities, they comprise the lion's share of rural livelihoods in the Asia-Pacific region. Information and communication play an important role in agricultural production and rural livelihood resilience. As regions become more connected and at once exposed to the vulnerabilities of globalization, what role can information and communication tools play in strengthening livelihood outcomes for the rural poor? Despite increasing anecdotal evidence of ICTs improving livelihoods in developing countries, this unfortunately has not translated into a proportionate body of evidence-based research to support such claims. ENRAP's ICTs for livelihoods research component seeks to build this evidence through supporting a number of evaluation and action research studies in this area and analysing the findings using a robust research framework. Through the ICTs for Rural Livelihoods Research initiative of ENRAP, it is hoped that the outcomes of this research can be shared and made accessible to enhance livelihoods. Thereby, providing opportunities for replication and up-scaling of practices and approaches, particularly in the context of IFAD projects and partners, for rural development'.

(ENRAP, 2009)

There have been a few attempts to apply the livelihoods framework to assess poverty reduction and ICT, for example by Chapman and Slaymaker (2001) and Batchelor and Norrish (2010). Duncombe (2006) suggests a modification of the livelihoods model (see Figure 1.3) to specifically show a role for information. His model has two roles for information: an analytical role and a functional role. The analytical role envisages the ways in which information can be used to assess vulnerability, while the functional role envisages how ICTs can be applied to create favourable outcomes. The projects discussed in this book are using the livelihoods model in this latter functional role.

The research projects applied the model by assessing the contribution of information and knowledge to the livelihood assets: social, physical, financial and human. Chapter 8 assesses the impact of the projects in a table derived from this framework. The main impacts were measured in terms of the livelihood outcomes such as increases in income, reduced vulnerability and improved food security. Some additional outcome measures not explicitly included in the framework came within the remit of the projects. These covered the ways in which ICT had an effect on social networks.

Social networks could be considered as part of the structures and processes box in Figure 1.3. Other issues covered here include the mobile phone network operators, the business models deployed by them and the actors themselves in the research process. Governance and wider policy considerations also come within this framework and these were noted by researchers but played little role in the analysis of the outcomes.

The challenges of using ICT for rural development

What do we know about the successful employment of ICTs for rural livelihoods? The evidence to date tends to be based on successful case studies; this gives an on-going challenge of how to scale these projects. A review held by the World Bank (2007: 1) concluded that 'the challenge is to understand better what business models and technology models work best in a given context, and what roles should be played by various partners in scaling these models in different contexts. It does seem clear that the needs and demand are so great that small scale entrepreneurial efforts and donor pilots will not be sufficient'. We might also usefully ask what do we know about the successful use of ICT (full stop)?

There is a literature on the use of ICT by business organizations which goes back over four decades. One framework from that literature might be useful to help us frame the challenge of learning about new technology and using it effectively. The learning phenomena have been observed before in other domains of application of ICT, most notably in general business. First noted by Gibson and Nolan (1974) was the notion that organizations go through a series of stages in their utilization of ICT. Amended by Nolan (1979) and many others subsequently (see Galliers and Sutherland, 2003), all variations of the model show an 'S-curve' over time as illustrated in Figure 1.4. Broadly, this concept suggests that over time there are periods of rapid deployment of ICT followed by some consolidation. There is pure enthusiasm followed by learning and changes in practice.

These concepts, although much debated and criticized in the literature, are at the very least a useful way of thinking about stages that people and organizations go through as they adopt new technologies. Since ICTs, by their very nature, are generic there is always scope for innovation, adaptation and change. For example, we know that the mobile phone was originally designed for voice communication yet one of the key successful applications is text messaging. These emergent properties of ICT are a key challenge to manage yet at the same time they offer the opportunity to customize applications to specific needs.

The ENRAP's programme set out with the high-level challenge of how to increase the sharing of knowledge and information for rural poverty reduction. This was further articulated as two indicators. First, that IFAD projects and associated partners are making greater use of regional and country programme networks to actively share knowledge and information. Second, ICT applications that have proved successful in improving rural livelihoods are accessible to network members for replication and scaling up.