Harnessing information and communication technologies (ICTs) to address urban poverty: Emerging open policy lessons for the open knowledge economy

Abstract

Urban poverty is a complex socio-economic problem. The expected doubling of the urban population relative to rural areas by 2050 without a corresponding economic and infrastructure growth will worsen the problem, especially in emerging economies. Poor urban residents face rising unemployment and underemployment, constrained access to financial services, market exploitation, poor housing, crime, unsatisfactory health services and scant education opportunities. Several players have attempted to address these problems through information and communication technologies. This paper isolated a few of these to determine critical success factors on the economic empowerment front.

Keywords:

• mobile phones
• ICT
• information and communication technology
• urban poverty
• slums
• developing world

Notes

See http://ww2.unhabitat.org/programmes/guo/statistics.asp for the UN-HABITAT definition of ‘slum’.

For more on cloud computing, see http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means-031.

N-Computing, for example, touts these as possibilities. See http://www.ncomputing.com/Default.aspx.

Mobile for Good Ltd. (2003). Kazi560. Retrieved November 14, 2010 from http://www.kazi560.co.ke/.

BSPL. Retrieved September 14, 2010, from http://www.babajob.com/.

On its website, Babajob lists jobs such as IT Professionals, Customer Representatives, Nurse-maids, Drivers, Housekeepers, Cooks, Child Caretakers, Gardeners, Security Guards, Construction Workers, Garment Workers, Office Helpers, Delivery Helpers, Receptionists and Cashiers/Retail Clerks.

According to Babajob, a check is provided when monthly earnings exceed 300R (∼$7).

A mentor can be a friend, relative, an NGO or a cyber-café operator.

Esoko. Retrieved November 11, 2010, from http://www.esoko.com/.

Manobi South Africa. Retrieved February 22, 2011, from http://www.manobi.sn/sites/za/.

WIZZIT Payments Pty. Retrieved November 14, 2010, from http://www.wizzit.co.za/.

For details on ABC, see Jaschke (2010) and Aker (n.d.).

In both cases, respective governments have given specific concessions to telecom companies in exchange for connectivity and service in commercially less competitive areas.