ICT and poverty - a community-based user approach

The digital challenges ahead for a country like South Africa can be met with different types of action. So far the emphasis has been on increased fixed line and mobile telephony access for disadvantaged communities. There are two major concerns : 1. The efforts have been main carried out in supply-led and top down ways either by the government or market operators.2. There has been no successful drive towards increased public access to computer use and internet. The data will be collected with a quasi- experimental approach . Using similar quantitative and qualitative data gathering techniques, and a panel study design, the objective is to provide measurable evidence on the impact of ICTs on the reduction of poverty. The approach embodies 4 stages: I. A baseline study of selected groups in selected communities; II. A participatory learning process with the groups, resulting in the design of the subsequent (intervention) stage III. An intervention designed to accelerate the use of ICTs among groups in s ome of these communities which will be randomly selected as a ?treatment? group, while delaying the provision of this training by one year for the ?control? group; IV. An impact study - second wave of data collection. Impacts of the interventions on digi tal poverty as well as of ICT usage on the wider dimensions of poverty will be analysed.