Authors:Helena Shilomboleni, Bernard Pelletier, Berhane Gebru Abstract: This article presents the main findings from a meta-review study of 15 agricultural development projects that employed a diversity of information and communications technology (ICT) tools in combination with other interventions to scale up innovations in low-income smallholder agriculture, predominately in sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, the study finds that interactive ICT tools and platforms are valuable in their capacity to improve the quality of agricultural extension and climate information services and, as such, can help smallholder farmers better manage predicted risks on the farm and elsewhere in the agriculture sector. The scope of impact in most of these projects, however, was largely premised on the numbers of beneficiaries reached (e.g., with information pertaining to an innovation). The efficacy of scaled-up results to achieve positive, long-lasting livelihood impacts in smallholder agriculture is more complex, and often requires effecting systemwide change on multiple dimensions, e.g., in societal values, institutional arrangements, market relations, and policy decision making. The scaling process here requires long-term attention, even if the impacts are not immediately apparent. PubDate: 2020-09-18 Issue No:Vol. 16 (2020)
Authors:Pranav Malhotra, Richard Ling Abstract: This study explores how access to the mobile phone affects the lives of female live-out (as opposed to live-in) domestic workers in Delhi. Through interviews with 102 workers, we find that the mobile phone helps to enhance their agency in determining their daily schedule, the amount of work they take on, and the public spaces they can safely occupy. It also engenders certain communication obligations at home and work, reinforcing the inequalities they face due to their marginalized position at the intersection of gender and social class. We draw upon contextually sensitive conceptualizations of agency to explain this phenomenon. In doing so, we argue that the device enhances the women’s capacity to act within the context of the social, cultural, and economic forces within which they are embedded. Further, we discuss the relationship between different types of access to technology and such conceptualizations of agency, highlighting its dynamic and complex nature. Thus, we move beyond dichotomies such as empowerment/disempowerment and access/no access to make a nuanced contribution to the literature on gender, mobile communication, and development. PubDate: 2020-09-10 Issue No:Vol. 16 (2020)
Authors:Judith Mariscal, Daniel Rojas-Lozano Abstract: Financial inclusion is recognized by governments and multilateral organizations as an enabler of economic development, while digital mobile devices are increasingly being considered as an efficient tool to incorporate unbanked population to the financial market. Despite this, close to 2 billion adults in the world remain unbanked as business models of digital financial services for the bottom of the pyramid have not proliferated. This paper argues that the state may play a crucial role as a catalyst to advance financial inclusion for the poor, particularly, we analyze how a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program may be a very effective platform to achieve this. We offer evidence and analyze a pilot project through which beneficiaries from the CCT program in Mexico (Prospera) were migrated from a modality of cash transfers to digital transfers. The results show this platform may indeed be effective if governments integrate diverse public entities into the mobile money ecosystem as well as promote market competition in the delivery service. PubDate: 2020-04-15 Issue No:Vol. 16 (2020)
Authors:Ibrahim Osman Adam Abstract: The interest in the role and contribution of ICT development, e-government development and the quality of a nation’s institutions on economic development is profound. Whilst extant research shows that the impact of institutions on national development is different across countries generally, the literature misses out on the role institutional quality plays in either the ICT development-economic development or the e-government-economic development nexuses. Relying on publicly available archival data, this study explores the mediating relationship of institutional quality by using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). Our results show a significant relationship between ICT development and e-government development, e-government development and institutional quality, e-government development and economic development as well as institutional quality on economic development. Also, the contribution of ICT development to economic prosperity can further be strengthened indirectly via the impacts of institutional quality. The study contributes to the theoretical discourse on the impact of ICT development and e-government development on economic development and the mediating effects of institutional quality. It offers some implications for practice and policy. PubDate: 2020-02-26 Issue No:Vol. 16 (2020)
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