ICT and the Developing Countries: Towards a Way Forward

Today there is a widely held consensus on the potential of ICT to contribute towards socio-economic transformation of the developing countries. This has induced unparalleled initiatives undertaken at the instance of not only governments — both national and sub-national — but also the NGOs and Multilateral Organizations towards harnessing this technology for development. The initiatives, in general, lay emphasis on trade and investment liberalization and place the developing countries in a situation of perpetual attente — waiting for the transfers of technology from the North and focusing their attention on the need to attract transnational corporations to their shore (Mytelka and Ohiorhenuan 2000). Such an approach ignores the technological capabilities built up in the South over the past decades and has the danger of perpetuating technological dependence of the South (Joseph 2005b). No wonder scholars (e.g. Parayil 2005) have been concerned with the current digital world order and the discussions throughout the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) process made it clear that a majority of developing countries were unsatisfied with the status quo in this matter and called for a change (UNCTAD 2004b).