Abstract

This paper throws light on the difficult question about why technological innovation has failed to thrive in low income countries. With the capability to drive humanity’s remarkable propensity to make innovations in business, health etc., and to enhance the quality of life, ICT has raised expectations for a possible economic growth in low income countries. The problem is that ICT is insufficient when simply deployed under the status quo model of development without engaging the important sets of complementary social behaviors and structures in society to support the adoption. The full benefits of ICT deployment will not occur until the technical and social components of the ICT transfer process are harmoniously managed and a fundamental capacity for long term development of the technology is mastered in the poor countries. In this regard, developing countries need to configure viable competencies within local cultures to stimulate technological innovation that can lead to lasting ICT benefits.

Introduction

Technology is regarded by many as a complex social enterprise which extends the human ability to change the world. It equips humans with the ability to cut, shape, or put materials together, move things around and to reach farther with their hands, voices and senses (Rutherford and Ahlgren, 1990). Technology is the engine which drives humanity’s remarkable propensity to imitate nature, adapt to environmental conditions and to also make innovations to enhance the quality of life (Alcorn, 1997). Technology is therefore not only vital for human development but also, it is the tool with which humans distinguish themselves from other animal species. The influential relationship between technology and human society dates back to the beginning of human history. There are no known people, now or in human history or even in prehistoric times that have not used technology in some minimal sense to explore the resources in their environments in the attempt to improve their welfare (Ihde, 1990). Every stage of human development has thus been linked with some technology that supplied the tools which were used to construct the social order (Ihde, 1990; Burke, 1985). Whether it was the crude tools of the Stone Age, the agricultural machinery of the green revolution, or the factories of industrialization, the prevailing technology determines the most profitable work people do, the popular tools people use and institutions that come to be established in human societies (Mitchell, 2003, Mumford, 1934).

History reveals that societies that recognize the importance of new technologies and harness them succeed and those that are deprived of access to them, or societies that resist the tide of the technological evolution often fail to advance in human progress. In spite of the important role that technology plays in human advancement, the pattern of access to hi-tech tools shows a significant separation between rich and poor countries. The concentration of wealth, resources and technological innovations in rich countries and the lack of such opportunities in poor countries create a technological dualism which results in imbalances in access to technology, wealth and power between the rich and poor nations of the world (Singer, 1970). This gap in technological adoption and usage often fuels an endless debate in human society. A similar debate is currently raging over attempts to deploy ICT for development in low income countries. It is this debate and especially how the developing countries of the world may deploy information technology to harness the economic development process which forms the subject matter of discussion in this paper.

This paper seeks to address the question about why technological innovation has failed to take root in the developing world, and then explore ways that ICT can be deployed to stimulate economic growth and help poverty reduction in countries in the region. The first part of the paper discusses the causes of technological failures and asks whether ICT can be used to reverse decades of stagnant economic growth to bring prosperity to developing countries. The paper then examines the economic development potentials of ICT for the poor countries and argues that the potentials may not be realized unless behaviors are developed to support ICT adoption in the region. The technical and social components of the ICT transfer process must also be managed in a synergistically productive relationship to ensure successful adoption. The paper concludes with suggestions for configuring viable competencies within local cultures to stimulate technological innovation that can lead to lasting ICT benefits.

The Promise of ICT for Development in Low Income Countries

Information flow is critical to the socioeconomic activities that make up the economic development process. The economic benefits of information handling technologies are derived from a long succession of innovations that played crucial enabling roles in past economic development processes in Europe, North America and parts of Asia (Beninger, 1986). Through timely delivery of information requirements for production, marketing and consumption, ICT makes possible the provision of credits, supply of raw materials and the distribution and sale of goods. Thus, ICT is not a simple connection between people, but a vital link in the chain of the economic development process itself (Hudson, 2001). ICT deployment and economic development are therefore not mutually exclusive. Rather, the two work to reinforce each other. Economic development is linked with growth in access to ICT whilst efficient applications of the tools can lead to greater wealth, prosperity and economic development in low income countries. Besides facilitating the production process, information dissemination through such ICT tools as mobile phones is critical to improvements in human welfare, education, health and the empowerment of under-represented groups. For example, the majority of poor people in developing countries are not just poor because they lack the essential resources in life. In many cases, the people are poor and continue to be so because they lack access to information about income-earning opportunities, going market prices for their produce and also lack the knowledge about local institutions that shape their lives (Marker et. al., 2002). The poor therefore stands to benefit tremendously from improved information flows through society that may improve the effectiveness of government agencies and also help them to access markets and institutions that directly affect their welfare.

Unlike previous engines of economic development (i.e. factories, industry, etc.) whose influences were limited to urban enclaves in the developing world, beneficial impacts of ICT tools can reach anywhere via wireless networks without an expensive landline infrastructure and with little capital outlay. As a result, tools such as the mobile phone provide a special advantage to many people in developing countries who have in the past been excluded from the means of economic advancement. While market solutions have not proven to be useful for redistributing economic rewards fairly between urban and rural dwellers in these countries, the unique openness of information technology could reverse this trend and spread economic benefits around (Attali 1997). The social and economic dividends of ICT adoption are therefore very high in developing countries partly because wireless networks expand interactivity between rural and urban locations to spread economic benefits to communities in the hinterlands. ICT can therefore be an enabling tool for meeting many of the development challenges that face low income countries of the world (Chacko, 2005).

On the other hand, the ICT technology is certainly insufficient when simply deployed under the status quo mix of policies without engaging the important set of complementary social behaviors and structures within the communities to support its adoption and sustained applications. For low income countries that are attempting to develop with ICT, successful deployment of the technology requires a rejection of the mainstream rationality that has dominated economic development policy since the last century.  Instead reliance on locally creative and developmentalist policies that closely resemble strategies that the Western developed nations adopted, when they themselves were trying to industrialize, would be beneficial.(Chang, 2007; Haque, 1999).

Why Technological Intervention Fails in Developing Countries

The adoption and use of a new technology causes disruptions in the socio-cultural system of a nation and induces a change from established practices to distinctly different and complex forms of social practice. The deployment of ICT into the predominantly traditional societies of developing countries is therefore very disruptive. In view of this, a seamless integration of both the technical and socio-cultural systems of societies where technology transfer takes place is necessary for a thriving ICT deployment. Unfortunately, technological transfer to developing countries is driven by a perspective that is based on the development experience of Western industrialized nations. Under this Eurocentric rationality, progress in technological adoption in the poor countries is measured by the capacities of the poor countries to absorb and replicate practices that have already occurred in Western industrialized nations (Servaes & Malikhao, 2002). Even though this rationality conveys only one particular set of values, it still dominates over other forms of rationality pursued in all development projects that occur in low income countries (Avgerou, 2000).

While this rationality has been instrumental in the definition of technological and economic development problems in the poor countries, and the solutions to those problems, it has been unsuccessful in streamlining people’s behavior towards the achievement of such solutions (Avgerou, 2000). The failure to mobilize behavior in support of technological innovation is partly due to the fact that sociocultural systems in Western Industrialized nations and the developing countries are different with respect to the degree to which they tamper economic productivity and efficiency with social values. The rationality of the mainstream development model is at variance with traditional values and belief systems in the communities where reciprocative and redistributive rationality displayed in beliefs such as mutual responsibility, solidarity among groups and common welfare of group members prevail over competition and the freedom of enterprise to accumulate capital (Corea, 2000). Consequently, attempts to improve the living conditions of the people by deploying technology via this economic rationality take on new meanings. As a result, the technology transfer process generates mainly negative reactions from the people. The resistance occurs because the new incompatible arrangements that accompany the deployment of technology threatens entrenched interests, local power structures and ingrained ways of doing things in the society (Avgerou, 2001; Madon, 1993).

Shoib and Nandhakumar (2003) have observed that the resistance which results from the clash of rationalities results in two main courses of action. First, it sparks off frantic calls from supporters of the mainstream rationality to change the local systems of values and reasoning and rather adopt the Western rationality which is conducive to technological adoption and modernization. This approach proves to be sustainable only among a small section of the society such as the rich and educated found mainly in urban areas. The majority of the people reject the economic rationality and ultimately the inconsistency between the rationale for transferring the technology and the rationality derived from historically evolved local systems of values leads to the abandonment of the project. Avgerou, (2000:1) has observed that often when this happens, the communities are erroneously labeled “as problematic hosts of technology” on the grounds that they do not only lack the economic resources and the capabilities to develop and deploy modern infrastructure, but that they also do not to make good use of technology transfer and adoption. Second, resistance to the technological project leads to demands from critics for the withdrawal of the technology on the justification that it is the product of Western rationality which is inappropriate for the people in developing countries.

The viewpoint which discards ICT altogether as irrelevant or inappropriate for adoption in developing countries is misguided because the idea conveys the critique of ICT as inherently serving one particular system of values and hence bound to perpetuate the subjugation of other identities (Shoib and Nandhakumar, 2003). We know today that technology is not only constituted within its social milieu but it has also proved to be shapeable and capable of serving radically different ends including social control and surveillance, or emancipation and empowerment (Corea, 2000). Thus, in response to the assertion that some cultures are incapable of economic development, Chang (2007), a Harvard Economist, has explained that not too long ago, the Germans were considered to be corrupt and the Japanese people were said to be lazy (terms that are used today to describe people in developing countries). The author explains that after the countries attained economic development nobody considers the Japanese to be lazy or the Germans to be corrupt. Chan therefore argues that culture is not a determinant of economic development (as it is often written of cultures in underdeveloped countries), but it is economic development which alters culture (ibid).

The problem with relying on locally derived rationalities and institutional mechanisms for technology transfer in developing countries is not that the model does not work. Unquestionably, ICT-related projects such as the Mpesa mobile banking scheme in Kenya and the Grameen Telecom and Banking initiatives in Bangladesh that are based on local rationalities and preferences reach several million villagers in Kenya and Bangladesh respectively (BBC, 2009). The mobile banking schemes introduce many villagers who operate mainly in the informal economic sector outside of the national economies into the national formal economy – a move that can enhance revenue collection for economic development. The problem is rather that examples of technological projects that are based purely on local sociocultural systems and everyday practices of the people are not popular in international and even national development plans and have not therefore been widely applied. Accordingly, the failures of technological transfer to developing countries are not because a specific rationality is embedded in a particular technology which makes it inherently inappropriate for adoption. Rather, Avgerou (2000) has rightly argued that often particular technologies are mobilized in support of particular regimes of truth and transferred to developing countries as part of transferring those particular ways of organizing economic and social affairs. The failures of technological innovation in developing countries are therefore symptomatic of a rationality that is fundamentally at odds to the objectives the projects were designed to achieve in the various countries (ibid).

Another recurring feature of technological failures in developing countries is a flaw in the methodology for implementing technology projects in the region. The rationality for transferring technology to the poor countries makes no room for changes in the culture and human behaviors that will support the long term adoption and applications of the technology. On the other hand, we find in technologically advanced societies that the culture of the people embodies sets of behaviors that propel society towards continuous technological innovation and increasing economic output. The behavior involves a learning and problem solving orientation which manifests itself in a willingness to solve problems using ingenious means and whatever resources are available for the sake of improvement and anticipated rewards (Corea, 2007). Conversely, stagnation occurs in cultural systems (such as those in developing countries) that are not geared towards technological innovation for behavior that produces continuous change is not being generated (ibid). However, this lack of innovation is not a reflection of the failures of the people that compose the social system but rather, a failure of the architecture of the social system itself in not producing behavior that is conducive to technological adoption (Goulet, 1971). For example, through sustained and growing subscription to mobile phones and wireless networks, citizens of many developing countries have aptly demonstrated that they are capable of engaging in behaviors that are supportive of technological adoption. What’s missing is leadership and the courage to design and implement changes in the critical aspects of the social milieu to generate the learning of behaviors that support technological innovation.

Thus, whereas significant potentials exist for the adoption and use of ICT for development in developing countries, the ability to manage the transition from adoption to applications and the realization of the potential benefits is vital for a successful outcome. An important challenge for the deployment of ICT in the low income countries therefore is the need to study the reinvention of traditional social systems to generate behaviors that will facilitate sustained technological innovation. The long term nurturing of attitudes and behavior that intrinsically motivate citizens of developing countries to engage technology permanently is therefore a much more important issue to be addressed in ICT adoption than the large scale implementation of costly ICT projects that will immediately be rendered obsolete through structurally-induced inertia (Madon, 1993). It is therefore important for the low income countries that are presently characterized by slowly changing cultural systems to generate sets of learning behaviors that are aimed at continuous innovation since that will in the long run materialize in the use of advanced technologies and the qualitative refinements in life expected from advances in technology (Corea, 2000).

Another reason for the failure of technological innovation in poor countries is the rationality of technological deployment which emphasizes economic growth to the total neglect of socio-cultural development. This is particularly true for ICT which many believe developing countries can use to correct decades of stagnant economic growth and leapfrog several stages of development into economic prosperity (ILO, 2001). Whilst economic growth may be the optimal outcome of ICT adoption, standard ICT tools such as the mobile phone and even personal computers are not necessarily the best kinds of tools that can help bring about rapid economic prosperity into developing countries. Unlike the industrialized countries of the world with large and established service and manufacturing sectors that make intensive use of ICT, the economies of developing countries are dominated by raw material production and subsistence activities where information technology plays less an effective role in the production process. As a result, ICT adds much less value to the economic production processes in these countries than it does in the economies of industrialized countries.

Additionally, domestic markets of developing countries include large numbers of people with significantly low disposable incomes such that the responses to opportunities offered by ICT are often recorded more in social uses than direct economic applications of the technology (OECD, 2003). It is however important to mention that factors that inhibit ICT deployment for economic development in developing countries do not suggest that ICT investment will not happen, or that benefits in economic productivity and human welfare will not occur in these countries. Rather, investments in ICT and resulting economic benefits will take longer to materialize in the developing world than it will do in technologically advanced nations such as USA and Japan or even in transitional economies such as Brazil and India (OECD, 2003). Measuring the initial success of ICT deployment in developing countries should not therefore be based solely on rates of economic growth but also, on progressive enhancements to the social and overall well being of the people.

Cultivating Favorable Environments for Effective Deployment of ICT

The cultural systems in developing countries of the world are often erroneously dismissed as unimportant and hence neglected in efforts to transfer technology into the region. However, the local culture is one unique institution which strongly determines which development intervention will succeed and which will fail (Mitchell, 2003). As explained earlier, the discounting of the historically-evolved systems of values and reasoning within technology-adopting low income countries has been a major contributing factor to the failures in technological innovation that occur in the region. This is because the socio-cultural system influences not only the capability to create socially fitting ways for using technology but also, the ability to manage their integration into work processes and human activities (Davenport, 1993; Porter, 1990). Culture dictates the initial uses of technology and also determines the types of usage and whether a technology such as ICT may be mainly used for social or economic activities. Even though ICT tools are known to easily incorporate multiple uses and different modes of organization because of their reflexivity and mobility that allow for diverse applications, the tools do not create jobs by themselves. By their nature, ICT tools must necessarily be incorporated into day-to-day economic and social lives of the people and be actively used for their development potentials to be fully realized. Users must therefore be engaged in some form of activity and then make elaborate plans to take advantage of capabilities of the technology to network their businesses and social tasks. In industrialized nations with long traditions of technological innovation, the choices and uses of technology are influenced mainly by economic factors such as the drive for profits, capital accumulation and increased market shares. On the other hand, in developing countries where industrial production is low and economic activities involve very low applications of technology, specific plans need to be put in place to redirect and steer the applications of technology into productive ventures. In the absence of such guiding plans, ICT tools (e.g. mobile phone) are used to confirm and/or promote existing socio-cultural practices that sometimes contribute very little to national economic development.

It is therefore important for developing countries whose citizens have already embarked on mass subscription to such ICT tools as mobile phones, to develop competencies from their cultures to guide and redirect the applications of the technology into viable and productive activities. In this regard, Bunker (2001) has identified some of these competencies that may be adopted to direct applications of ICT into economically viable ventures. The first competency is related to the ability to envision new products, new services or new functions from a consideration of the potential capabilities of the available ICT tools. The recognition of potentially new uses of the tools could result from a search for technological solutions to existing problems, or the exploration of new problems with the tools (Hammer & Champy, 1993). An example of this is the use of mobile phones in mobile banking to expedite money transfer from urban to rural areas. The second competency involves the ability to identify the potential capability of the available ICT tools for improving existing production, packaging or marketing practices in the community. For example, mobile phones can be used to relay daily retail prices of goods sold in urban areas to small scale producers in rural areas to enhance the profits of producers. The third competency depends on the ability to recognize the potentials for need-driven satisfaction or new demands among consumers, and figure out ways that ICT capabilities can be developed to support or fulfill such potentially new demands. Equally important is the competency which is indispensable to the previous three and entails the ability to skillfully manage and bring about changes in practices of production or packaging, and corresponding changes in the functionality of ICT tools, to achieve the expected improvements.

Designing the competencies from local culture and belief systems requires (a) the ability to recognize potential new applications of information technology and (b) the capability to mobilize and manage human resources to achieve the desired uses and the transformations in human behavior that will support and sustain those uses. In this enterprise, education is important because those charged with the duty to examine local practices and develop new uses for ICT will need to open up to new ideas and then reframe the values and traditions in society to match capabilities of the new technology (Bunker, 2001). Incentive schemes would also serve to enlist commitment to the technological adoption as well as sustain the motivation to change the behavior of potential consumers following the technological adoption (Ciborra, 1999). The competencies can emerge from grassroots experimentation or may result from planned deliberations and consultation with stakeholders in the community.

Conclusion

The desire to understand and realize the potential benefits of ICT for economic development in low income countries have grown in recent times but there is little evidence that the rationality which currently guides economic development and ICT deployment can deliver economic prosperity to the poor countries of the world. Pertinent questions remain about why technological adoption fails in developing countries and yet very little effort has been made to examine the nature of technological adoption beyond the perspective of a development intervention. It seems the urgency to see developing countries catch up with the information rich nations and the promise of information technology have overshadowed the need to sufficiently assess the causes of failure in technological adoption ahead of ICT deployment in low income countries. There is indeed value in ICT deployment and information dissemination in developing countries but the implementation of ICT projects ought to be complemented by substantial local inputs. For the potentials of the ICTs to be translated into digital opportunities to assist with development in the poor countries, the current rationality for transferring technology into the region must change and assumptions that underlie current development must be discarded. Instead the countries need to rely on creative strategies that are based on locally evolved value and belief systems. A way must also be found to manage a flawless integration of the changes in both the technical and socio-cultural systems that accompany the deployment of ICT. A successful ICT deployment will thus require that we look beyond the very strong anticipations of ICT usage outlined in developed countries and in mainstream policies and rather identify and nurture competencies within local cultures that are compatible with sustained applications and development of the technology.

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