Sustainable Development Through ICT : The Need for Entrepreneurial Action

The emergence and wide-spread use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in various fields is considered (rightly so) the most powerful tool for achieving the developmental objectives of the world’s poorest regions. However, a review of the ICT projects in the less developed regions has shown that most of such projects have not survived beyond their ‘sponsor-supported’ life. Further reviews of the literature and the study of two illustrative cases of successful ICT projects – one from the private and the other from the public sector – have brought out a few essential ingredients necessary for the effective use of ICT for sustainable development, which are identified as: entrepreneurial action, feasible revenue model, felt need for the project/technology, involvement of the user-community, pilot start-up on a small scale, and technical support on a continuous basis. One of the oft-neglected implications of these findings is that the implementation of a new technology should be preceded by the development of the general capabilities of the people in the region, so that they would be able to make effective use of the new technology beyond the initial period of sponsor-support