Pro-poor social and economic opportunities in the African ICT innovation ecosystem.Perspectives and case study of Iringa, Tanzania.

inclusive innovation, are at the heart of efforts to harness ICT for development (ICT4D). In the context of rural Africa, this research investigated the pro-poor social and economic opportunities, both potential and actually exploited, in the local ICT innovation ecosystems, and identified how policy-makers, NGOs and private sector actors could turn such opportunities into poverty-alleviating measures in the future. This research project is based on desk research, as well as extensive field research in Iringa, Tanzania. Iringa was chosen as the case study locale, as it typifies, in many respects, the rural social, cultural, economic and geographic landscape in Tanzania and Sub-Saharan Africa. While we do not claim that our case study projects all of Africa as such, we argue that some of the central research findings and conclusions bear broadly upon ICT and development, not least because of the characteristics of our case study locale. Since the late 1990s, the “mobile revolution” in Africa has created a huge number of new jobs and micro-entrepreneurs providing critical maintenance for the continental ICT infrastructure, as well as new income opportunities at the base of the pyramid. An analysis of these social and economic opportunities, which include Internet cafes, mobile phone sales, repair and related services, SIM-card and phone-time voucher vending, and services for local telecommunication base stations, in Iringa, demonstrates that they have real poverty-alleviation impacts. Moreover, the description of this local ICT trade and service ecology was accompanied by an analysis of the underlying skills, competencies and microentrepreneurial strategies, and we identify what types of factors trigger and inhibit people from low-income communities in seizing potential micro-entrepreneurial opportunities. A secondary objective of the research project was to map the local ICT innovation ecosystem in Iringa, and to identify and describe how the technical ICT infrastructure reality frames all social and economic opportunities. This work reviewed the coverage of networks, the diffusion of devices, availability, affordability, reliability, and so forth. Measurement and assessment of these aspects are important factors in analysing how individual people, as well as organizations, relate to the opportunities provided by ICT, and our research points out that the technical and economic limitations of local ICT innovation ecosystems weigh heavily on the ability of rural communities to capitalise on the latest waves of ICT technology. ICT-related social and economic opportunities call into question the narrow economic or investment focused impact assessment of ICT’s contribution to development. The ICT-related social and economic opportunities (that we analysed) often reside squarely within the informal economy, and also contribute to development in terms of social and cultural empowerment, and in many other ways that are significant to the poor, but that are relatively invisible or vaguely captured in national economic and social indicators. The objective of this work was to consider in detail what types of technical, availability, reliability, and affordability issues bear upon the creation and emergence of pro-poor aspects of ICT in rural African communities. By verifying and analysing the technical reality in Iringa, we also developed perspectives on how to consider inclusive and pro-poor aspects in future planning of ICT activities in development cooperation, as well as how these issues could be embedded in technology foresights and roadmaps specifically for developing country.