Information and Communication Technologies For Development - Funding ICT4D 2.0

Funding ICT4D 2.0

In Professor Richard Heeks’ Paper No. 42, The ICT4D 2.0 Manifesto: Where Next for ICTs and International Development?, he cited that ICT4D 1.0 was driven by money from a relatively small number of international development agencies. ICT4D 2.0 looks set to be funded by a much more eclectic range of sources:

• Private sector. Private firms are increasingly investing in ICT4D for reasons which appear to lie at the rather murky interface between CSR (corporate social responsibility) and BOP (seeing the poor as bottom of the pyramid consumers).
• Southern governments. Previously – and still somewhat – reliant on donor funding in this area, some governments in the South are starting to invest their own funds in ICT4D, drawn by the push of community demand and the pull of perceived benefits.
• New donors. The 21st century is seeing a new wave of Southern aid donors emerging. Newly-industrialized and transitional nations such as China, India and South Korea are now active in development aid because of their own economies and expertise and they have been particularly keen on funding ICT4D; arguably more so than some Northern donors. Korea, for example, had already spent more than US$120m on ICT4D aid (over 10% of its total aid budget).
• Revived old donors. Funding for ICT4D from Northern and international (i.e. Northern-dominated) donors has followed a dot.com-like cycle. It ramped up massively from the late 1990s; fell away after the 2005 Tunis World Summit on the Information Society; and showed signs of reviving from 2008 with, for example, the UK's Department for International Development placing ICTs back onto its agenda and the World Bank doubling its funding for African ICT initiatives.

Heeks explains that this is vital in a broader sense because of the large sums being spent, stating that the development agencies like the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development, Japan's International Cooperation Agency, etc. spend at least US$2bn per year on ICTs for developing countries.