Posts Tagged ‘rwanda’

We are told that we live in an information age, a knowledge economy, and a network society. And while these are useful shorthands for pointing towards certain trends, of course, information, knowledge and networks are nothing new to our age, economy and society.

One of the strongest explanations for the historical importance of information and communication technologies to economic dynamism is James Beniger’s Control Revolution which convincingly argues that ICTs were originally necessary not to an information economy of services, but an industrial economy of manufacturing.

The telegraph, and even more mundane innovations like tables, arose in response to a “crisis of control.” The most poignant example of this was how the speed at which trains operated made traditional communication and managerial strategies inadequate. Crashes were frequent until ICTs were developed to overcome the crisis through alerting distant switching stations and tracking repair statuses.

What, then, does the rise of ICTs in developing countries mean for industrialization?

Many people hope that the Indian model, where ICT created an enormous service industry, is replicable (this form of leapfrogging is famously the goal of Rwanda’s President Kagame). But as we strive to use ICTs for productive activities in the developing world, we would be remiss to ignore manufacturing – the sector that stands between agricultural societies and service-based ones. As China becomes increasingly sophisticated, we see the initial stages of poorer countries replacing them as the world’s factory floor. Increasing the productivity and efficiency of industry in the developing world will require ICTs, from cloud computing down to file management systems. While this will mean some service-based businesses providing ICT solutions, I think a potentially more productive change will come as the structure of the economies shift from primarily agricultural to significantly industrial. This, I think, could be one of the more promising roles for ICTs in development.

Over the past couple days, millions of dollars have been donated to help Haiti through the use of text messaging. This will surely be chalked up as another example of the role that ICTs can play in saving the world. People with that view are right to be excited about what this signals – another example of technology lowering the transaction costs to doing good.

But it would be a mistake to believe that the good news is all there is.

As an example, Chris Blattman points to a recent paper [PDF] about the infamous “hate radio” in Rwanda that played a role in motivating the genocidal violence. By looking at the variety of radio coverage in villages (due to hills interfering with radio waves), the author concludes that “complete village radio coverage increased violence by 65 to 77 percent, and a simple counter-factual calculation suggests that approximately 9 percent of the genocide, corresponding to at least 45,000 Tutsi deaths, can be explained by the radio station.”

ICTs are a tool and it’s important to remember that other factors (people, geography) will impact whether they are used for good or ill.