Information and Communication Technology

1.1.3 The Importance of ICTs 

ICTs present a revolutionary approach to addressing developmental questions due to their unequalled capacity to provide access to information instantaneously from any location in the world at a relatively low cost. This has brought down global geographic boundaries faster than ever thought possible. The resulting new interconnected digital world heralds the fluid and seamless flow of information, ideas, people and products.

The advances made in convergence technologies, whereby the mode of information available is no longer restricted to text but includes real-time audio and video data streaming, have many implications for and applications in all fields of human knowledge as well as in social, economic and political life. In fact, many governments, the private sector and civil society members are beginning to recognize the immense potential offered by ICTs in overcoming structural and historical weaknesses. They argue that ICTs offer the developing world the opportunity to ‘leapfrog’ several stages of development by the use of ‘frontier’ technologies that are more practical, environmentally sound and less expensive than undergoing the traditional stages and cycles of progress to the information society.