Background
In rural areas of developing countries, promoting economic development implies enhancing income generation and livelihood opportunities by improving the access of small-scale producers and small businesses to markets for goods, services and commodities, to basic services (i.e. education, vocational training, finance) and to information on market conditions. Improving the business environment around the rural producers in a way that they can benefit from local, national and international markets is hence a key enabler for rural economic development.
Improving access to markets however requires overcoming a number of challenges that hamper the competitiveness of rural producers; including: a) insufficient market orientation of their production and dependence on a small number of economic activities, b) remoteness and sparse population density, lack of transport infrastructure, c) insecurity and lack of effective rule of law, d) inadequate physical infrastructure and basic services, lack of support infrastructure, e) dysfunctional land and property ownership structures.
The positive impact of Information and Communication Technologies
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have a positive and significant impact on economic growth. A recent study from the World Bank1 shows for instance that, in low and middle-income economies, for each 10 percent increase in Internet broadband penetration, the economic growth rate increases by about 1.38 percentage points. Business initiatives but also policies and regulations that enable or promote investment in ICT infrastructures and services in rural areas may thus boost economic growth in these regions.
ICT can also play a significant role to foster economic development by improving the business environment in rural areas. They can provide rural businesses with access to information (e.g. price, trends, market size, contacts, “know how”) as well as financial and non-financial services (e.g. business development services). At the same time ICT generate new business opportunities and improve the business enabling environment by reducing transaction costs and improving the investment climate. ICT facilitate networking and partnering, and can therefore contribute to value chain promotion. By connecting rural areas more closely to national and global information, knowledge, or social networks, ICT can motivate young entrepreneurs to stay in these regions. ICT can thus play a significant role in fostering efficiency, productivity and innovations in rural areas.
The Conference
Against this background and on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), GTZ will be organizing an international conference on the potential of ICT for contributing to economic development in rural areas.
The conference aims at highlighting the role ICT can play for economic development in rural areas. By bringing together experts and practitioners working in the area of ICT4D, economic development and rural development, it will enable an exchange of ideas, international good practices and trends in this field of development cooperation. The presentation of effective ICT solutions, business models as well as policies will illustrate the impact and potential of ICT for economic development in rural areas. The conference ultimately aims to outline future fields of action for Development Cooperation and to promote cooperation between public and private actors in interventions of development cooperation in rural economic development.
The conference will be held in English and will be part of a series of conferences on ICT4D (together with the 2008 e-Government conference or the 2009 e-Health conference).
Further information:
Venue: GTZ-House Berlin
Date: 18-19. November 2010
Participants: Invited Guests
- Preliminary Agenda
- Twitter: #ictgtz
- Conference blog: http://ict.ez-blogs.de/ict4d-berlin-conference (will go live 12. November 2010)
- The following organisations will be represented: FAO, ITU, UNCTAD, InfoDev, CTO, BMZ, BMELV, BMWi, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, DFID, GTZ, DED, KfW, InWent, Tufts University, Hasso-Plattner-Institute, Fraunhofer, University of Siegen, Royal Holloway, IICD, Kabissa, LinkNet Zambia, Kiwanja.net, GSMA, BITKOM, SAP, NSN, Manobi, MicroBanker, Detecon, Intelecon, BIID, etc.
Talk-A: Talk Agriculture & Rural Development 
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