Technological progress is a considerable driving force behind economic growth, citizen engagement and job creation. Information and communication technologies (ICTs), in particular, are reshaping many aspects of the world’s economies, governments and societies.
In developing countries, public officials, businesses and citizens are working together to harness the transformative power of ICTs to make services more efficient, catalyze economic development and strengthen social networks. More than 75 percent of people around the world now have access to a cell phone, with the number of global mobile-cellular subscriptions quickly approaching 7 billion. In addition, new services and industries are rapidly emerging.
In Tanzania, for example, mobile money agents now outnumber all other financial intermediaries by a factor of 10 to one. More than half of those living on less than US$2 a day in that country have access to mobile technology.
At the same time, access to mobile and fixed broadband remains prohibitively expensive in some countries where lack of ICT infrastructure and regulatory bottlenecks still hamper broadband development. Residential fixed-broadband services cost about 30 percent of average monthly Gross National Income (GNI) per capita in developing countries – compared to just 1.7 percent of average national income in wealthy countries. This average masks vast discrepancies between and within countries, affecting opportunities available to citizens. In Djibouti, for example, a mobile broadband package costs more than the income of the country's poorest 60 percent of the population.
When done right, ICT infrastructure investment and policy reform can empower poverty reduction and shared prosperity. A 10 percent increase in high-speed internet connections leverages a 1.4 percent increase in economic growth (on average) in developing countries.