Click for the latest ICT developments
From the early 1980s, developing countries began adopting national ICT policies. This process was propelled to a large extent by the advent of the personal computer and increasing demand for related hardware and software applications. The emergence of the global network economy in the 1990s, fueled by the digitalization of telecommunications and later by the rapid expansion of the Internet, created additional impetus for a wider variety and number of developing countries to adopt national ICT policy frameworks. For many countries, these policies and strategies are not clearly differentiated from ICT sector and telecommunications policies and, in most cases, have no explicit connection with national development goals.
Developing countries' diverse ICT policies and strategies vary substantially in terms of their objectives, design and approach to implementation. Nevertheless, while the strategies pursued by each country have unique features, the role assigned to ICT can be broadly characterized in one of two ways:
· ICT as a Production Sector. This involves policies which focus on the development and/or strengthening of ICT-related industries such as computer hardware, software, telecommunications equipment and ICT-enabled services.
· ICT as an Enabler of Socio-Economic Development. This involves the adoption of holistic, cross-sector strategies which aim to harness the uniqueness of ICT to accelerate a wider development process.
Within these two overall approaches, it is possible to discern a second tier of strategic choices, which in turn influence the particular policies and strategies adopted by developing countries (see figure 2.1).
These four types of interventions;export market focus, national capacity/ domestic market focus, global positioning focus and development goals focus;are neither mutually exclusive nor necessarily complementary. But this typology is useful in helping to understand the development impact of different approaches and contributes to building a framework which can guide future efforts.
Representative country examples are presented in the following section to illustrate each of these basic types of policy and strategy interventions and to highlight the similarities, as well as differences, in terms of implementation and outcomes. The purpose of this typology is not to comprehensively describe any specific country's ICT policies, but to highlight the main focus of their approach, at a point in time, for the purposes of analysis.
Additional information about Estonia and ICT