In depth

26.10.2005 A Farmers Internet Café, established by the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU), through support from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the USA’s department of Agriculture, has helped linking the mother body with affiliates at district level, while at the same time providing access to information to individual union members. Through this café not only were the farmers able to access business opportunities, they were also able to know general marketing trends in the agricultural sector, to write letters to their relatives as well as enquire about any other services that the union or any other organisation of interest to them was offering.

24.10.2005 The tech market in Bangalore may be racing ahead, but it is a very different story for India's 700 million farmers. Spencer Kelly has been to Northern India to see how plans to bring technology to rural areas are working.In a village meeting, known as a choupal, the adults of Sabalpur are given the weekly news and discuss the pressing issues of the day.Other information such as the school exam results is online.The village is now online, and with the help of Akash, a local who has been trained to use the computer, villagers now have access to a wealth of information.
Just as the choupal is a place to meet and discuss with other villagers, this is a place to talk to other villages, and it is called e-Choupal.

13.10.2005 While rarely given the same importance as the threat of terrorism or war, the issue of child protection in this technologically-savvy age is a grave concern. There is no doubt that the simultaneous growth of the IT industry and the travel sector has placed children living in tourism destinations at greater risk of sexual exploitation by foreign tourists as well as domestic ones.

13.10.2005 In developing country contexts, handheld computer applications are starting to show their benefits across development sectors. Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and other types of handheld computers offer considerable advantages over desktops or even laptops. Health and microfinance have been particularly keen to test handheld applications.

10.10.2005 With the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit +5 coming up in September and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in November, it is timely for developmental agencies to revisit some of the key issues and developments that have taken place in the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) within the larger scheme of national developmental policies.This note examines the treatment of ICT in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) of Asia-Pacific countries. PRSPs serve as a good starting point.There is a clear demonstration by governments that ICT can effectively help alleviate poverty.All eight countries have plans to develop ICT as a sector and use ICT as tools to achieve other PRSP goals in education, health, employment, monitoring poverty, disseminating information,facilitating government services, and disaster management.