ICTs for Livelihoods

There were 31 participants who joined the session on ICTs for Livelihoods at the Asia and the Pacific Division's APR. The session was facilitated by Ms. Shalini Kala from IDRC. Following brief presentations by Mr. B. Batpurev (Mangolia) and Mr. Sean Siochru (Cambodia) on the use of ICTs for livelihoods in their contexts, session participants were divided into three groups to exchange their views on the question:

What should IFAD be doing to support the use of ICTs for livelihoods?

Group discussions were very lively and resulted in the following major recommendations:

• Do not forget about other direction e.g., Ekgaon's experiment with remote sensing
• Upscale current pilots initiatives: Wider connectivity - better productivity
• Include ICTs as one component and/or sub-component in all future projects, facilitate linkage between media and community
• Subsidize the cost of mobile phone sets for the use of community
• Use ICTs for disseminating weather/market information
• Provide more training to the community members on the use of technologies including mobile phones, computers etc.
• Identify how to use ICTs to increase the impact of IFAD funded projects
• Use ICTs for extension services; market related activities at local level
• Work with private sector and maintain international standards e.g., UNICODE
• Carry out social science research beyond technology determination, localize/customize according to the local context
• Promote appropriate and feasible/sustainable technologies, do not forget the traditional media such as radio, television etc

Reported by Bashu Aryal