This was stated by the Communication, Science and Technology minister Prof Makame Mbarawa in Dar es Salaam yesterday at a dissemination workshop on assessing the impact of ICT towards poverty reduction.
He said the move was aimed at training more skilled people to enhance competitiveness and better service delivery.
Prof Mbarawa said the aim was to use ICT as the linchpin of the government’s plan to transform the country from a low income agricultural economy to a middle-income knowledge based one as envisaged in Vision 2025.
“One of the country’s major priorities particularly in the technology domain is the development of local human resources competence, capacity building and skills development,”
He said poor infrastructure, weak and disparate regulatory frameworks and limited human resources have been the major factors creating fetters on country’s rapid economic growth.
Attesting to the importance of ICTs, the minister said, the government allocated 30bn/- for research and development to the Commission for Science and Technology (Costech) in this financial year.
In his remarks Costech Director Dr Hassan Mshinda said a study, carried out jointly by an international organisation and a government agency, has shown how increase in access to ICTs has helped to cut poverty levels in some areas by over 20 per cent in the last two years.
For example, he said, an experimental study found that poverty levels in Njombe District dropped from 45 per cent before the ICTs tools and skills were introduced to 16 per cent.
However, in Makambako, the same study shows that without ICT incentives, poverty levels fell insignificantly from 45 per cent to 38 per cent.
In 2006, IDRC funded a four-country study in Eastern Africa including Tanzania, to investigate the relationship between poverty and access to and use of ICT, he said.
It involved two unique methods, one of which was to assess change the research surveyed 400 households, he said, adding that in the poorest urban and rural sites surveys were done twice over a period of two years.
The second one, conducted in Njombe and Makambako, was an experimental study done only in Tanzania for the purpose of establishing evidence-based recommendations that could be replicated in other countries, he said. Both groups were surveyed before and after the ICT interventions, he added.
In Njombe, a group of 100 small businesses were given ICT gadgets (mobile phones and airtime, and free access to internet for five months plus business trainings).
The other group (in Makambako) comprising 150 small enterprises, was designed as a control group with regular monitoring of their businesses, he said.
In the household country survey, it was established that people using ICT have higher incomes, expenditures, economic assets as well as more education.
In addition, many of the respondents also appreciated the reduction in isolation and exclusion.
"Mobile ICT is used not only for communication, but also in receiving and sending money. Unfortunately, some of the mobile banking services such as M-Pesa were not readily available in the rural areas," he said.
While mobile usage is growing in popularity, the use of e-mail was still low not only in the rural areas, but also in urban areas, he noted.
In contrast, in Njombe District, e-mail usage increased from 1.3 per cent to 7.6 per cent, he said.
The study concludes that ICT is a new resource that can assist in the war against poverty, recommending that improved investments, promotion and application of the same, especially in money transfers is necessary.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Edwin Agola
Quelle/Source: IPPmedia, 29.04.2011
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