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Broadband a potential ‘game changer’ in post-2015 development agenda

KEY TOOLS Information and communication technologies have become critical and essential tools for enhancing access to education, healthcare and other public services, information, finance and knowledge

NEXT STEP The post-2015 agenda aims to build on the Millennium Development Goals successes and place the world on a more sustainable footing

ENABLING EDUCATION Some 60-million primary school-age children and 71-million adolescents are currently not attending school

Photo by Natasha Odendaal

SUPPORT FOR FARMING ICT technologies can enable farmers to monitor markets, weather and harvests

Photo by Bloomberg

13th December 2013

By: Natasha Odendaal

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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As the world edges closer to the deadlines outlined in the Millennium Develop- ment Goals (MDGs), it has become apparent that much more needs to be done to sustain and accelerate the gains made since 2000. It is also being argued that more emphasis should probably be given to leveraging information and communication technology (ICT), in particular broadband, as a potential development game changer.

Serious consideration is being given to the incorporation of ICTs – the full impact of which was relatively unknown a decade ago – into the post-2015 development agenda that is currently under development. Proponents believe ICT could play a key role in helping to place the world on a more sustainable path over the coming decade and a half.

ICTs, they point out, have already emerged as essential tools for enhancing access to education, healthcare and other public services, information, finance and knowledge, while creating jobs, protecting the environment, mitigating natural disaster risks and ensuring sustainable use of natural resources and food production.

It has also been proved that ICT can enhance transparency, enable women’s empowerment and provide marginalised populations a voice in key decision-making processes, with United Nations Group on the Information Society on the Post-2015 Development Agenda says.

In fact, Ericsson South Africa MD Magnus Mchunguzi says ICTs and broadband are pillars of economic growth linking sectors such as agriculture, education, health and government, and cutting across industrial sectors as supporting infrastructure.

Mobile Revolution
The Broadband Commission notes that the impact of mobile over the last decade has been “nothing short of a revolution”, with the number of broadband subscriptions, in both fixed and mobile, in the developing world expected to exceed subscriptions in the developed world for the first time by the end of 2013.

Mobile Internet subscriptions have increased from 268-million in 2007 to 2.1-billion in 2013, with developing countries accounting for over half, at 1.16-billion.

In Africa, the number of subscriber identity module, or sim, cards sold has grown threefold since 2007 to 810-million, says Aida Opoku-Mensah, adviser to the executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Post-2015 Development Agenda, adding that there are now 160-million mobile broadband subscribers across the continent.

“However, the success has mainly been confined to capital cities, and more than 30 countries have yet to build the backbone infra- structure required to meet the target.”

Mchunguzi adds that broadband speeds have also improved, with banking websites enabling quicker, more immediate access and video download speeds, besides others, increasing, limiting the amount of time wasted in queues and enabling people to focus on “doing something more productive”.

A report, ‘Transformative Solutions for 2015 and Beyond’, compiled by Ericsson in con- junction with the International Telecommuni- cations Union and the United Nations Educa- tional, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, says connectivity on this scale is a game changer, particularly in emerging economies.

“By 2016, over 80% of broadband is expected to be mobile and many people’s first and only access to the Internet will be through a mobile device. Such connectivity, combined with [access to] advanced, low-cost devices, provides unprecedented opportunities to empower people and improve livelihoods.”

This allows an information-poor world to become information rich, Mchunguzi adds.

Millennium Goals
Since the emergence of the global development partnership, major new challenges have emerged, while existing ones have been exacerbated, with progress differing sharply between countries, inequality deepening and ever-increasing environmental degradation.

According to a report by UN secretary- general Ban Ki-moon at the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly, poverty and hunger globally have been significantly reduced, particularly in developing regions, where the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day fell from 47% of the population in 1990 to 22% in 2010, but about 1.2-billion people still live in extreme poverty.

While the number of undernourished people in developing regions fell from 23.2% in 1990 to 14.9% by 2012, 870-million people in the world do not have enough to eat and 165-million children are ‘stunted’, smaller than they should be for their age, ‘wasted’ or anaemic, owing to malnutrition.

Between 1990 and 2011, the mortality rate for children under five years of age decreased 41% and maternal mortality declined 47% – far short of the targets of a two-thirds and 75% reduction respectively.

Nearly seven-million children die each year before their fifth birthday, while, every minute and a half, a woman dies from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth.

Further, malaria, tuberculosis (TB), Aids/HIV and perinatal conditions account for three-million deaths a year.

Despite expanded treatment and prevention yielding a 25% reduction in Aids-related deaths, ten-million people receiving anti- retroviral treatment and new infections down 21% over the last decade, 2.5-million new infections still occur each year and millions lack access to treatment.

The last decade saw a 25% global decline in mortality rates from malaria, avoiding 1.1-million deaths and, between 1995 and 2011, 51-million TB patients were successfully treated, saving 20-million lives.

Since 2000, deaths related to natural hazards have exceeded 1.1-million, and more than 2.7-billion people been affected, with poor people often lacking the resources or support to recover.

Meanwhile, Ban, in his report to the General Assembly, reports that the number of children out of primary school declined from 102- million to 57-million between 2000 and 2011. However, progress has slowed significantly over the last five years, with some 60-million primary-school-age children and 71-million adolescents not attending school. Half of the out-of-school children live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Further, of the world’s 650-million primary- school-age children, 130-million are not learning the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, and 28-million children in countries emerging from conflict are still not in school. In more than 20 countries, at least one in five children has never even been to school, he says.

Despite the High-Level Panel (HLP) of Eminent Persons report on the Post-2015 Development Agenda’s estimations that, between 2015 and 2030, 470-million more people will enter the global labour force, mostly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the number of unemployed people globally has increased by 28-million since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, with another 39-million who have likely given up in frustration.

Over the last decade, over 200-million slum dwellers – double the target – benefited from improved water and sanitation facilities, durable housing or sufficient living space.

While the population of developed countries is projected to remain relatively unchanged at around 1.3-billion, the population of developing countries is expected to increase from 5.9-billion in 2013 to 8.2-billion in 2050.

With a population of 7.2-billion, the world economy is already exceeding at least three of the nine planetary limitations identified by the Stockholm Resilience Centre – climate change, the nitrogen cycle and biodiversity loss, the ‘Transformative Solutions for 2015’ report shows.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are more than 46% higher than in 1990 and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has exceeded 400 ppm – a level not seen in millions of years.

Biodiversity loss continues at a rapid pace, while freshwater resources are being depleted and fish stocks overexploited. Land degradation and desertification, ocean acidification and the loss of species and forests continue at a rapid rate.

2030 Outlook
The HLP indicates that, by 2030, the world would have 1.2-billion fewer people hungry and in extreme poverty, 100-million more children who would otherwise have died before they were five and 4.4-million more women who would otherwise have died during pregnancy or childbirth.

The panel envisages a world where 1.3-billion tons of food will be prevented from going to waste each year, 200-million more young skilled people will be employed, 1.2-billion more people will be connected to electricity and 190-million to 240-million hectares more forest cover.

The $30-trillion spent by governments worldwide will be transparently accounted for, with people worldwide participating in decision-making and holding officials accountable, while the average global tempera- tures will be on a path to stabilisation and 220-million fewer people will suffer crippling effects of natural disasters.

“Ours is the first generation with the resources and know-how to end extreme poverty and put our planet on a sustainable course before it is too late,” Ban states.

There is a clear indication of the centrality of ICTs in the post-2015 development agenda and some of the issues emerging from Africa-wide regional consultations on the post-2015 agenda include enhanced focus on the use of ICTs, says Opoku-Mensah.

President of the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly John Ashe believes that, given dramatic global change and national and regional transformations leading to “unprecedented and increasingly complex socioeconomic and environmental threats, challenges and concerns”, ICTs can be leveraged and maximised to reach the post-2015 development ambitions.

Mchunguzi says ICTs can deliver improved education levels through feature-rich e-learning experiences and improved welfare and quality of life through e-services, such as e-health.

Even broadband speeds make a difference, with a study by Ericsson, Arthur D Little and the Chalmers University of Technology showing that doubling the broadband speed increases national gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.3% on average.

And, as mobile prices drop, people in the poorest parts of the world are gaining access to knowledge and beginning to participate in the global economy, learning from others and solving their own problems.

Interventions
Incomes of smallholder agricultural farmers – on which 1.5-billion to 2-billion people depend – can be raised through better land security and market access, and mobile phones can provide access to credit, electronic banking and market information, including price fluctuations and weather forecasts.

“The HLP report reiterated [that] smallholder farmers’ incomes might be rapidly raised by giving them land security and access to credit, but even more so if they are able to transport their produce to market and have mobile phones and electronic banking, so that they know how prices are moving and can get paid straight away,” says Opoku-Mensah.

Biotechnology has also emerged as an important area in agriculture, but, to date, only South Africa, Burkina Faso, Egypt and Sudan have adopted transgenic crops.

“African scientists in countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana are at the forefront of leveraging biotechnology to address local agricultural challenges. They are focusing on problems such as pests, disease, drought and low nutritional content of staple crops,” she explains.

Further, satellite broadband offers sophisticated earth observation, essential in the monitoring, protection and management of ecosystems, such as rainforests, wetlands, drylands and grasslands, and other ICT applications can assist in improving water catchment management, allow access to energy management at community level, enable storm warnings or assist farmers to accurately and effectively plan seed-planting.

For the 2.5-billion people estimated to be unbanked worldwide, mobile phones can enable access to credit and banking services, enabling small transactions at low cost and providing financial inclusion for the poor.

“ICT tools should also be developed in the area of healthcare to redefine how healthcare is delivered in the future, with innovative systems that would connect patients to information on health services, and improve the issues of accessibility, affordability and acceptability,” Opoku-Mensah adds.

She comments that, while Africa is home to 11% of the world’s population and is the focus of many research questions, including neglected tropical diseases, HIV, TB and malaria, the continent accounts for just 0.3% of the world’s health research output owing to weak research capacity.

“Moreover, not much research work has been done on Africa’s own scientific indigenous knowledge emanating from rural and tribal communities. By building a vast repertoire of indigenous medicine, the continent can provide viable alternatives to Western-based medicine.”

Further, broadband access and smartphones can link community health workers to the national health system and allow for realtime disease surveillance, child and maternal health monitoring, mobile training, supply chain management and capturing of vital events, while assisting parents to monitor information, such as immunisations, height, weight and other development milestones.

Meanwhile, the HLP notes that a study of 98 countries found that each additional year of education results in, on average, a 10% increase in lifetime earnings, spurring many governments and organisations to roll out initiatives to link schools, particularly those in rural areas, to the world and enable greater access to information, online training and support and peer-to-peer learning.

Closing the mobile gender gap – there are 23% fewer women online than men – and bringing 600-million more women online could increase global GDP by between $13-billion and $18- billion.

The use of ICT in e- or m-governance provides people with accessible tools to better engage with public institutions, fostering broader transparency, civic responsibility and accountability.

Illicit financial flows, such as corruption, bribery, theft and tax evasion, are said to cost develop- ing countries $1.26-trillion a year – equivalent to the combined economies of Switzerland, South Africa and Belgium.

Urbanisation is also increas- ingly placing growing pressures on public transportation, clean water and air, employment, urban planning and growing income gaps. Currently, more than half of the world population is now in urban areas, and this is expected to rise to two-thirds by 2050.

Smart use of ICTs, through teleconferencing and telecommuting through video or audio conferencing, as well as shifting newspapers online, can reduce greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions by up to 25%, saving 7.8 Gt of carbon emissions by 2020.

Mobile technology alone could lower GHG emissions by 2% by 2020, while e-commerce could lower energy consumption and GHG emissions by 30%.

Transformative broadband-enabled solutions can enable the reinvention of business models or allow countries to ‘leapfrog’ from high GHG-emitting technologies to low-carbon development, including smart buildings, electric cars and e-services, such as e-health, e-education, e-commerce and e-governance.

A critical role of ICTs in the implementation of the post-2015 agenda is the need for a data revolution, says Opoku-Mensah.

The MDGs were implemented without much attention to devel- opment indicators, making the measurement of impact difficult.

“For instance, basic data on births and deaths, the number and quality of jobs available in a given country and agricultural productivity remains elusive. Yet such data provides the necessary information for decision support in planning and resource allocation to begin with.”

Further, high-resolution images, such as those available from Google Earth, can be used to map a slum area of a city, providing a rough estimation of the number of people living in the area, while handheld GPS/mobile phones can be used to locate schools, hospitals or clinics and other social amenities, and allow the uploading of the information onto the Google Earth site for public use.

“As more and more Africans get access to broadband, crowdsourcing can also help to generate much-needed data on all aspects of development and projects are emerging daily across the continent,” she says.

Meanwhile, new research undertaken by the secretariat of the Broadband Commission shows that, while national broadband plans increasingly recognise broadband’s role in socioeconomic development, much more needs to be done to support this ‘invisi- ble technology’ transforming our world, Ericsson points out.

There are a number of actions governments can take to boost the impact of ICT on sustainable development goals, including articulating a vision and setting clear, long-term strategic plans, designing, reviewing and imple- menting effective policy and regulatory frameworks, removing regulatory barriers, and intro- ducing new regulation that encourages competition, innovation and investment.

Opoku-Mensah notes that, consequently, more efforts by governments for policies and strategies, to enable affordability and availability by bridging inequalities to ICTs and broadband services, has to be paramount.

In March, the Broadband Com- mission established a Task Force on Sustainable Development and the Post-2015 Development Agenda to explore how broadband can best contribute to achieve development goals.

However, ICTs by themselves cannot guarantee the achievement of development goals. Strategic policies, human capacity, appropriate knowledge management, relevant content development, infrastructure deployment and an enabling environment are critical factors to ensure that the potential of ICTs for sustainable development is fully harnessed by, and for, all.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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