Good Practice Paper on ICTs for Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction

This page is designed to provide users with information on how to better understand the report "Good Practice Paper on ICTs for Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction", as well as how to further explore its key issues.

This report was published in the DAC Journal, 2005, Vol. 6, No. 3 and as a separate Pre-print. You can download it from here, or obtain a free copy of the Pre-print by contacting: dac.contact@oecd.org (don't forget to send your full postal address).

Background Notes

• For Chapter 2 "The Contribution of ICTs for Pro-Poor Growth"
  For Chapter 3 "The Contribution of ICTs to Achieving the MDGs" 
• For Chapter 4 "Integrating ICTs into Development Co-operation" 
• How are ICTs Defined?
• Note "ICT in PRSPs as of January 2004" 

Useful Resources

• Financing ICTs for Development: Efforts of DAC Members - Review of Recent Trends of ODA and its Contribution 
• Donor ICT Strategis Matrix - Online version (CD-ROM is also available)
• GrameenPhone Revisited: Investors Reach Out to the Poor 
• ICTs and Economic Growth in Developing Countries 
• Role of Infrastructure in Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction – Lessons Learned from PRSPs of 33 Countries 
• Leveraging Telecommunications Policies for Pro-Poor Growth: Universal Access Funds with Minimum-Subsidy Auctions 

OECD Work on ICTs and Economic Growth

Most of recent OECD work on ICTs and economic growth is compiled into one CD-ROM toolkit "ICTs and Economic Growth: The OECD Experience and Beyond", March 2004. Available for free; order your copy online.

Please visit and check the thematic page on: digital economy and information society.

DAC Work on Poverty Reduction

In recent years a renewed impetus has emerged in the international community around the central goal of reducing extreme poverty by half by 2015 - a Millenium Development Goal (MDG). In order to help bilateral aid agencies sharpen the focus and impact of their poverty reduction efforts, the DAC Network on Poverty Reduction (POVNET) was established in 1998. 

POVNET, under its original mandate, developed the DAC Guidelines on Poverty Reduction which synthesize state-of-the-art good practice and set out a vision for working with development partners and stakeholders towards poverty reduction.

Recognizing that the quantity and quality of growth in the productive sectors have an important contribution to make towards achieving the MDGs, a new mandate was tasked to POVNET in June 2003, to:

• Focus on the multidimensionality of poverty and on the relationship between inequality, economic growth and poverty reduction in developing countries.
• Provide a forum for the exchange of experience and best practice on pro-poor growth, i.e. involving the poor in generating growth and benefiting from growth and globalisation.
• Address, from this perspective, strategies and policies in areas such as infrastructure, agriculture, trade and investment capacity building, information and communication technology, the role of the private sector and public-private partnerships.
• Promote the pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals and a central role for broad-based growth and its determinants within the strategic framework of national Poverty Reduction Strategies.

For more information on POVNET, please visit: www.oecd.org/dac/poverty 

More information

For further information on this subject and publication, please contact: dac.contact@oecd.org