Thanks very much for facilitating an important topic on “information and communication technologies (ICTs)” and their relation to efforts aimed at poverty reduction/eradication and increased food security in our world regions. The APEC region reminds me very much of my student-interactions, knowledge and lessons gained during my two-year study experience at National Chung Hsing University in Chinese Taipei and the contrasts I am daily exposed to, in my home country, Zimbabwe, where food and agricultural development is in a realm of its own, beyond the power of imagination to anyone with a keen interest.
I cite the late Kenyan Professor and entomologist, Professor Thomas Risley Odhiambo, who is quoted as having written that [paraphrased], “…the poverty problem is not so much one of lack of access to goods and services [including information and communication technologies] but one of a lack of will and the means to realise that will”. His quote has never been truer than now when the world is in full swing with ICTs whose transformative benefits are evident. On the “technology and people/designer pendulum”, there are times when it is not about the technology but rather the designers/the people of the technologies, their motifs, aspirations, their world view, and their hope for a better and food secure future. We have somewhat tended to focus more on the technology, forgetting the other end as the “technology and people/designer” pendulum swings.
One of the steps in expanding on the possibilities afforded by ICTs to world citizens should be to revisit our capabilities to spring to action in eliminating “ills” owing to the amplifying nature of ICTs. ICTs present to the human species the limits and extent of our progress, some remarkable and some, on the sidelines. This is a salient message in a recent article on “data and digital services and securing rural and food futures” focusing mainly on the economic dimension/business in the digital economy.
We should continue to explore more opportunities for improving the lives of rural folks, far and above, simply getting them connected. If this is what we have made our noble cause, then our rural folks deserve our honest response on what we can do for them, what we cannot do for them, and (or) what think we might do for them in the near future.
Thanks for your consideration.
Raymond Erick Zvavanyange
Raymond Erick Zvavanyange