"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics" quipped the economist Robert Solow in the year he won the Nobel Prize (1987). Is there any evidence that he was wrong? Certainly there is no change in rates of economic growth, or efficiency, in apparently highly computerized sectors such as banks or Western shops in the last couple of decades. So what should one look for in the impact of ICT in rural areas? I assume it is separated from other communications channels. In contrast to ICT, the Nobel-prize winning concept of Solow's - the determinants of economic growth can be separated out into increases in inputs (labour and capital) and technical progress, but 80% of the growth is attributable to technical progress - applies exactly to agriculture, where new varieties and better agronomy have a strongly techical basis.