The Digital Dividend's site contains a variety of publications and analyses focusing on sustainable solutions for bridging the global digital divide. General reports include those produced by Digital Dividends, as well as several from other organizations.

Digital Dividend Publications |  Other Publications

Sector specific analyses are organized by activity, including agriculture, connectivity, education, health, and microfinance. Other publications include information on the use of ICTs in activities such as e-commerce, NGO capacity building, and women's empowerment.

Agriculture |  Connectivity |  Education

Health |  Microfinance |  Other

DIGITAL DIVIDEND PUBLICATIONS

Technology, Globalization and the Poor: Summary of the Global Knowledge for Development Virtual Conference
Digital Dividend Analysis, November/December 2004.
Can technology help make globalization work for the poor? Can the private sector use ICT to create, as CK Prahalad argues, "sustainable win-win scenarios where the poor are actively engaged and, at the same time, the companies providing products and services to them are profitable"? During four weeks in November and December 2004, GKD’s Technology, Globalization and the Poor online conference attempted to explore these questions. This PDF document is a searchable compilation of the discussion. An online archive of the discussion can also be found at the GKD Archives.

Lessons from the Field: An Overview of the Current Uses of ICTs for Development
Digital Dividend Analysis, November 2004.
The Lessons from the Field report highlights many of the projects included in the Digital Dividend Project Clearinghouse, grouping them according to the type of service they provide in order to illustrate the wide variety of applications of ICT for development that exist worldwide today. Taken together, the initiatives reveal the extent of current efforts to bridge the digital divide, thereby providing a roadmap for moving forward and extending the benefits of globalization and the knowledge society to those who need them most.

Selling to the Poor
C.K. Prahalad and Digital Dividend project director Allen Hammond, Foreign Policy, May/June 2004.
Digital Dividend project director Allen Hammond and the University of Michigan's C.K. Prahalad offer a controversial hypothesis: that global poverty can be reduced by turning to the world’s 4 billion poor people as consumers and partners of multinational corporations. According to Hammond and Prahalad, "...getting it right can both generate big profits and help end economic isolation throughout the developing world." Published in the May/June 2004 issue of Foreign Policy. To read the article, search FP's web site.

Geographic Distribution of ICTs
Digital Dividend Analysis, October 2004 Update.
The Digital Dividend Project Clearinghouse contains over 1,000 ICT-enabled development projects. These projects are collected through Internet research, relationships with partner organizations, and submitted to us by the projects themselves. While our data is not exhaustive, by examining a broad range of initiatives from around the globe, we hope to provide some interesting insights about where experimentation with ICTs is occurring.

What Works: Serving the Poor, Profitably (PDF)
C.K. Prahalad and Digital Dividend project director Allen Hammond, Harvard Business Review, June 2002.
Digital Dividend's corporate strategy paper outlines business strategies for providing poor communities in developing countries with efficient and affordable access to basic goods and services—and making a return on investment at the same time. Building upon examples from the What Works case studies and Digital Dividend Project Clearinghouse, the authors present the business case for entering the world's poorest markets and examine innovative models that make it possible. A version of the corporate strategy paper was published in Harvard Business Review in September, 2002. For the HBR version, click here

Digitally Empowered Development
Allen L. Hammond. Foreign Affairs, March 2001.
Digital Dividend project director Al Hammond argues that "the imaginative use of emerging technologies and the creation of partnerships or cooperative approaches that combine the skills of major corporations with the growing strength of civil society can accelerate development in even the poorest regions." Reprinted by permission of Foreign Affairs, March/April 2001. Copyright 2001 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.

Bottom-Up, Digitally-Enabled Development: A Vision
Allen L. Hammond and Elizabeth Jenkins. iMP Magazine, February 2001.
"What is needed is a new paradigm, a bottom-up approach that empowers individuals and communities to manage their own development by giving them access to the information, tools, and services they need."

Innovative Social Technology Solutions: A Preliminary Research Report on Awards and Competitions
Digital Dividend Report, June 2003.
This document is an overview of existing award programs in the area of social technology. It is intended to be a resource for organizations considering launching award programs of their own, for ICT-for-development projects seeking entry into award programs, and for social venture capital groups seeking scale-up candidates. This is but a preliminary document; as more ventures come to our attention they will be added.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

The Global Information Technology Report 2001-2002: Readiness for the Networked World
Geoffrey Kirkman, Managing Editor. Oxford University Press, March 2002.
The Harvard Center for International Development has published an international assessment of the realities and possibilities of the "networked world." Part analysis and part vision, the report provides a comprehensive picture both of the way ICTs are being used around the world today as well as of the opportunities and challenges that remain.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
C.K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart, strategy + business, First Quarter 2002.
Low-income markets present a prodigious opportunity for the world's wealthiest companies—to seek their fortunes and bring prosperity to the aspiring poor.

E-Commerce and Development Report 2001
UNCTAD, 20 November 2001.
UNCTAD's Electronic Commerce and Development Report 2001 reviews trends that developing countries need to be aware of as they try to position their economies to take advantage of ICT and the Internet. It provides basic facts and figures about electronic commerce and discusses the impact on sectors of particular relevance to developing countries. It also suggests, with concrete examples, ways in which developing countries can create the necessary enabling environment for e-commerce.

Essentials: Information Communications Technology for Development
UNDP Evaluation Office, September 2001.
Based on work by UNDP and its partner organization, this document reviews the use of ICTs in development and presents 6 generic challenges that can affect any such initiative: awareness, politics, access, relevancy, sustainability, and coordination. The report also offers some practical ideas for meeting these challenges.

Information and Communication Technologies and Poverty
Charles Kenny, Infrastructure Economist, World Bank. TechKnowLogia, July/August 2001.
"Few would argue that lack of access to information and communications technologies (ICTs) is an element of poverty in the way that insufficient nutrition or inadequate shelter are. But, ICTs are increasingly central in the effort to escape poverty. This article will discuss the use of ICTs in poverty alleviation, the poor's limited access to ICTs, and government policies that might help to overcome this 'digital divide.'"

Creating a Development Dynamic
Final Report of the Digital Opportunity Initiative. UNDP, Markle Foundation, and Accenture. June 2001.
The DOI asserts that poor countries can use technology and the Internet to create jobs, lure investment, and disseminate information addressing a wide range of human needs—improving living standards in the process. The report recommends new policies and cites many successful government and project models as examples.

Digital Opportunities For All: Meeting the Challenge
Final Report of the Digital Opportunity TaskForce (DOT Force), May 11, 2001.
The final report of the Digital Opportunity TaskForce, an effort of the G8, presents nine concrete "action points" for using ICT to promote sustainable development.

Let’s Focus on the Digital Dividend
C.K. Prahalad. European Business Forum, Vol. 2. Copyright European Business Forum Limited, 2000.
Three traditional, but inappropriate, assumptions underlie the current debate about the digital divide. Looking beyond these assumptions, it becomes possible to envision not a digital divide but the creation of a digital dividend.

India as a Source of Innovations
C.K. Prahalad. The First Lalbahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration and Management Sciences Lecture, September 30, 2000, New Delhi.
“How do we conceive of a market built around the very poor? How do we embrace new approaches to innovation? Can we convert our apparently insurmountable problems of poverty into a global opportunity to serve 4.5 billion poor around the world - the India-like markets - who have similar problems?”

A Call for Smart Electrons.
Michael North, iMP Magazine, May 21, 1999.
Can any industry expect to prosper, long-term, if it ignores more than a third of its potential market? The author discusses the obstacles and potential rewards to incorporating today’s poor, rural, and currently excluded communities—more than one-third of the world’s population—into the global e-economy.

“The poor remain poor because they are not receiving enough information that will allow them to grow, allow them to make choices.” From "Technology and Learning" UNESCO, 1997 Photo:CDI