How Can ICTs Support Rural Development

The development of Internet and small scale computing created the belief that ICTs would help the development of rural areas. In retrospect, these visions turned out to be too optimistic. Today, we experience rather dramatic centralisation trends. This is not because of ICTs alone, but we have seen that ICTs often support centralizing forces, rather than help local development. However, the academic discourse on these issues suffers from the lack of clarity and precise understanding of the ICT artefact. We have therefor developed an analytical framework by conceptualizing ICTs along three dimensions; how it is viewed, its use and how it impacts development. Our main message is that ICTs have to be used locally to foster horizontal collaboration, innovation and knowledge creation activities.