Connecting the Digitally Disconnected: Challenges and Opportunities for Research and Policy

Abstract

ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) are increasingly seen as a necessary development tool. While digitally connected communities of the Global North benefit from modern ICTs to access endless information sources, collaboration opportunities and platforms to reform social processes, access to appropriate ICT infrastructure and resources remains a challenge for many Global South communities. In this era of digital connectivity and globalization, those who are not digitally connected are newly marginalized and disadvantaged. Not having access to or the capacity to utilize modern ICTs systematically silences the voices of the digitally disconnected and gives rise to exclusion and inequality. Considering the significance of digital connectivity needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) among economically developing communities, this article aims to unmask the complex challenges associated with the traditional, model-building approaches towards development and deployment of ICT tools around the world in general and the Global South in particular.At present, there are significant obstacles that widen rather than narrow the gap between theory and practice, thereby increasing the "digital divide‟. An unreflective approach which assumes ICTs are good for development may lead to practices that have the opposite effect: entrenching rather than eradicating marginalization. If ICTs are to serve the greater societal good and assist in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs), then research must not only serve profit-making interests; it must also inform state-level policy making through theoretically informed, critical, reflective and engaged inquiry.