Social outsourcing means the contracting out of goods or services to social enterprises. When used by government, it can be seen as a hybrid of the workfare outsourcing found in wage employment schemes, and the commercial outsourcing of government activities to the private sector. This paper...

The impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on development largely depends on the existing economic, social and cultural fabric into which they are introduced. This can be seen in the case of Kerala in India, which has been implementing an ICT-based strategy that particularly...

This paper focuses on the role of information and information-handling technologies within the many rural microenterprises that currently lack access to ICTs. On the basis of field research in Botswana, it finds that poor rural entrepreneurs rely heavily on informal, social and local information...

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This editorial introduces the three papers in this Policy Arena on the contribution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to development. Contribution in terms of technology diffusion and use - especially of mobile phones - is easy to detect. But focus has only recently shifted...