Overview

There has been a lot of enthusiasm for the use of ICT to combat poverty and foster economic growth. In recent years, many global initiatives, such as the G8 Dot Force, UN ICT Task Force and World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), have helped raised awareness of the benefits and opportunities offered by these technologies to the international community, and more specifically, to the developing world. At WSIS in 2005, donors and developing-country partners gathered to affirm their commitment toward the creation of an inclusive, people-centred and development-oriented information society, recognizing that:

• the rapid progress in ICTs could provide new opportunities to attain internationally agreed development goals;
• ICT can be a powerful tool for increasing productivity, generating economic growth, job creation and improving the quality of life;
• ICT can provide increased opportunities to broad sections of civil society, including women, youth, people living in remote and rural areas by becoming an integral part of and key actors in the information society;

Today, ICT is recognized as comprising important tools to access knowledge and information, and to create national, regional, and global networks that promote growth and democracy, and advocate change. ICT tools are also recognized as crucial for enabling access to the global knowledge-based economy, thus empowering civil society actors and facilitating their participation in the sustainable development of their countries.

CIDA has extensive experience in the use of ICT in the developing world. For more than 25 years, the Agency has supported ICT as a tool for development, and has made significant investments in ICT projects and knowledge initiatives. In 2001 the Agency released its first Strategy on Knowledge for Development Through Information and Communication Technologiesto guide and inform CIDA's work in ICT programming. In 2007, the Agency released an ICT Toolkit to further support the integration of ICT into development programming.

Today, CIDA continues to recognize the importance of new, as well as traditional technologies, as crosscutting tools for alleviating poverty and fostering economic growth. In addition, mainstreaming ICT into Canada's development programming is also seen as an important priority for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and can impact on each of CIDA's key sectors of focus: health, education, governance, private sector development and the environment, with equality between men and women as a crosscutting theme.