The Role of ICT Regulations in Agribusiness and Rural Development
Agriculture plays a vital role in the development of many countries. Access to markets, finance and information are cornerstones for agricultural growth. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supports farmers by facilitating access to mark...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/595981512639073166/The-role-of-ICT-regulations-in-agribusiness-and-rural-development http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29041 |
| Summary: | Agriculture plays a vital role in the
development of many countries. Access to markets, finance
and information are cornerstones for agricultural growth.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supports
farmers by facilitating access to markets through real-time
data on market prices, weather forecasts, information on
pests, seed varieties and planting techniques. A major
impediment for smallholder farmers to fully exploit the
benefits of ICT is the lack of sufficient infrastructure and
mobile networks in rural areas. A reason for this persisting
network coverage gap stems from the significant capital
investments required for providing widespread ICT access,
which mobile operators have often little incentive to make
since the potential profit margins in rural areas are
relatively low. This paper examines the role of regulations
in facilitating ICT access and ultimately rural development.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The
second section discusses the role of an enabling environment
and ICT regulations that are critical for expanding access
to rural areas. The third section presents the new data set
on the quality of regulations followed by the analysis of
the relationship between regulations and key ICT development
indicators. The final section draws some concluding remarks. |
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