Abstract

While recent studies have shown that ICTs can bring about development at the macro-economic level, it is not clear how this process takes place. This paper throws light on this issue by investigating how micro-enterprises adopt ICTs. The majority of businesses in under developed regions of the world are micro-enterprises which are often owned by a single entrepreneur with very limited resources. It appears that when these micro-enterprises adopt ICTs, their ability to survive and grow increases. This paper investigates the effects of processes in which training, technology and trust building interventions enable micro-entrepreneurs faced with limited resources to adopt ICTs to grow their businesses. By building upon current studies, it furthers the analytic role of the livelihoods framework to provide a more functional role to enable sustainable capacity building efforts to be undertaken using ICTs. Based on this analysis, the contribution of this paper to global development is in the processes it provides micro-entrepreneurs to continue to adopt ICTs in innovative ways to stimulate growth.

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