Abstract

Despite the worldwide growth in investments in information and communication technology (ICT), it is not clear whether or not any impacts are the same for countries at different levels of economic development. International organizations, ICT vendors and policy makers have been investigating whether such large investments are worthwhile. ICT investments can be thought of as having four components: Hardware, Software, Internal IS and Telecommunication investment respectively. Of particular interest are the relationships between the interactions of the different components of ICT investment and the dimensions of human development. In this paper we explore the impacts of ICT investments on two dimensions of Human Development (Standard of Living and Health) within three contexts (i.e. High, Medium and Low income countries). Our results suggest among other things that: 1) impact of investments in the ICT components vary with context; 2) impacts are in many cases conditional and complex; and 3) the directions of impacts of investments in ICT on Standard of Living may be different from the corresponding directions of impacts on Health. It is therefore necessary to do in-depth trade off analysis in order to determine an appropriate allocation of ICT investments.

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