Communications & IT Technology and its impact on Poverty Essay

Communications & IT Technology and its impact on Poverty - Essay Example ess the potential to act as tools in support of poverty reduction because of their flexibility, addressing issues in education, healthcare, banking, and livelihoods. They can also empower people locally and strengthen promotion of human rights, which makes them an increasingly essential presence in emerging economies (UNCTD 94). By basing these economies around information and technology, governments in emerging economies could potentially enhance the livelihoods of their citizens, while also creating new livelihoods. Technology can help reduce poverty in rural areas of emerging economies through lending support to agriculture activities. An example is the Israeli state-owned Techno-Agriculture Program that seeks to shore up food security in sub-Saharan Africa and already boasts successful initiatives in Niger, as well as South Africa (Chilimo & Ngulube 98). By partnering with NGOs in these countries, such as World Vision and Green Senegal, the program has also been successfully introduced in Senegal. These programs make information better available to farmers in rural areas about best practices, especially when there is drought. ICT can also create employment opportunities directly through manufacture of hardware and indirectly by increasing their productivity, for example, through improving market information access and decreasing costs of transaction for poor traders and farmers. E-commerce programs can also help artisans in rural areas bypass exploitative middlemen, as well as corrupt governa nce, to market their products directly to the market (Chilimo & Ngulube 98). In addition, ICT provides multimedia applications for use in schools, thus enhancing skills and knowledge. This will provide students with knowledge required to become employers and skilled or semi-skilled employees. Overall ICT implementation is also a potential contributor to national GDP since a highly skilled, well informed, and skilled workforce will strengthen and complement multi-sectoral

Strategic Information Systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Strategic Information Systems - Essay Example Therefore, the most important element among those perquisites is a secure, well designed and well managed website. It is through a user friendly website that a firm can attract more traffic to the website. This report presents an investigation into the extent to which e-commerce is currently being used in the computer hardware and the banking industry. The Computer Hardware industry is as much a commodity market as it is a technology market. It is somewhat misleading to assume that research and development alone decides the success of a PC manufacturing company. R&D is most definitely required for future improvements but perhaps is not the sole determinant of a company's success. In the PC industry, apart from excellent R&D and customer care, it is marketing of the product that would matter. Dell has been one of the prime examples of success in e-commerce. The business objective of Dell is to eliminate the retailers and sell directly to the consumers. By eliminating the middle layers, Dell has brought about epochal changes in the PC industry. Communicating directly with the consumer helps the business become more agile, and also helps cut cost of sales. In this endeavor, the only tool in the hands of Dell is the Internet. Dell has unique business strategies and models to support the growth process of the organization. From $1000 to $30 billion, the growth rate of Dell has been phenomenal. Dell mainly concentrates on activities that would add more value to the organization and also result in good-looking market returns. Over the years there have been many companies in the PC/server industry following the footsteps of Dell. However most of them failed in their endeavor (Woodgrange Technologies Ltd., 2005). Simply replicating the business model never serves the purpose of making something successful. Dell has a competitive advantage in its cost advantage and greater efficiency. As such it emerged as the cost leader in the market. Dell was the first one to offer world-class PCs at dream prices to the consumers. However selling directly to the consumers were more of a revolution than a religion. As such Dell has continued to surprise their customer base with unique and intelligent offers. Recently Dell has signed up Best Buy as a retail partner (Dell, 2007c). This is a major historical shift for Dell who had been preaching the values of direct selling for more than two decades. With the