Global Broadband & Innovations Program: Overview and Services
The Global Broadband and Innovations Program was created in 2010 by the United States Agency for International Development. The goal of the GBI Program is to improve socioeconomic outcomes by expanding access to wireless voice and broadband services and facilitating the kind of innovation that makes such access more effective for development. For more information visit www.gbiportal.net Or Contact Joe Duncan GBI Program Director jduncan@usaid.gov
Information & Communication Technologies and USAID The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) holds as a core mission the alleviation poverty and promotion of economic growth in the developing world. Towards that end it focuses heavily on raising the productivity of workers and firms through technical assistance that improves their knowledge, management practices, and ability to make use of appropriate technology. Technology has become especially important in today’s world, particularly Information and Communications Technology (ICT). It provides opportunities for work, better information for decision-making, and a better ability to network and interact; leading to stronger communities, more innovation, and a better connection to the world economy. Study after study shows that access to ICT increases economic growth in a measureable way, when observed at both the macro and micro level. Writ large, increasing ICT access by 10% has been shown to increase economic growth by about 1% across a developing economy. At a smaller scale, it has been shown to have the same 10-1 impact on output though studies of Indian fishermen and Ugandan banana growers, among many others. Similarly, direct interventions in applying ICTs for Development (ICT4D) have stood up to rigorous impact evaluations. ICTs can be used in the health sector to better track disease and encourage healthy behaviors, in agriculture to better provide extension services, and in governance to better reach voters with election information. They can be employed across the spectrum of development interventions to facilitate information flow, better manage projects, and improve socio-economic outcomes. Program Background USAID has long acknowledged the social and economic benefits of information and communication technologies, and for many years has included ICT in its project portfolio. An early flagship ICT program, the Leland Initiative, brought the Internet to much of Africa between 1996 and 2000. A follow-on program, the Last Mile Initiative (LMI), sought to expand access to communications for the rural poor of developing countries. Launched in 2004, it focused on the construction of community centers that could either act as cyber-cafes or serve as way stations for the transmission of wireless voice or wifi signals. Since the launch of LMI, however, the telecommunications landscape has changed dramatically. Digital convergence has accelerated, and it has become apparent that mobile devices, not computers, will be the primary medium through which the poor access and make use of the Internet. Further, the proliferation of cloud-based services for development, accessible through mobile phone applications, has altered the possibilities for ICT4D service delivery in exciting ways. The Global Broadband and Innovations Program was created in consideration of these developments and is the way forward for USAID’s Digital Development Strategy.