Anita Gurumurthy IT for Change Bangalore, India Anita@ITforChange.net

We need to examine why and how skills and knowledge are positioned within the dominant ICT for development paradigm and explore the routes that we would like skill transfer within the information and communications for development theory and practice to take.

ICTs have transformed the ways in which we learn, with spectacular outcomes. From the radio to the Internet, the potential in these technologies for information and skill transfer is now well demonstrated. While it is true that ICTs provide new paradigms in education – from distance learning, learner-centredness, peer to peer exchanges, etc., the dominant ICT paradigm is not consistent with the social and ethical objectives of education. Within the ICT debate, skill transfer has been positioned within the framework of the market rather than of development. Thus skills have been constructed almost completely as constituting those capacities that can be monetised or as a commodity for exchange. Within the context of a discussion on MDGs, such a definition is indeed very narrow and negates the needs of the vast majority. The poorest certainly need livelihood skills, but their freedom from poverty is predicated also upon a whole range of other skills that can empower them socially and politically, and these capacities lie beyond the framework and logic of the market.

We need to examine why and how skills and knowledge are positioned within the dominant ICT for development paradigm and explore the routes that we would like skill transfer within the information and communications for development theory and practice to take.

Education/skill upgradation through ICTs: The state of the art
The dominant paradigm in the use of ICTs for education is antithetical to respect for diversity, for local control of knowledge and individual creativity (proprietary software being a stark case in point).

We know that the major ICT corporations have kept close links with education institutions in the South. The efforts of Cisco, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard and many other ICT corporations in the field of education invoke the language of ‘development’ and of ‘corporate social responsibility’, and many of them have begun sponsoring gender academies, hosting proprietary systems seminars, lock-in software certification conferences, as they have sought to engage the local labour force in jobs in the IT industry. It is a moot point whether such initiatives are really opening up opportunities on a level playing field or if these are geared towards producing a new form of dependency - a passive, uncritical acceptance of corporate globalisation. Critiques of this model are beginning to emerge in the work of NGOs like ISIS International Manila, engaged in global advocacy for an equitable information society.

The increasing privatisation of education and the consequent entry of global media and ICT corporates into this space has seen the emergence of a new agenda for education: the creation of a new breed of internationally-immobile work force with low, but highly specialised skills, ready to plug into the global production chain of knowledge industries. The deskilling of the workforce in poor countries in the global information economy is now well documented.

ICTs for development has adopted a market-led approach and within this, approaches to build the information base and skills of local communities for their livelihoods, like MNC-led agriculture extension programmes that use ICTs, have predominantly been synonymous with a submission of local communities to multinational corporate interests. In the short run, this seems like a win-win situation – the corporate gets local produce for its global markets and local farmers get cutting-edge information and ‘assured’ incomes. But almost invariably, this