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Connecting South Africa: ICTs, Uneven Development and Poverty Debates

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The Geography of South Africa

Part of the book series: World Regional Geography Book Series ((WRGBS))

Abstract

Much has been written about information and communication technology (ICT) and its development potential in areas such as poverty reduction. Debates are framed around technocentric visions of development. This discourse on ICT-for-development (ICT4D) has opened the way for academic and policy debates surrounding ICT’s potential for development in Africa. By critically engaging with these debates, this chapter entangles key issues around ICT4D on the African continent to show how ICT might be implicated in uneven development. It then adopts the lens of South Africa to cover some ICT and poverty debates and shows that ICT is critical for development in South Africa, particularly at the individual level. The development policy prescription of the current South African government is heavily implicated towards this neoliberal line of thinking. Overall, there remains a need for further research to address how ICT can enable a change in the structural dynamics in the country that are key to poverty and inequality reduction.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank anonymous referees for their feedback on earlier drafts of this chapter. This research was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP/2007–2013) [ERC Grant Agreement n. 335716].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Mohammad Amir Anwar

  2. University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Mohammad Amir Anwar

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  1. Mohammad Amir Anwar
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Correspondence to Mohammad Amir Anwar .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, Archaeology & Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Jasper Knight

  2. School of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Christian M. Rogerson

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Anwar, M.A. (2019). Connecting South Africa: ICTs, Uneven Development and Poverty Debates. In: Knight, J., Rogerson, C. (eds) The Geography of South Africa . World Regional Geography Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94974-1_28

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