I publish something on the importance of free information in development, certain responses and questions always recur. This is an attempt to answer some of the more frequent ones.
Information is critical to all modes of human existence.
To a hunter-gatherer it is vital to know where waterholes are to be found, which plants produce fruit when, what the likely weather patterns are, and so forth. While struggles over access to information may seem distant from illiterate Indian farmers, such struggles may decide which seed varieties they are allowed to use and how dependent they are on transnational corporations. There is more to ending poverty than handing out food. While development agencies do carry out humanitarian relief operations where feeding starving people is the goal, they also support sustainable development projects where the goal is to attack the long-term causes of poverty. The idea is to help people build resources that will allow them to take control of their lives - and that will persist when donor funding stops.