ICT-Led Development and Cross-Sectoral Innovation: The Case of Rwanda

During the past decade national ICTD strategies have transitioned from a focus on infrastructure and institutional development to a shift in leveraging these assets across a broad range of sectors (e.g. government, education, healthcare). This transition brings challenges, including balancing this ‘application focus’ with continuing infrastructure and institutional change The transition can also highlight the interplay of additional development challenges, such limitations in areas such as banking or power systems. These related sectoral issues can have cross-sectoral implications, limiting returns on ICT investments. To shed light on this transition process and its challenges, this study examines the case of the Rwandan national ICTD policy and its implementation. Rwanda is an interesting case due to its strong emphasis on ICTs in its development strategy. In 2000, the government defined goals for Vision 2020 and established a framework to be articulated through a series of four five-year plans. The transition from its first to second National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) plan (2001-2005, then 2010), witnessed a change in emphasis from infrastructure to 10 application domains. In the third plan (2010 – 2015), the emphasis was further refined to 5 domains: skills development, ICT private sector development, community development, e-government and cyber security. By examining case studies of programs in four of the five domains, our research team, consisting of two U.S. and two Rwandan faculty members, will address the following questions: 1. To what extent does the program meet broader policy goals? 2. To what extent does the program exhibit effective use of ICTs? 3. What role does infrastructure play in the success (or lack thereof) of the program? 4. What areas beyond the ICT sector hinder or facilitate program success and through what mechanisms do these effects occur? The cases cover all but the community development domain, which encapsulates the others but at a local level. Hence, cases in the four other areas include a secondary school GIS curriculum program (skills development), K-Labs – an ICT innovation hub (ICT private sector development), e-government through mobile beneficiary payments, and finally, cyber security as reflected in the March 2015 cybersecurity legislation and efforts to establish a cybersecurity operations center. The cases have been developed through face-to-face and skype interviews as well as action research on the part of all team members. Preliminary findings suggest significant cross-sectoral effects in the leveraging of ICTs. For example, the mobile payments case demonstrates the importance for banking and power innovations to the successful program. In the case of power, the innovations were market based rather than technical, with ‘charging shops’ being established to allow beneficiaries to charge mobile phones where infrastructure is lacking. These businesses are crucial to the functioning of the mobile payment system. The cases also point to the need to balance efforts at leveraging with continued infrastructure development as an important ongoing process of development. The evolutionary analysis points to the government’s white space spectrum policy and aggressive broadband deployment as evidence of its ability to continue its infrastructure development activities. However, cases indicate a slowing of the efforts at building out national fiber optic network, particularly in the last mile. Recommendations are made that suggest that efforts at leveraging and continued infrastructure development may be simultaneously pursued through decentralized infrastructure development. In this approach, leveraging projects include infrastructure enhances (last mile build outs, upgrades) as part of funding requests for leveraging programs. Such an approach allows the efforts of users to help resolve the difficult balancing of priorities in infrastructure investments where resources are scarce.