Indigenous communities, ICT and rural development: Case studies in Tanzania and Sarawak, Malaysia.

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the role that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can play in advancing rural development for indigenous communities in the BRICS and emerging economies. Using the Thunen model as a theoretical framework, this chapter begins by highlighting the twin challenges that indigenous communities face in balancing outside influences with the consolidation of traditional organizational structure and culture and a limited set of economic activities due to the disadvantage of economic distance. Three in-depth case studies in Tanzania and Sarawak, Malaysia, are carefully analysed to show how, with the appropriate institutional support, carefully executed ICT projects have the potential to alter the vector of economic distance for remote indigenous communities thereby both strengthening and expanding the set of economic activities undertaken.