1 This is the prepeer reviewed version of the following article: Heeks, R. “Do information and communication technologies (ICTs) contribute to development?”, Journal of International Development, 22(5), 625640, 2010, which has been published in final form at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jid.1716/abstract Do Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) Contribute to Development? Richard Heeks Introduction Every year, developing and transitional economies spend in excess of US$800bn on information and communication technologies (Heeks 2009a). Even Africa, the world's poorest continent was likely to spend over US$60bn in 2010 (WITSA 2008): the equivalent of around US$60 per head. Such per capita figures are easily superseded: those outside the richest quartile who own mobile phones in Africa spend 1127 percent of monthly income on them (Gillwald & Stork 2008). For example, in rural Tanzania, average spend is US$22 per month; some 20% of total income and such that around half report "they sometimes substitute important needs (e.g. education, buying food, and clothes) for mobile phone ownership/usage" (Mpogole et al 2008:7). Much of this expenditure will find its way from developing to developed countries; the latter being home to most of the world's ICT multinationals. Conversely, ICT related development and investment funds flow from North to South. The World Bank Group invests around US$800m per year in specific loans and guarantees on ICTs and development, and US$11.5bn per year on projects with significant ICT components (World Bank 2009a). Private sector investment in Africa on mobile telephony alone runs at about US$10bn per year (Heeks 2009a). From the individual through the organisation to the nation and beyond, then, huge sums of money are being spent on ICTs. But what is the contribution of all this expenditure to development? That can be answered in certain terms fairly easily, if we see infrastructural development as a fundamental part of broader development, and ICT as a fundamental part of infrastructure. In 1998, one of every 100 inhabitants in a developing country was an Internet user (ITU 2010). By 2008, that figure was nearer to a sixth of the population – 15 per 100 – with a 21 percent annual growth rate. The rise for mobile phones has been even greater: the number of subscriptions was equivalent to 2 percent of the developing world's population in 1998 (ibid). Ten years later in 2008, that figure had risen to 55 percent, with a 26 percent annual growth rate. Estimates suggest that actual ownership of mobiles might be around threequarters of the subscription rates (due to lapsed and multiple subscriptions), but that actual usage might in turn be twice that figure (due to shared usage of mobiles) (Heeks 2009b). These estimates suggest usage rates of mobiles in excess of 80 percent of the