Title:	INVESTIGATING UNIVERSAL ACCESS FROM A HUMAN DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE
Author(s):	Florence Nameere Kivunike , Love Ekenberg , Mats Danielson , F F Tusubira
ISBN:	978-972-8924-82-9
Editors:	Gunilla Bradley and Piet Kommers
Year:	2009
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Human development, universal access, universal service, rural communications development, Uganda
Type:	Full Paper
First Page:	58
Last Page:	66
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	To ensure that the rural poor also benefit from Information and Communication Technology (ICT), governments in developing countries have employed the universal access policy to provide affordable access to communication facilities, within reasonable distances, at an affordable cost. While universal access (UA) is one of the development initiatives aiming to improve the day-to-day lives of people in marginalized communities, little is known about the extent to which UA has catered for and contributed towards human development. This paper addresses this gap by considering human development in terms of Sen’s capability approach which emphasizes the creation of opportunities and freedoms for people to live the lives they value. It specifically reports investigations of Uganda’s Universal access fund - the Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF) which has registered a lot of success in as far as meeting its infrastructure targets is concerned. The study established that RCD has evolved from infrastructure deployment to service delivery. The apparent next level is the need for a human development approach which provides a beneficiaries’ perspective to universal access deployment, one that explicitly considers the beneficiaries’ needs and values.
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