CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
In the recent time, rural areas are currently featured with significant changes in urbanization, globalization and technological changes have continued to change the rural dwellers’ ways of life (Martz & Sanderson, 2016). In an attempt to deal with economic and social implications of these changes, rural dwellers face a lot of constraints in term of financial and communication services (Marini & Mooney, 2015). Rural communities are the largest underserved or unserved market for financial services.
In African, a lot of people reside in the rural areas ranging from women, children, the elderly, able bodied men and people with physical disabilities. Jones (2006) explained that rural people represent multi-cultural, multi-faceted client groups, with a variety of needs including access to information relevant to them. According to International Food and Agricultural development (IFAD) (2015) about 75% of the poor, or 900 million people, live in rural areas and depend on agriculture and related rural crafts, trade and services for their livelihoods.
In Nigeria, rural or community development has been declared a priority by the successive governments, be it civilian or military (Ifeanyi, 2016). In this regard, several organizations, institutions and agencies have been set up to undertake and monitor the complicated process of nation-building, development and integration (Ifeanyi, 2016). Hence, projects such as the construction of roads, bridges, schools, railway lines, ports and marketing boards were all aimed at opening the rural areas as a link for the easy exploitation of export raw materials in Nigeria (Nnadozie, 2018).
Over the past two decades, significant development of information and communication technology (ICT) has encouraged government to investigate its economic implications, notably the contribution of ICT to increasing productivity, promoting economic growth and reducing poverty (Sepehrdoust, 2018). Also, international organizations such as the United Nations, the International Telecommunications Union, the OECD, and the World Bank argue that the ICT sector is a key driver of sustainable development (Pradhan, Mallik & Bagchi, 2018).
The great diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT) has caused a dramatic transformation that Africa into an information society (Sassi & Mohamed, 2013). Information communication technology plays a major role in reducing poverty by creating new sources of income and new jobs, but also by reducing the cost of poor people’s access to health and education services (Wamboye, Kiril & Bruno, 2015). ICT diffusion has substantially improved the efficiency of resources allocation, enormously reduced production costs, and promoted much greater demand and investment in all economic sectors (Sassi & Mohamed, 2013).
Nigeria government has leverage on this new trend of technological change though a little (Dada, 2016). These have successfully aided many sectors like Manufacturing, Education, Transportation, Tourism, Health, Banking, Commerce and Nigerian economy (Ndukwe, 2014). Thanks to ICT infrastructure such as fixed-line telephones, mobile phones, Internet, and broadband, people, firms, and governments now have much better access to information, knowledge, and wisdom than before in terms of scale, scope, and speed (Dada, 2016).
ICT has been recognized as the engine for growth and a source of energy for the social and economic empowerment in Nigeria (Ajayi, 2013). The country are now empowering masses particularly in the underserved and rural area through IT as it can prove to be effective short-cut to higher levels of equity in the emerging Global Digital Networked Information Economy (Akanbi, 2015). The Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) a special fund set up by the Federal Government under the National Communications Act 2003, has embarked on several interventions to close the digital gaps in underserved and unserved communities especially in the rural areas (Ajayi, 2013).