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worries that, in developing ICT4D policies, we tend to assume a functional state capable of managing processes of innovation - what's missing in the literature is discussion of large-scale institutional failure providing massive bottlenecks and constraints. In South Africa, she worries about the rise of the state in terms of provisioning and operating communication services.

That's what we learned with the explosion of mobile telephony. We claim that mobile phone companies opened this market - that's totally false. The mobile networks were the innovation of poor people when they were enabled to use it the way they wanted to. Poor people spent much more income than we ever thought they would.

While he agrees that this consideration is “not crazy”, he suggests we not overfocus on this. “There are institutional failures all over the place - they're the main cause of stalled growth… If you're in a state that shuts down communication channels, there's something larger wrong.” (He admits that this sets up an intersting paradox, as China is growing incredibly quickly, but shows extremely high willingness to control these communication channels.)