In 2007, IICD’s project portfolio increased from 120 to 138 projects. Contrary to our expectations, our partner organisations reached a larger proportion of users than we had initially predicted. The majority of the people benefiting from the projects belonged to IICD’s target group: underprivileged people with little or no education, people with a below-average income, and people living in areas where basic public services like health and education are scarce.

Through the projects carried out by partner organisations, IICD managed to reach around 700,000 active users who directly benefited from the ICT facilities and information that those projects provided. Most of those users were already computer literate or gained basic ICT skills through the projects. The programmes also reached an estimated 6,400,000 secondary beneficiaries, who can be categorised generally as passive users of information.

The users and secondary beneficiaries receive information pertaining to their particular sector, such as market information relevant to agriculture, health information or educational materials. In that way, the IICD programmes and partners are contributing to the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in particular MDG 1, which focuses on increasing the income levels of the poorest, MDG 2, which focuses on universal education, MDGs 4, 5 and 6, relating to health issues, and MDG 8, which focuses on international partnerships and networking, including access to ICT.

The users and beneficiaries can provide or access information through one of the 328 information centres and other access points set up by the programmes in the various countries. The centres have both printed materials and digital information provided through the Internet using either fixed, wireless or satellite-based Internet connections. To reach a much wider public in places where the Internet is either not yet available or financially not feasible, user and beneficiary access to the information is provided via printed bulletins, mobile radio, rural radio, television or voice-radio systems.