Innovative and Green Growth for Rural Areas: Investing & Scoping

Project Summary:

Kosovo’s Government recognizes that broadband connectivity enables growth. KGGTF’s two-year USD $485,000 program aims to produce guidelines and a pilot program to support
the Government. The program team will provide technical assistance and advice to help Kosovo design a rural broadband program to give access to everyone in selected underserved areas. Together, they will identify pilot opportunities to save costs and increase revenue by applying green ICT in rural areas in both the public and private sectors. The program will serve as a model for rollout of broadband services in other countries facing similar connectivity challenges.  

List of Activities:

• Producing comprehensive guidelines on how to enable ‘Greening through ICTs’ in developing countries while leveraging rural broadband infrastructure rollout (hereinafter - Guidelines)
• Testing the application of the Guidelines by providing rationale for and technical advice to the Government of Kosovo
• Providing assistance with respect to (i) the design of the rural broadband program giving ubiquitous access to high-speed broadband Internet in the underserved municipalities as a platform for enabling innovative and green growth for rural Kosovo and (ii) identification of the opportunities for piloting projects which will allow potentially significant cost savings and revenue generation as a result of the application of green ICTs in public and private sectors in the rural areas

Outcomes:

Outputs 1~3:

• Guidelines on the rationale for Rural Broadband as a means for ‘Greening through ICTs'.

Outcomes:

This project is expected to produce a knowledge product on greening through ICTs, particularly through application of broadband Internet. The deliverable consists of a set of comprehensive Guidelines to the policymakers on how to mainstream green growth through ICTs by leveraging rollout of the rural broadband infrastructure in the developing countries. To a significant extent, the Guidelines drew upon experiences and knowledge of Korean institutions that have successfully mainstreamed ICTs in urban and rural areas. This activity will also transferred the extensive knowledge accumulated by the Republic of Korea with respect to development of the ultra-fast broadband Internet access network and utilization of this infrastructure to enable higher scale flow of services, goods, finance, and people.

Collaboration with K-Partners and Others:

The project benefited from the extensive expertise and knowledge transfer in the application of ICTs in the rural areas led by Korean public institutions such as National Information Agency and Korea Communications Commission in the area of development of the high-speed Internet access.