Causes Of Information Poverty

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Information poverty is one of the main forms of poverty today that affects the lives of billions of people on a daily basis (Britz, 2006). Information poverty is a serious ethical issue. It does not only affect the individual/society in terms of human dignity and autonomy, but also restricts the individual’s and society’s capability to make choices and to develop.
The purpose of this research will be the following: (1) Identifying the causes of information poverty; which may include information illiteracy, lack of information resources and other resources in general, rapid developments within the Information and Communications Technology industry, poverty and a lack of infrastructural facilities (Aguolo, 1997). (2) Identifying the effects of …show more content…

26). Africa is the continent most struck by poverty and information poverty. There are about 1.2 billion people living under a dollar a day of which 70% of them are located in South Asia and in the sub- Saharan Africa region, making it almost impossible for those people to access the basic information they need to make a living for themselves. Information poverty affects the lives of many people in the world; most of these people lack the sufficient resources to access the right type of information they …show more content…

Since the sub-Saharan region is highly information poor, it is therefore also economically poor. The graphical representation that follows demonstrates how Africa as a whole has negatively suffered due to information poverty [see map]. It is important to realise that only one country in the entire sub-Saharan region is in the top 50 richest countries. It is also important to realise that the northern region of Africa has more countries with higher gross domestic products (GDP) figures than the sub-Saharan region
Information poverty also plays a big role in one’s human development and social interaction. Research by the American Psychological Association (ASA) show’s that one’s childhood plays a very important role into how they view the world as adults (ASA, 2013). Growing up in an information poor society will play a crucial role in how a person interacts with the rest of society. For example, many children from the Mamelodi townships who grow up information poor usually end up becoming criminals because they are not aware of ethics as they had never received any form of

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