Action Research on E-Commerce for Small Artisans and Development Organizations: Pan Asia E-Commerce

In the World Bank’s World Development Prospectus 2001, the first of the four broad conclusions in the chapter assessing e-commerce in developing countries states: “Firms in developing countries should enjoy productivity gains and expanded demand with the spread of electronic commerce.” Many would scoff at this statement, especially given the collapse of Internet market values. But keen observers believe that “there is a big difference between believing in the new economy and in believing unrealistic stock prices that were attached to firms in the new economy” (Kirkman and Sachs 2001). If the new economy can bring enormous benefits to the developing world, our major concern should be to focus on work that would enable artisans and development organizations to share in these benefits. Otherwise, the digital divide will reinforce the income divide. This chapter documents the efforts of Pan Asia Networking, a programme initiative of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), which experimented with a live Internet laboratory where artisans and development organizations could learn the ropes of e-commerce in a