The Digital Poverty and Empowerment Issue in Indonesia

In Indonesia as many other developing countries, ICTs in rural areas are still facing connectivity challenges. However, the empowerment becomes matter and tipping point for the success of the policy. This paper discusses about the important of empowerment through ICT needed in rural areas. The digital poverty in Indonesia will describe this empowerment condition. The data were processed from national surveys on the use of ICT in households and individuals from 2013 to 2017 and also secondary data. In general, it is found that in the last five years, the growth of digitally "wealthy" is very low below the infrastructure growth and its gap between rural and urban also shows an increasing trend. Human capital and economic factors still hampered the access and use of ICT in the rural area in Indonesia. The benefits of ICT are always felt only by most villagers who have higher income and education. Therefore, the empowerment issues should be a serious concern the agenda-setting of rural ICT policy.