Information and knowledge society and its impact on poverty alleviation and economic empowerment among informal sector women entrepreneurs in South Africa

Abstract

The use of tools for development has evolved from the industrial revolution in the late 18th and 19th centuries that saw the increased use of machines and developments in the mining industries, to the increased use of information and technology in the 20th century and major breakthroughs that sparked the evolution into the information and knowledge society of the 21st century. The basis of the information and knowledge society revolves around technology’s increased assimilation and diffusion in human society, particularly information and communication technologies and their rapid growth and use in the exchange of information and knowledge. This society offers many opportunities and benefits to people in terms of the facilitation of information creation, distribution, diffusion, access and use for growth and development in various spheres of life. Information and communication technologies are thus regarded as tools for the advancement and development of communities, and this includes rural, illiterate, marginalized and poor communities and the female entrepreneurs in the informal sector who are the subject of this thesis. The aim of this study was to examine information and knowledge society and its impact on poverty alleviation and the economic empowerment of informal sector women entrepreneurs in South Africa and develop a model for utilization of information and knowledge in the informal sector. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed for triangulation, although the qualitative approach significantly outweighed the quantitative in this study. The absence of a comprehensive list of informal activities in KwaZulu-Natal led to the decision to use snowball, purposive and haphazard sampling techniques to select the sample for the study. Focus group discussions, interviews, observation and content analysis were used to collect data from 118 women entrepreneurs from the informal sector, 17 women leaders, and 4 officials from the Hlabisa Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal.

Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Library and Information Science at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2012.