Information and technology-enabled services (ITES) has become a sector of promise for many developing economies seeking to leapfrog industrialization and build knowledgeintensive economies. Existing approaches focus on enabling value and employment creation. Less attention has been paid to questions of value capture and socio-economic transformation.
We describe three countries’ articulations with global ITES - India, the Philippines and Kenya - to understand the potential for value capture in the ITES sector. In each case, we show how particular techno-political ‘windows of opportunity’ opened the door for value creation. Yet value capture and economic transformation did not occur in all cases.
While ITES certainly offers opportunities, this paper argues that the longterm developmental potential of the sector has often been exaggerated and it remains unclear how much developing countries can expect to upgrade within a sector whose very existence is premised upon a global economic restructuring process aimed at cost-reduction.
Our paper aims to present a more realistic perspective by emphasising both the contextual nature of successful ITES policies and the potential developmental vulnerabilities, which include the social and spatial inequalities unleashed by the Indian ITES sector and the dependency on foreign investors and lead-firms in the case of the Philippines.
Policy-makers in newly emerging ITES destinations like Kenya must decide if and how they want to engage in the sector in order to use it for long-term development.
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