Agriculture plays a vital role in thedevelopment of many countries. Access to markets, financeand information are cornerstones for agricultural growth.Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supportsfarmers by facilitating access to markets through real-timedata on market prices, weather forecasts, information onpests, seed varieties and planting techniques. A majorimpediment for smallholder farmers to fully exploit thebenefits of ICT is the lack of sufficient infrastructure andmobile networks in rural areas. A reason for this persistingnetwork coverage gap stems from the significant capitalinvestments required for providing widespread ICT access,which mobile operators have often little incentive to makesince the potential profit margins in rural areas arerelatively low. This paper examines the role of regulationsin facilitating ICT access and ultimately rural development.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Thesecond section discusses the role of an enabling environmentand ICT regulations that are critical for expanding accessto rural areas. The third section presents the new data seton the quality of regulations followed by the analysis ofthe relationship between regulations and key ICT developmentindicators. The final section draws some concluding remarks.
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