Abstract

Poverty amid plenty is one of the greatest challenges confronting Nigerian economy. Government at all levels had initiated various forms of poverty reduction strategies in an attempt to reduce the incidence of poverty in Nigeria. Using data obtained through the administration of questionnaires on the operators of GSM purposively selected within the study area, the paper examined the extent to which evolution of GSM has been able to reduce poverty in Ilorin metropolis. A research question was raised. A hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The data obtained from the field were analyzed using descriptive statistics and chi- square. The findings reveal that GSM has contributed immensely to poverty reduction through income generated because of employment provision.  The paper therefore concluded that GSM has the potentials to reduce poverty in the study area if proper policies such as an enabling environment were created for more operators to strive. Based on this, the paper recommends among others that government should create a technical ICT (GSM) training centre such that the trainee will be based on salaries and wages with the view that they will be able to provide services to GSM operators or users.

Key words:  Poverty, Global System for Mobile Communication, ICT, poverty alleviation, food and shelter.