The ICT4D Baby Is Out but Its Bathwater IS Making Waves

This blog-style personal reflection is Patrick Kalas's view of the "perceived heartbeat of the ICT4D community at ICTD in London [3rd Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) conference, London, United Kingdom, December 13-16 2010]."

Though ICTs are thought of as enabling tools for development, "which can catalyze social, economic and political change processes through providing timely access to information and knowledge, facilitate knowledge-sharing and learning while amplifying voices of the voiceless ..., there is a current shift in discourse within the ICT4D community" towards evidence-based exchanges focusing on outcome and selected impact. The result is a case for "bottom-up, demand-driven strategic integration of ICTs to leverage results in other sectors such as Health, Education, Rural Development, Governance or Climate Change programmes.... Encouragingly this trend is also reflected in the ongoing consultation of the new World Bank ICT Sector Strategy which envisions emphasis on cross-sectoral mainstreaming under its 'Transform' pillar."

Kalas gives examples of "waves" of development interest by sector in ICTD: In agriculture, "ICTs - such as interactive community radios and mobile phones - enable timely access to decisive market information helping to address systemic market inefficiencies with resulting higher incomes of farmers. This includes the important role of empowering intermediaries such as knowledge extension workers and farmers associations). Very timely, the FAO [Food and Agr4iculature Organisation] launched its revamped e-Agriculture web platform during ICTD 2010 complementing initial overviews on ICTs for Rural Development and targeting this precise group through this global community of practice." The Health Sector, which he exemplifies through an “M-Health” interactive workshop [PDF] on how mobile phones can influence change of practice / behavioural change, must, as he states, continue to seek "critical reflections on good (and bad) practices, including the tricky issue of collaborating with the private sector."

His analysis of ICTs within climate change programmes includes their role within both adaptation and mitigation. On mitigation, "ICTs contribute to 2% of Global Emissions and efforts to optimize this are spearheaded by initiatives such as ITU’s [the United Nations (UN) agency for information and communication technology issues] Global e-sustainability Initiative and OECD’s [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] Green-ICT Initiative exploring the potential of ICTs to help reduce carbon emissions through smarter and greener production processes. On adaptation, 'Planting the Knowledge Seed - Adapting to Climate Change using ICTs' established concrete linkages between the 'people-centred' approach of strategically integrating ICTs (including interactive media) noting that

• ICTs have a negative influence on climate change (2% of global emissions and e-waste)
  
• ICTs as tools have positive potential to reduce the risk and vulnerability at grassroots levels through
  • providing timely access to relevant information (e.g. Early Warning Systems)
    
  • raise awareness (particularly at grassroots level)
    
  • facilitate practical knowledge-sharing and learning on coping strategies
    
  • empowering those most vulnerable and effected by climate change to raise their voice for political accountability and tangible action
    
• Current mainstreaming approaches from integrating ICTs in a people-centred, demand-driven approach into development sectors such as health, education, governance can be directly applied to Climate Change Programmes with systemic capacity development approach is needed."

Kalas cites the conclusion of the University of Manchester’s “Climate Change, ICTs and Innovation Project”: "...there is a systematic 'bottom-up-driven' demand emerging from poor communities themselves demanding capacity development efforts to reduce their potential vulnerabilities through increased access to and sharing of information and knowledge. This is in line with the general ICT4D bathwater trend and the way forward needs to include:

1. Focusing on adaptation and people in order to reduce vulnerabilities of the 70% of the 1.4 Billion people live on less than 1.25 dollars a day that are in rural areas and who will be most affected by the inevitable consequences of climate change;
   
2. Applying the Holistic 7 C’s-approach complimentary to connectivity and access issues (see blog post ‘Simple but Not Easy…’ for an overview on 7 C’s);
   
3. Taking critical reflections on ‘ICT-Mainstreaming’ into account (see ‘Mainstreaming ICTs in Development: The Case Against it’);
   
4. Embedding ICTs into Standard Operating Climate Change Tools such as the OECD ‘Climate Proofing Tool’ [PDF]."

Kalas proposes the following conclusions and invites discussion and comment through the link below:

• "People First - Technology Second, Particularly in Rural Areas - ...Exploring ICTs as empowering tools to address poverty alleviation efforts in rural areas ought to remain the key focus of the research and practitioners community."
  
• "Convergence Among Different ICTs Beats Mobile Alone - Focus on Convergence among different ICTs – including the pivotal role of interactive radio..."
• "Keep the Bad and Ugly About ICTs in Mind - Address and explore the serious flipside of the positive ICT coin including e-waste or the commercial standards of the extractive metal industry and ICTs as both issues can contribute directly to unsafe and exploitative working conditions."
  
• "Re-embracing ICT-enhanced Communication for Development Approaches for Political Empowerment and Social Accountability - Extraordinary events in Tunisia with regional implications indicate the catalytical role different ICTs are playing to foster political transformation, paradoxically a dimension of ICTs in risk of being considerably side-lined by other sectoral applicability such as in health and economic development. Wrongly so. ICT-enhanced 'Communication for Development approaches' - a social process method based on fostering dialogue – deserve a comeback to build on established linkages to enhanced participation and inclusion of voices of the marginalized in decision-making."
  
• "Back to Basic Mysteries - Up-Scaling, Public-Private / Multi-stakeholder Partnerships [PPPs/MSPs] and the Role of an International Donor - Persisting knowledge gaps on Up-scaling, PPPs / MSPs and the role of international donor agencies remain and deserve attention to explore how to move beyond 'small is beautiful', how to make PPPs and MSPs actually work sustainably with any role of a partnership Broker or what the role of international donors agencies should be, particularly within the mobile hype."
  
• "Don’t Reach for the Holy 'Impact Grail'- Outcome is Enough - ICTs have a promising potential to facilitate the leap to a change of practice / behavioral change (i.e. Outcome level results). Despite selected case studies on ICTs and Impact, this is costly and therefore it may be more pragmatic to deepen understanding on outcome levels with appropriate tools for measurement (adjusted Outcome Mapping) while integrating these lessons learned into the ongoing project cycles."
  
• "No More Freestanding ICT4D Conferences - There is no more need for large, top-down ICT4D Advocacy conferences but rather continued, focused exchanges between the research and practitioners community to narrow in on evidence gap while piggy-bagging on mainstream development conferences."