EDUCATION FOR EVERY ONE

Opportunities[edit]

See also: Global digital divide, Digital divide and Global Internet usage

Graph of ICT penetration per 100 inhabitants byInternational Telecommunication Union

ICT is central to today's most modern economies. Many international development agencies recognize the importance of ICT4D – for example, the World Bank's GICT section has a dedicated team of approximately 200 staff members working on ICT issues. A global network hub is also promoting innovation and advancement in ICT4D.Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) is the world's first multi-stakeholder network, bringing together public sector, private sector and civil society organizations with the goal of sharing knowledge and building partnerships in ICT4D.

Developing countries far lag developed nations in computer use and internet access/usage. For example, on average only 1 in 130 people in Africa has a computer^[101] while in North America and Europe 1 in every 2 people have access to the Internet.^[102] 90% of students in Africa have never touched a computer.^[103]

However, local networks can provide significant access to software and information even without utilizing an internet connection, for example through use of Wikipedia for Schools or the eGranary Digital Library.

The World Bank runs the Information for Development Program (infoDev), whose Rural ICT Toolkit analyses the costs and possible profits involved in such a venture and shows that there is more potential in developing areas than many might assume.^[104] The potential for profit arises from two sources- resource sharing across large numbers of users (specifically, the publication talks about line sharing, but the principle is the same for, e.g., telecentres at which computing/Internet are shared) and remittances (specifically the publication talks about carriers making money from incoming calls, i.e., from urban to rural areas).

A good example of the impact of ICTs is that of farmers getting better market price information and thus boosting their income.^[105][106] The Community e-Center in the Philippines developed a website to promote its local products worldwide.^[107] Another example is the use of mobile telecommunications and radio broadcasting to fight political corruptionin Burundi.^[108] This is a short video that discusses the impact of ICT4D in our society: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwxWHC7NCs8

Women and ICT4D[edit]

In recent years there has been a major thrust in the effort to fight longstanding gender discrimination through ICT and to empower women. In May 29 at the "International Girls in ICT Day 2012" held in Geneva, Switzerland, the ITU's Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun Touré said that “Technology needs girls for all sorts of reasons – but perhaps the most important one is that women drive social and economic growth.^[109] A study made by ITU shows that narrowing the gap between men and women in the workplace increases economic growth, while fighting to maintain the gap costs billions of dollars a year. Plus, a more diverse gender pool in the workplace makes for a more robust and healthy business environment.^[110] As of today, it is a fact that --on average-- women have less access to ICT than men, that they use ICT less intensively and that they are vastly outnumbered in high-level ICT positions worldwide.

There is disagreement for reasons of this gap. On the one hand, one often cited argument are that women are somehow technophobic and that they perceive ICT to be a male-dominated terrain, making it less appealing to approach them, and as a career choice (see for example at Insight's study or^[111] Changes are currently underway in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and Russia to change the perspective of girls at the primary educational level regarding the feasibility of ICT as a long-term and fruitful career.^[112] On the other hand, a carefully controlled study^[113] has shown that women actually embrace digital technology even more than men, disproving the stereotype of "technophobic women". The reason for the negative correlation of ICT with women is confounded by a spurious correlation. The confounding variables are income, education and employment. In other words, the reason why fewer women access and use ICT is a direct result of their unfavorable conditions with respect to employment, education and income. When controlling for these variables, women turn out to be more active users of digital tools than men. This turns the alleged digital gender divide into an opportunity: given that digital ICT have the potential to provide access to employment, education, income, as well as health services, participation, protection, and safety, among others (ICT4D), the natural affinity of women with these new communication tools provide women with a tangible bootstrapping opportunity to tackle social discrimination. This shows that if woman are provided with modern information and communication technologies, these digital tools represent an opportunity for women to fight longstanding inequalities in the workplace and at home.

Examples of women's empowerment through ICT include:^[114]

• Training in the use and design of computer applications, such as e-mail, word-processing and design applications, builds marketable skills
• Marketable skills create alternative possibilities for income generation and the possibility of upward mobility
• An independent income is the basis for individual autonomy, increased agency and control and, frequently, increased self-esteem and self-confidence
• Increased agency and self-confidence allow women to travel more and develop a wider network of contacts. Such travel and networking expose them to the availability of more economic opportunities
• ICTs open new avenues for education, communication and information sharing
• ICTs can be a valuable tool for the organization and mobilization of women’s advocacy and interest groups
• Education and information increase knowledge about the world and the political, economic, social and cultural factors that shape women’s lives.

ITU, in cooperation with Sookmyung Women's University of Korea and the Asia Pacific Information Network Center, recently funded an ICT pilot program in the Philippines and Bhutan that specifically targets rural women. Its results show that women tend to adapt much quicker to the use of ICT once exposed to it, and participants, though initially averse to the idea of using ICT for information gathering and marketing, found the application of ICT in their local setting beneficial.^[115]

Artificial Intelligence for Development[edit]

Insightful applications of machine learning, reasoning, planning, and perception have the potential to bring great value to disadvantaged populations in a wide array of areas, including healthcare, education, transportation, agriculture, and commerce. As an example, learning and reasoning can extend medical care to remote regions through automated diagnosis and effective triaging of limited medical expertise and transportation resources. Machine intelligence may one day assist with detecting, monitoring, and responding to natural, epidemiological, or political disruptions. Methods developed within the artificial intelligence community may even help to unearth causal influences within large-scale programs, allowing a better understanding on how to design more effective health and education systems. Ideas and tools created at the intersection of artificial intelligence and electronic commerce may provide new directions for enhancing and extending novel economic concepts, such as micro-finance and micro-work.

Machine learning holds particular promise for helping populations in developing regions. Unprecedented quantities of data are being generated in the developing world on human health, commerce, communications, and migration. Automated learning methods developed within the AI community can help to tease out insights from this data on the nature and dynamics of social relationships, financial connections and transactions, patterns of human mobility, the dissemination of disease, and such urgent challenges as the needs of populations in the face of crises. Models and systems that leverage such data might one day guide public policy, shape the construction of responses to crises, and help to formulate effective long-term interventions.

Machine intelligence has been pursued before in projects within the broader Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT-D) community. These and other ICT-D efforts have already led to valuable ideas, insights, and systems. AI-D^[116] stimulates a larger focus on opportunities to harness machine learning, reasoning, and perception to enhance the quality of life within disadvantaged populations.

Funding ICT4D[edit]

Heeks’ argues that more traditional ICT4D work was driven by money from a relatively small number of international development agencies. Modern ICT4D projects tend to be funded by a much more eclectic range of sources:

• Private sector. Private firms are increasingly investing in ICT4D for reasons which appear to lie at the rather murky interface between CSR (corporate social responsibility) and BOP (seeing the poor as bottom of the pyramid consumers).^[117]
• Southern governments. Previously – and still somewhat – reliant on donor funding in this area, some governments in the South are starting to invest their own funds in ICT4D, drawn by the push of community demand and the pull of perceived benefits.^[117]
• New donors. The 21st century is seeing a new wave of Southern aid donors emerging. Newly industrialized and transitional nations such as China, India and South Korea are now active in development aid because of their own economies and expertise and they have been particularly keen on funding ICT4D; arguably more so than some Northern donors.^[118] Korea, for example, had already spent more than US$120m on ICT4D aid (over 10% of its total aid budget).^[119]
• Revived old donors. Funding for ICT4D from Northern and international (i.e. Northern-dominated) donors has followed a dot.com-like cycle. It ramped up massively from the late 1990s; fell away after the 2005 Tunis World Summit on the Information Society; and showed signs of reviving from 2008 with, for example, the UK's Department for International Development placing ICTs back onto its agenda and the World Bank doubling its funding for African ICT initiatives.^[117]

One of the main challenges is to widen the influence of the respective policies from those carried out by just the telecommunications authority to the entire public sector (be this on the international-, national-, or local level). While most of the national digital agendas are led by national telecommunications authorities (such as ITU or the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and NTIA), the case of Chile shows that the funds managed by the telecom authority represent less than 5% of the total funds spent by the overall government on ICT-related policies and projects (spread out over 22 government departments), such as those carried out by the national health department, the education ministry or the finance department.^[120] The funds available for ICT4D throughout the public sector are a large multiple of those spent by technology and infrastructure authorities alone.

Countries and international organizations usually do not know which agency manages which kinds of ICT funds and do not often make an effort to track these resources. Since ICT for development is about more than providing mere access to technologies, the logical conclusion should be to coordinate the funds and projects implemented by telecommunications and technologies authorities with those managed by the health, education, finance and defense authorities. The first task in coordinating usually consists of taking inventory of the funds available to the entire public sector. This is generally not done and not even the actors and decision makers have a coherent picture about what is being done. Double efforts/lack of synergies are the common result.^[120]

Projects[edit]

Schoolkids with laptops inCambodia.

Analyses[edit]

ICT4D initiatives and projects may be designed and implemented by international institutions, governments (e.g., e-Mexico initiative), consultants (e.g., Non-Profit Computing, Inc.^[121]), private companies (e.g., Intel's Classmate), non-governmental organizations (e.g., International Institute for Communication and Development), or virtual organizations (e.g., One Laptop per Child). The projects can typically be evaluation research, matching a tool and a problem, exploratory research, or constructive research.^[8]

A 2010 research report from the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre^[122] found "Very few ICT4D activities have proved sustainable... Recent research has stressed the need to shift from a technology-led approach, where the emphasis is on technical innovation towards an approach that emphasises innovative use of already established technology (mobiles, radio, television)."^[123] However, of 27 applications of ICTs for development, E-government, E-learnings and E-health were found to be possible of great success, as well as the strengthening of social networks and boosting of security (particularly of women).

The United Nations Development Center in Bangkok issued a list of over 100 case studies addressing one or more of the following issues:^[124]

• Access and Infrastructure
• Capacity building and Education
• e-Governance and e-Government
• Environment and Agriculture
• Free and Open Source Software
• Gender and ICT
• Health and Medicine
• Policy and Social Analyses
• Technical Innovation for Development

ICT and WSIS related projects are available in the public database of WSIS Stocktaking

Problems[edit]

Projects which deploy technologies in underdeveloped areas face well-known problems concerning crime, problems of adjustment to the social context, and also possibly infrastructural problems. While a link between poverty reduction and ICT exists, the connection is yet to be fully understood. In fact, the relationship between infrastructure investment and increased output commonly encounter problems with reverse causality and false correlations.

The expansion of ICT can have direct negative outcomes. Expenditure on ICT has been known to cause intra-household conflict, foster male dominance over resources and divert household resources away from food and other essentials. Human right concerns such as child labor have also been raised over the use of conflict materials in the production of ICT devices.^[125]

In many impoverished regions of the world, legislative and political measures are required to facilitate or enable application of ICTs, especially with respect to monopolistic communications structures and censorship laws.

The literacy issue is one of the key factors why projects fail in rural areas; as education in literacy sets the foundation for digital and information literacy, proper education and training are needed to make the user at least understand how to manipulate the applications to get the information they need. Constant follow-up with the community is needed to monitor if the project has been successfully implemented and is being used meaningfully.

In the case of India, technological advancement has been more of leapfrogging in nature: the affordability of mobile phones allowed more people to acquire mobile phones before learning to use personal computers and desktops. This unfamiliarity with computers could be seen as problematic as it creates digital divide if technological devices provided are computers; a disconnect between computing technology and people causes difficulty for some of the ICT4D project initiatives to take effect. For instance, in rural parts of India, the Ministry of Education rejected OLPC initiative^[126] due to lack of facilities and trained professionals for computer teaching and maintenance. While closing the gap of digital divide through training teachers so that technology may be used for teaching process is challenging, there is yet another problem of failing to recognize technology as a tool for learning process. Studying how learners and/or students interact with technology is vital for developing and designing technologies for them.

Projects in marginalised rural areas face the most significant hurdles – but since people in marginalised rural areas are at the very bottom of the pyramid, development efforts should make the most difference in this sector. ICTs have the potential to multiply development effects^[127] and are thus also meaningful in the rural arena.^[128]

However, introducing ICTs in these areas is also most costly, as the following barriers exist:^[129]

• Lack of Infrastructure: no electrical power, no running water, bad roads, etc.
• Lack of Health Services: diseases like HIV, TB, malaria are more common.
• Lack of Employment: there are practically no jobs in marginalised rural areas.
• Hunger: hungry users have problems concentrating.
• Illiteracy: Text user interfaces do not work very well, innovative Human Computer Interfaces (see Human Computer Interaction) are required.
• Lack of means to maintain the project: some projects may be left to deteriorate in time because maintenance is sporadic and if a component breaks it is costly to obtain skilled people and parts to make a repair..
• Lack of means to maintain the project due to short-terms grants
• Lack of support from the local government
• Social Contexts: the potential users living in rural marginalised areas often cannot easily see the point of ICTs because of social context and also because of the impediments of hunger, disease and illiteracy.
• Possibility of encouraging brain-drain.^[130]
• Corruption is one of the factors that hampers the implementation of ICT projects in rural areas.
• Training and seminars must be conducted according to a suitable time for farmers, to make sure that their daily routine is not affected.
• Many applications are not user friendly.
• Projects are sometimes not being needs-driven and not relevant to local context.^[130]

Another significant problem can be the selection of software installed on technology^[131] – instructors trained in one set of software (for example Ubuntu^[132]) can be expected to have difficulty in navigating computers donated with different software (for example Windows XP).

A pressing problem is also the misuse of Electronic waste in dangerous ways. Burning technology to obtain the metals inside will release toxic fumes into the air.^[133] Plastics, chips and circuit boards are destroyed to gather their raw and sellable materials. These practices cost the health of communities, affecting the respiratory and immune system. Presence of harmful chemicals are stuck on soils like lead, mercury and cadmium.^[134] Sadly electronic wastes are profound in developing countries where they are dumped due to large recycling costs. Developing countries are forced to labor on these waste to get money. (Certification of recyclers to e-Stewards or R2 Solutions standards is intended to preclude environmental pollution.)

Finally, while the training, support, hardware and software may all be donated, it is rare for another vital component of technology, Internet access, to be made available at a discounted rate. "In about half the countries in Africa, one year of [dial-up] Internet supply will cost more than the average annual income."^[135][136]

TechChange, The Social Impact Lab and the World Bank have highlighted many of the above issues and complexities around implementing ICT4D projects through an animation short.^[137]

Lessons learned[edit]

Crucial in making any ICT4D effort successful is effective partnership between four key stakeholders:

• Public sector (governments from developed nations, developing nations, international bodies and local governments)
• Private sector (companies belonging to members of the target audience, multinational organizations wishing to expand their markets to the 4 billion people under US$2/day, pro-poor or social companies)
• Informal sector (NGOs, advocacy groups, think tanks)