ICT for Development Seminar Series

India’s right to information movement demonstrated the potential to combat corruption through social audits – an exercise to share and verify public records with people. India’s right to information movement demonstrated the potential to combat corruption through social audits – an exercise to share and verify public records with people. But this process requires a lot of time, skill and organisational effort – thanks to which very few audits are organised in India despite its potential. We hope to change this by creating digital tools for activists, which they can use to organise social audits continuously at low cost, and thus challenge corruption in a sustained manner. The technology involves collecting public records online, disseminating it to people via mobile phones and collecting their feedback so that the activists can redress grievances in a timely manner. I will share the progress of the project so far in this talk. Please note: video captions are auto-generated and may contain errors.

Over the past decade there has been a phenomenal growth in mobile phone and internet usage in Africa which has attracted substantial media and academic interest. Over the past decade there has been a phenomenal growth in mobile phone and internet usage in Africa which has attracted substantial media and academic interest. However questions remain about the economically transformative nature and potential of this diffusion of communication infrastructures and artefacts. Based on over two hundred firm level interviews in Tanzania and South Africa this paper explores the impacts of the “information revolution” on small and medium enterprise development. Contrary to perceptions it finds evidence of thin integration, devaluation and neo, rather than disintermediation. The implications of this for African development are then explored.

An in-depth study of the most powerful electronics contractor and the lives of its 1.4 million workers. During 2010, 18 workers attempted suicide at Taiwanese-owned Foxconn Technology Group's Chinese facilities, where Apple and other high profile branded products are produced and assembled. They ranged in age from 17 to 25 - the prime of youth. Fourteen died, while four survived with crippling injuries. What had driven the young Chinese workers to commit the desperate act? What light did they cast on China's much touted economic transformation in the era of export-oriented growth? The mystery that our investigation seeks to explore is not only the "inside story" of Foxconn; it is also the nature of global capitalism embodying with specific relationship between Foxconn and its buyers, the largest and richest being Apple, as well as that between Foxconn and the Chinese state. These are the relationships that shape conditions on the factory floor and ultimately workers' lives. An in-depth study of the most powerful electronics contractor and the lives of its 1.4 million workers enable us to draw out the deep contradictions among labor, capital, and the Chinese state in global IT production.

How can NGOs like Oxfam come together with academics and practitioners alike to tackle emerging privacy and security challenges when it comes to effective management of data? Data has invaluable applications to ensure organisations like Oxfam are needs driven and responsive, meanwhile there are also huge risks to communities if the related processes are not designed and managed in a responsible manner. Adopting meaningful approaches to data security and ethical methodology is not a new effort within Oxfam and the development community nor is it for academics. What is new, however, is the way that the changing digital landscape is presenting new challenges and opportunities which we must react to and ensure staff have resources and knowledge about how to collect, store, manage, use and even dispose of data responsibly. How can NGOs like Oxfam come together with academics and practitioners alike to tackle emerging privacy and security challenges when it comes to effective management of data? As Oxfam are in the process of applying a Responsible Data Policy, how can we learn from and support one another, particularly when it comes to guidance and what policy means in practice?

Alloysius Attah discusses some of Farmerline's success factors, including its locally adapted technological solutions and strong local outreach Development organizations, governments, and many others have put high hopes in the potential of mobile technology to improve and upgrade agricultural markets and value chains. However, with a few exceptions, traction and scale of mobile applications targeting African farmers have mostly remained elusive. Farmerline is one such exception. In a short time, with support from development partners, we have been able to provide mobile services that improve the livelihoods of over 5,000 rural farmers through communicating timely and relevant agricultural information (weather alerts, best farming practices, financial tips and market prices) through voice and SMS messages directly to their mobile phones. We also support food companies (Hershey, Ecom Trading and Armajaro), governments, mobile network operators and agricultural businesses with services such as farm management, communication, data collection and traceability tools to better manage their partnerships with small-scale farmers and their entire supply chain. This talk will discuss some of Farmerline's success factors, including its locally adapted technological solutions and strong local outreach. Unlike other mobile solutions for agriculture, Farmerline enables two-way communication in every language and works globally.

Since Tavaana's launch in 2010, the e-learning institute has safely educated thousands of Iranians about democracy and human rights. Since Tavaana's launch in 2010, the e-learning institute has safely educated thousands of Iranians about democracy and human rights. Through our live e-classes, documentaries and lectures aired on satellite TV, robust social networks, dissemination of ebooks and more, we are able to teach and inspire civic discourse about highly censored topics such as democratic transition, feminism, Islamic reformation, and LGBT rights. Our materials reach 7-15 million Iranians each week via Facebook alone, and over 15 million Iranians via satellite TV. We've learned great lessons from the potential of the Internet in reaching and supporting civil societies in even the most repressive regimes, and about cultivating via overlapping technologies a culture of human rights and liberalism.

Tim Unwin focuses on current work at the CTO, where his own personal contributions focus especially on the use of ICTs by people with disabilities. Many of those engaged in using information and communication technologies for development in the early 2000s saw them as being an opportunity through which profoundly different social, economic and political structures could be created, that would in some way generate a fairer, more equitable global system. Recent rapid expansion in the use of mobile technologies and social media has convinced a newer generation of researchers and practitioners that this project is still on track. In this seminar, Tim Unwin will draw on his experiences at the boundaries between theory and practice, to explore whether such optimism is indeed justified. Themes that he will (probably) address include notions of empowerment, poverty, political violence, and challenges of implementing effective ‘development’ interventions. The seminar will draw particularly on some of his current work at the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, where his own personal contributions focus especially on the use of ICTs by people with disabilities as well as on skills development and entrepreneurship, but he will also take a longer term perspective that builds (almost invisibly) on his early work as a medieval historical geographer.

David Souter uses the history and development of ICT4D as a framework to critique ICT4D approaches and consider the relevance of ICTs and ICT4D to the post-2015 development agenda. The presentation will use the history and development of ICT4D - and its relationships with both development policy and the ICT sector - as a framework to critique ICT4D approaches and consider the relevance of ICTs and ICT4D to the post-2015 development agenda. It will draw, inter alia, on recent work for the World Bank, to assess ICTs in post-conflict reconstruction; for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, to address the relationship between ICTs and sustainability; and for UNCTAD and the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, to consider the implications of emerging ICT trends for developmental outcomes.

This seminar will investigate how different technologies were used by CDAC Network Members in the immediate response to Typhoon Haiyan, focusing particularly on how needs assessment data was collected, shared and acted upon. This seminar will investigate how different technologies were used by CDAC Network Members in the immediate response to Typhoon Haiyan, focusing particularly on how needs assessment data was collected, shared and acted upon. The session will discuss some of the challenges faced in collecting data following a crisis, and will give examples of how Members are working together to try and overcome these. The CDAC Network is a network of media development organisations, international NGOs, inter-governmental agencies and technology providers, with a vision to improve two-way communication between humanitarian responders and populations affected by disasters. For more information visit www.cdacnetwork.org.

Dan McQuillan examines the Internet in a post-PRISM world, and asks if its power to tackle global poverty will be lost. This seminar will examine the Internet in a post-PRISM world, and ask if its power to tackle global poverty will be lost. While recognising the danger of nation states breaking up the Internet, I will concentrate on the already existing threat of tracking & big data and the emergence of algorithmic regulation. ICT4D may never have delivered on the promise of development anyway, so I won't mourn its passing but will point instead to the risk of a neocolonial cybernetics running across the Internet and the Internet of Things, and the risk of renewed subjugation through ideas like Smart Slums. Based on my experiences with civic hacking and the crypytoparty movement, I will identify participatory methodologies and critical pedagogy as key to post-digital citizenship and to our ability to disrupt predictive 'states of exception'.