DRAFT

ICT and DEVELOPMENT

LESSONS FROM THE FIELD

Luis I Rodriguez Ph.D

Im not here to make friends

Im here to make it work

Acknowledgments
This book was made possible thanks to the effort, trust and vision of many people. I have only
been the instigator observer and note-taker of the many challenging experiments carried out
by those who believed in the potential that these new technologies to better support development
activities in the field, and the vision and trust of those who made it possible, by providing the
financial resources to make it happen.
Among those I need to thank my boss, colleague and friend at USAID, where it all started for
me, Anthony Meyer as well as his supervisor and director of the Human Capacity Development
Center, Emily Vargas-Baron, who never cast a doubt about what we were trying to accomplish.
Also, and in high respect, I need to acknowledge the members of the implementation team, in
this case the Learnlink team at the Academy for Education Development, led by Dennis Foote.
All of them, Steven Dorsey, Jackie Hess, Marie Fontaine, Eric Reston, Jeffrey Coupe, Sabina
Belkadi and many others, that collaborated enthusiastically in this endeavor. I also want to
acknowledge my friends and colleagues from the E-Skola-Mk project in Macedonia, who fully
understood the vision and contributed to test in on the field for the first time.
I need to thank, and acknowledge all these people in the field, who were the actors of this
process and gave their best to make it happen. Thanks to them, many of these experiments
have been so successful that they stand on their own until today.
And finally my family, my children, who have been pushing me through these ten years to
continue writing and finish this book.

Introduction
Hate to do that, but this will be an I statement for a we introduction.
I (and we) have been working on this subject for what, 18 years now? And what have we got out
of it, besides the fun, the hard times and the fifty e-mails a day asking us to come down to
country X, Y or Z to do things? Well, weve written some lessons-learned -written basically
to comply with contract requirements- but nothing more than that.
Now, seriously, have we learned something out of all this? Definitely yes! Do we know what
have we learned? Not quite; too busy to think Things have been moving too fast for us to sit
down and mellow over the details. Well, this is what I think this set of articles is all about.
Writing this book has taken me ten years of a process of constant writing. Actually, while
working, at all times I have felt the need to sit down, look back and think about some lessons that
could have been extracted from each of the different experiences I was involved in. It was not
about why these programs have been so successful, but about a more intimate issue: why,
despite success, we havent really been able to affect change? Are we doing the right thing? Are
we doing all that could or should be done? Thats precisely what I have been looking to figure
out.
Another important observation about the writing process of this book: The first section, the
policy section, was written 10 years ago; the last two sections, education and community have
been written in this last years (2013 and 2014). Amazingly enough the situation has changed so
much, that many of the policy recommendations are now common knowledge and have been
implemented more or less as described. The paradigm has changed in many ways butstill no
major impact in development. So the future is still to be created
Thats why I could not write this under anybodys commission (thats and euphemism for
income). I needed to feel free to think, to follow my thoughts wherever they would take me,
without offending anybody and attacking anything. The idea was to remain positive and provide
some answers (maybe this is too presumptuous), or at least some words of wisdom, some
guidance, particularly to those who are in a position to make the greatest good or the greatest
damage in this kind of activities: donor agencies --that is fund providers-- and decision-makers
--that is, government officials who are the beginning and the end of all these processes.
I will confess that my greatest frustration in this whole process has been the limitations in the
vision and the thinking of these people (donors agencies and government officials), which
translates too often in funding the wrong kind of projects. Not out of bad intentions (actually
they want to do the best), but out of misconceptions about how IT/ICT for Development works.
And, although I have tried to address all these issues in the playing field, basically there has
never been enough time to do it: too much to do and too little time to do it. So this is my chance
to go about it, with the hope that if I get it in writing, maybe someday they will read it.

Thats why I am writing short articles, light in their reading and to the point in the message I
want to convey. Will it work this time? Only time will tell. But let me tell you something: We are
missing a beautiful opportunity to make something really great out of something really simple.
So, why dont we give it a try?
A final note on vocabulary and concepts: I want to clarify the use of IT and ICT throughout my
text, as it seems to be incertitude and confusion about the use and meaning of each. IT will
address (and should address) the hardware-related aspects within the subject. IT has to do with
installing computers, developing internet connectivity etc. On the other hand ICT (Information
and Communication Technologies) has to do with the development-concept related to the use
of IT infrastructure for development activities. Actually the correct expression should be at all
times- ICT applications or ICT applications in support of development.
I hope Ive made myself clear.

O.k., you are a newly elected president eager to make a difference or a Secretary of Education
with greater aspirations and want to bet on Information Technologys power to take you there.
Great, the intentions are good, but how do you go about it without making a fool of yourself?
Hopefully, here we will find out how

Table of contents
I. The policy series.
1.- How to succeed in ten steps. How to fail in five (IT as a development strategy)
2- Damned, it will not all happen under my administration (how to set up an ICT for
Development program that works for all)
3.- Good and bad strategies for ICT development, for development (ICT and Development
issues: how to bring these two together?)
4.- Addressing the holy equation of supply and demand in Development terms (access, teledensity and the economics of people and ICT)
5.- Whos afraid of the big bad private wolf? (Why private sector is so open to invest in ICT for
the common good?)
6.- Do we ask for their money or do we make them partners? (Funding ICT for development
projects)

II. The ICT and Education series.

7.- After cutting the ribbon in a school lab. What? (Computers in schools; how and for what)
8.- What if they dont want them? (How do teachers respond to computers?)
9.- When they break, do we fix them or do we throw them away? (Computer maintenance; a
common deal breaker)
10.- Everything is in place, so what do we do now? (Changing the paradigm in education.)

III. The ICT and community development series.

11.- Telecenters: do we really need them? (Do they really provide access?)
12.- Content, content, content!! (So much said, so little done)
13.- Community participation (is just a title or a driving idea?)

IV. Conclusion

THE POLICY SERIES

Chapter 1
How to succeed in ten steps. How to fail in five.
(ICT as a development strategy)
There is a golden rule to take into consideration when you start a program that will involve the
use of ICT to support development activities: You have more chances to fail than to succeed.
The reason being very simple; there is very little experience in designing and implementing this
kind of program, and a lot of expectations with respect to what ICT can do by itself.
IT, that is technology, can do a lot in support of development activities, but the problem is not
there. The problem is that there is such a tendency to rely on the power of technology that we
forget about the social and other conditions necessary to make it happen. That may seem pretty
obvious to someone with development assistance experience. After all we have done it all the
time; we have used technology in other fields (technology for health being the one in which
many bibles were written about how to organize community participation to support the
introduction of new technology). So why is it so different when we are working in the IT and
ICT field?
Lets face it; IT/ICT has never been considered a development strategy. The most we can say is
that there have been efforts to create strategies for ICT applications in support of development, in
order to give coherence to and make sense of dispersed initiatives floating around in a given
country. The notion still prevailing in the public opinion --that politicians look so eagerly to
please-- is that technology, in itself, makes things happen. At first glance this idea doesnt seem
totally incorrect. Lets take for instance a country where the leadership strives to bring it into the
21st century. Putting computers in classrooms seems totally appropriate and computerizing
government offices seems perfectly logical. Nevertheless, it is precisely there when the tragedy
begins. The assumption that computers will allow countries to make more and faster leads to the
lets place computers everywhere approach. This becomes the justification for investing
government moneys in the purchase of the tools that will make all this happen. But very soon
the hype gives way to astonishment and frustration: it didnt work the way we thought it would.
What happened? What went wrong?
There are two reasons to explain this problem:
The more and faster must be good approach is obviously wrong: We are talking of countries
with poorly performing education, health and other services. Education is most likely
authoritarian, repetitive and theoretical. Children are requested to memorize things they dont
relate to or dont care about. Thus, using machines with the only purpose of accelerating these
processes wont work. It will not do the trick to move up these kids to the 21st century. Actually,

when out of school, these children are in the 21st century. At the very least they know about it
and are eager to get into it. School is boring; it brings them back to the 19th Century, and schools
use of computers doesnt make it any more fun. If students were left alone, they would use the
machines in a totally different way. Unfortunately, every time this has happened they have been
discredited, under the argument that they are misusing a tool supposedly meant for learning only.
They were missing the peoples approach: ICT cannot get away from the rules that govern any
development strategy, even if it is considered a panacea. This panacea needs to be
appropriated by those who will benefit from it. No one will oppose to the benefits involved
in getting technology. But a very different thing will be to take the next step and feel fully
invested in the use of it. If none of this happens, communities become outside spectators of the
effort made by governments to provide that infrastructure to them. They will not really get
involved in using, maintaining and preserving it. Final result: if the government doesnt have the
capacity to service and maintain the infrastructure, it will soon become obsolete and die.
Sad, isnt it?
Worldwide experience shows that a large percentage of projects of this nature are failing to
produce the results expected for the amount of investment made, with very few exemptions. So
far, it is just money lost. Thats why we should take a good look at how we have been doing
things, and make corrections to these overall strategies, even before getting into details of
program implementation.
So far in the implementation of IT/ICT programs in support of development projects, what has
prevailed is a quick success strategy (I would say the five steps to failure) based on the
following parameters:
-

IT will make it work

Make considerable investment in hardware

Train people in computer use

Make available lots of software

Work on the policy and regulatory environment to facilitate access

Results have not been very encouraging: In the best case scenario, a strong infrastructure is
deployed computers everywhere- lots of people with computer skills seeking employment
(eventually migrating to other markets), and a favorable policy and regulatory environment
enabling countries to make rapid progress in the development of IT-related business. However,
no overall jump into the 21st century, no ICT revolution, no superhighway into the global
economy, as of yet.
Is it there another way to make it work?

We have no quick-fixes, or ready-made recipes, but there is definitely a more reasonable, and
development-friendly way to approach all this. Theres nothing really wrong with the previous
strategy. It is just incomplete. Its missing a lot of elements that experience in development can
bring to it. No wonder; these programs were created by Techies, not by Devies (development
people). On the other hand Devies have not been very friendly to technology as well. But now
it is time to change that state of mind: Everybody will benefit from that.
So, if we want to create a program that has better chances to succeed, what should we do? Here
are a few rules of thumb to go by:
- Dont plan for short- term results: Keep in mind that we are talking about a process, and
processes take time. It will be better to plan for the long run and create benchmarks to indicate
progress. As a good decision maker, however, you may feel the pressure of time. Your
constituents, both above and below, want to see progress. Creating a plan that identifies
achievable benchmarks will allow you to take credit for each step along the way.
- Put people first: The absolute first step in the process (after you had the idea and decided to
work on it) is to work with the people that will constitute your target population. Not only do
they need to be part of the process but they need to be the main actors in it. Its an old trick in the
development field However in the IT/ICT business the assumption seems to be that: IT/ICT will
be automatically well received by the beneficiaries. You might be in for a surprise. You may not
find plain rejection but you will certainly have to deal with indifference and disbelief.
- Prepare the community before bringing in technology: As a consequence of the previous point,
building peoples participation is only one piece of the equation. The other is to educate them
about the benefits they will get from the new technologies. Preparation means allotting time
for these awareness raising and education processes to take place. You want to move the target
population into an information technology culture in which they feel comfortable. This is
essential to ensure sustainability of the processes engaged by introducing technology in these
peoples lives.
- Its not about training; its about educating: Experience tells us that programs focusing only on
training for computer use have very little impact and much less success in achieving
development objectives. Very frequently a training phase precedes implementation for an amount
of time that is always too long for users and too short to affect real change. Thus, if not educated
and motivated, when the time comes for them to be confronted with the machines, its all gone.
The only insurance in this process is that recipients are indeed well educated and motivated to
make the transition towards an IT based environment. They have to know why theyre using
information technology and be convinced that this is what they want to do. But, also plan to let
them practice their technical skills until they become pros and not scared to confront the
machines.
- Empower people, get them involved, foster ownership and youll get sustainable projects:
Educating and motivating people to become users is fine, but real success will come when people
find the right conditions to develop a sense of ownership and their involvement translates into
controlling and guiding the project. Lets not forget that technology comes strongly associated

with the big brother approach. People will never trust something that is forced down their
throats. Make technology available to them, negotiate goals and objectives to be reached and
youll have a sustainable project. People will appropriate technology and put it to their service.
Isnt that what we want?
- IT/ICT is not only about bringing information to them; its also for them to disseminate their
own: The most common mistake is to believe that people would want technology to get
information and contents to be delivered to them so they can progress in life. I call this the
boy scout approach; you need to do a good deed every day, even if recipients dont necessarily
need what you are doing for them. Experience shows that it is as important for people to put out
their own information on the web as it is to get information from it. It makes them feel part of the
international community. Gives them pride, a sense of self- esteem and tells them that they are
valued members of society. That is true empowerment.
- Government policies need to favor people as well as business: Yes, policies so far have focused
on the creation of favorable conditions to enable IT/ICT-related business to prosper. Thats good,
but it is not enough; it makes us run into a catch 22 situation: Businesses prosper in areas
where conditions are right for them to succeed, urban middle and upper class environments: But,
what about expanding business into other areas? Not profitable businessmen would say.
Theyre right in their own perspective. Its not their business to get into developing new markets.
But then whose business is it then? Ours? No, as we dont want to replace private sector
initiative. So, what do we do? What can we do in the meantime? Well, we can create conditions
that will foster private initiative and eventually attract private sector investment. We can do that
from the policy side. We can create conditions to:
1) Provide low cost hardware by regulating imports, supporting local manufacturing and
providing affordable credit.
2) Provide credit to teachers, municipal workers, and other social sector professionals to acquire
technology.
3) Adopt policies to favor low cost connectivity for low-income sectors
4) Support the creation of public access outlets (telecenters) in urban marginal and rural areas.
I dont think we have even thought about the policy and regulatory issues that are hampering the
popularization of the use of technology, a strategy to benefit the people, and push any nation as
a whole- into the information technology era. Its about time to get to it.
Dare to take infrastructure to rural areas: Private sector business wont do it. It doesnt stand a
market analysis. But someones got to do it. There is a potential market out there in rural areas
although it may take time and investment to develop. The need for communication is felt as
much there, or even more, as in any other place. So who will take the bull by the horns and
develop a rural connectivity plan? Experience shows that developing agencies see this as their
responsibility under the assumption that government will follow, provided they can get the
vision.

You dont have to do it all by yourself; seek partnerships: IT is an area of activity particularly
well suited to build partnerships with private sector businesses. Governments tend to think they
have to do it all by themselves because thats what they are used to doing, particularly in
common good programs. An extra benefit of partnering with the private sector is that, despite
the fact that government officials will not give up the opportunity to take political credit for the
initiative, business will be more interested in the benefits of the operation than the political
credits they can get from it. Seems like a win-win situation for all. Why not taking advantage of
it?
Public facilities are not enough. You need to increase teledensity: In the past when you wanted
to bring the benefits of ICT to low income sectors, the logical strategy to follow was to
develop public access points. This followed the same principle used by other public services such
as phones. Thats o.k., but not enough anymore. Experience in this field is telling us that
telecenters are not capable by themselves of servicing the rapidly growing demand within this
sector of the population. So, what to do? We need to move rapidly to an individual-based/homebased type of service for these populations. We need to increase teledensity. Its the only way to
go. For that, we need to get policies straightened -up, develop a market and a whole area of
related economic activities such as technical support, repair and maintenance. On the other hand,
this will keep a lot of people busy, working and making a buck! Isnt that what we want after all?
Granted, it may seem a little strange to think about low-income sector residents sitting in front of
their own computers. But wasnt it the case with radios, telephones and TV sets throughout the
20th century? Well, now that were in the 21st, isnt it about time we moved our mindset to it too?
What I have stated are a few tips and thoughts about the issue. Im sure theres a lot more to be
learned. Is this a bulletproof strategy? Theres no guarantee to that effect but at least it has the
value of bringing together experience gathered by the development-assistance community and
the specifics of ICT. As far as we know, projects having higher rates of success have in one way
or another observed many of these rules. Thats why we say that a real IT/ICT related project, in
order to be successful in supporting development initiatives, has to be conceived and
implemented as an ICT in support of the development one.
It is about time that the development community takes ownership of ICT use in support of
development objectives. Should this happen, then governments will listen and maybe become
more responsible about the way they implement ICT-related projects for the peoples good.
Benefit can be so significant that it would be hard to refuse. And that is good business for
everyone.
Isnt that what we all want?

Chapter 2
Dammed, it will not all happen under my administration!?
(How to set up ICT for development programs that works)
Well, its becoming clearer now that an ICT for development program is not just about
dumping computers and cutting ribbons. We are also aware that an IT/ICT program can, at the
same time, be an important part of making an image for those government officials that dared to
bring that kind of challenge to their nations development agenda, in order to move things
forward. So where is the balance in this equation between the time required to set a program that
will work and the time-constraints posed to decision makers by the need to carry out everything
under their administration, so as to collect the political credits for it? In simpler terms: What do
I get from starting a program like that?
Lets say that you are a government official and that you are willing to make things right, that
is to listen to what development agents might have to say about the way of implementing an ICT
for Development program. All thats fine, but how long are they (the development guys) going to
take to put all that in place? Isnt my mandate going to be over when they are ready to cut the
ribbon on the project? Is it there anything I can do to keep my conscience clear and get some
benefits from something that was started after all- under my administration? In other words:
How many times can we cut the ribbon on a computer?
Only once is definitely not the kind of answer we are looking for. We dont want to look
intransigent on that matter. So lets say its okay to cut ribbons more than once. The question here
is how do we go about it, without interfering with the sequence of short and long-term
development goals that need to be met in order to have a successful program?
Marrying both (the requirement for a program to succeed and the needs of a government to be
seen as successful) into a recipe with chance for survival, will take some creative thinking. At the
very least it will take the capacity to look at things with a different perspective. Isnt that after all
what creative thinking is all about?
Well, it seems that the trick to solve this equation is finding a sequence of steps and events for
project implementation that will satisfy development needs and short term results. That is what
any administration will request to make the effort of getting involved in such an endeavor
worthwhile, knowing they will get something concrete out of it.
So, lets give it a shot at drafting this magic sequence. But, before getting into this, lets take a
look at some general guiding principles we need to keep in mind in order to tackle the issue at
stake:
- Plan accordingly, looking for intermediate short term goals acceptable to program and
government decision makers: In plain English we are asking development agents to be practical
when considering timing and emphasis made on intermediary results, and government officials to

be open to consider longer term programs with benchmarks they can announce and take credit
for.
- Communicate, educate and prepare your public: Implementing the project is not enough. It has
never been enough. Believe it or not thats been one of the reasons why these projects fail.
Dealing with technology is considered way too serious, by the common citizen, thus the natural
tendency to keep a distance with whatever technology infrastructure is placed in their proximity.
So, you place a computer lab in a school building and it remains closed; and this is not because
teachers are not trained or there is no ink or paper to use the machines, but because the school
principal feels the pressure of the responsibility of keeping these very expensive equipment
safe from deterioration and vandalism. So he puts the lab under lock and key (probably thinking
about his/her misfortune of having to deal with that, just because a government official wanted to
get more votes). Thats why --first thing first-- you must make the people feel comfortable
around equipment that has been stripped of their sacred aura and are nothing else but useful
tools to work with. Think what happened with fax machines 15 years ago and now.
Communication, education and familiarization with technology and hardware will do the trick.
But -you guessed right- it will not happen alone. All this needs to be planned ahead. So, do it!
And do it first.
- Dont forget about training and training follow up: Yeah, yeah, we know you have a training
component in mind. But then its probably a how to operate the machines and its software
type of training. Think on this like if it was a car: You train someone to drive the car but; does
that give the trainee any idea of where to go with that car? Well, here we find a similar situation.
Not only they dont know what to do with it, but as you may have experienced it after a training
session- you go back to your workplace and all the questions arise as you sit there, staring at the
bloody machine, trying to remember what key you have to punch in order to perform the bloody
operation youre attempting to perform. So, not only the initial face-to-face training is important
but, follow up, standalone, do-it-yourself trainings are as well. You better keep that in mind, as
this has traditionally been the weakest link in all these programs. People forget what they learned
and are too afraid to ask around. So they dont use the machines, except to stand flower vases on.
And then, what about giving the new users any clue or information that will prepare them for the
other impacts that should come along with the use of technology? They call this now
Managed Knowledge. What about transactional training to prepare them for the social and
organizational changes that will be brought into the workplace by the use of computers? What
about the shift in corporate culture brought by the computerization of the office? Dont tell me
you have never sat in your office with a wicked smile, writing an e-mail to someone, thinking
how are you going to organize your cc or forward it to other people in order to maximize
pressure on the recipient of this mail, to get from that person what you want to get? Thats right,
training is much more than the brush-up training you had in mind. And if you dont think about
all these other aspects you run the risk of getting an unwanted e-mail cced to all your
colleagues at work, on a subject you would have never wanted to see discussed in public. And
we dont want this to happen. Do we?
- Cut ribbons but focusing on the program: If you want to start your program cutting ribbons on
installed computers you might be in for an unpleasant surprise; your PCs might be there, but they
will sit idle for a while until your users are ready to get into using them. In the meantime you

will not only look ridiculous with these empty closed labs, but you will also be very vulnerable
to criticism, beginning with my own. Take my advice: If you can afford not to bring them (the
politicians) at the very beginning of the program, or not to bring them all at once, we can help
you find some ribbons to cut in the meantime, so you dont lose time or face in your career (you
will in the future take the credit for having done things right). On the other hand, doing it the
way Im proposing, will save wear-time on your machines, and your users when ready- will
find newer PCs to work with. Believe me, you will look much better and the program will be
saved. Here goes a tip: write a contract with your vendor by which they deliver, in phases,
machines upgraded to whatever model they are selling at that time. They love that because it
saves them warehouse costs and helps them to get rid of their stock, fasterand you may save a
buck or two as they come cheaper every time. Works just like a car dealership. The message
therefore is: work hand in hand with your development agent and come up with a schedule in
which you cut a few ribbons before the computers are actually there. It has been done before and
it works even better than putting all your eggs on the voila the computers basket.
- Dont focus exclusively on the technology side: Focus also on other results. Technology
provides the tool but the outcomes are in the benefits you get from using it. The real results are in
terms of economic growth, increased citizens participation, consolidation of democracy,
enhanced skills, larger access to information for better decision making, even happiness (you
should have seen the face of that villager in West Africa when she first sent an e-mail to her son
in the U.S. and got an immediate response). So, when you present your program be clever and
dont bet all your money into the fact of bringing computers to the rescue. Im tired of hearing
education sector people boasting about how education will change with the use of computers.
More often than else it doesnt. But what about saying how do they see education changing with
the effective use of computers? Someday we will have to talk about thatActually we do in the
Education Section of this book.
So, lets talk business now. First, what is this magic sequence and then whats in it for me to
make it worth doing it this way, or even doing it at all?
Benchmarks of a sequence that responds to development standards and the needs of an
administration should be the following:
1) Communication, public awareness and education first: Two main purposes are served here;
one, bring the issue to civil society (community at large) in order to begin a demystification
process that will transform a sacred icon into an ordinary tool; two, this constitutes an excellent
opportunity for government officials to make public announcements, public relations, and even
to inaugurate an Implementation Team responsible for the implementation of the project. As
communication and social engineering will be an important key to success, dont repeat the same
mistake that has been made over and over again, dont put a systems engineer (or a teckie) to run
the show. Technical aspects are relevant but later. Better hire a good one as a consultant and not
do the opposite, recruit a teckie as the boss and hire a development specialist as a consultant to
piecemeal a communication, education awareness campaign (and later training, social marketing
and so on).

2) Start the training program next: I mean the first face-to-face training, the one you had in mind,
to target population of users and most certainly your technical staff that will have direct technical
responsibility for the hardware and software to be installed. Dont trust diplomas. Experience
tells that even if they come with the right credits from well-known education institutions, they
need a brush-up to understand they will not be there just to administer a network but as
development agents. Prepare yourself for a surprise: They probably dont have a clue about what
social or economic development is. Thats why they studied computer sciences. Second
(although actually it should come first), have a training plan that includes cost-efficient and
realistic strategies for follow up training, stand alone, distance support, a help desk, etc. I can bet
my right hand that this is the first thing that will go away when the inevitable budget cuts come
down the line. Believe me, they always come. So, if you plan for more face-to-face follow up
training, it will not happen. But if you plan accordingly and take into account this reality, you
will develop your help desk, your CD Roms and your website at the onset, when everybody is
enthusiastic. Like this, you will not be out-in-the-blue when passion subsides and you know
who, starts loving another pet project. However, to keep the fire burning, you may want to make
sound bites out of many of your training events as you can. This will keep you know who
happy. Between you and I, donor agency officials may also need to take some credit, for their
own sake. It serves everybody and nobody gets hurt.
3) Sell the vision to stakeholders: Yes, this should also be considered as a critical and
unavoidable project implementation step. Lets be clear about what we are saying here; we are
not selling a service, we are selling a tool. A phone company sells a service; a telephone is a
tool. So if we make available a tool, at a huge cost, we better find people to use it. We will not
look very clever if we dont. Is this a metaphor? ; Actually, not. It is the accurate description of
what is happening in many projects, as we speak. So, how do you think potential stakeholders
will buy the vision and become users or supporters of the tool made available to them? Simple:
make them shareholders; that is, give them a piece of the action. Its called participation, I
believe. When people, beneficiaries, stakeholders, etc. are involved, things may not only go well
but they may thrive, survive and even bring some benefits to them. Why not giving it a try?
4) Put your bloody machines in place now: Finally some action! Thats okay; you may now cut
THE ribbon everybodys been waiting for (hopefully before the next elections). Once again you
may be in for a surprise. The return youll get for all this waiting is that next morning you can go
back to where they were installed and actually see people, real people, using them! Isnt that a
great photo opportunity? The other good thing is that your infrastructure will be properly
maintained by well-trained technicians and used by educated users. That really brings down the
risk of wear and tear.
5) Look for synergies and partnerships: Remember, your job will not last forever, the current
administration will be replaced, and donor funds and technical assistance will dribble away. So
what will be the project left with? Only with those directly involved in it, and its friends. So,
what are you waiting for? This is the time to make as many friends as possible. Synergies and
partnerships are the life insurance of your project. So build them; create different types of
alliances, deals, and yes, sustainability, with your community of users, the community at large,
private sector businesses, local donors etc. Use you imagination or find what others have done,
but do it now. Later, it may be too late.

6) And work on the S word at last! Sustainability, yes, we need to get to that. Sustainability is not
something that you create by decree. It is the outcome of a long process that begins with the
steps I have described before. It will emerge from the synergies, partnerships and sense of
ownership of a large community of stakeholders, developed through time, and willing to invest
time, effort and eventually money into preserving a common good for the benefit of all. Thats
the true meaning of sustainability that we need to work on.
I cannot guarantee that this sequence is the magic formula to make a bullet-proof project but it
certainly makes much more sense in development terms. It also offers the guarantee to be more
solidly grounded in the community. This alone provides a better chance to survive time and other
weather conditions.
But, what do I get from all this? Why should I bother? and what will you know who say?
Well, thats your call. But nothing in the principle that led you to think this was a good idea has
changed. The idea has always been good. What has been terribly wrong is the way to carry it out.
And it is nobodys fault. There has been little enough experience and a lot of myths around
technology-based development project, and this has been the reason to make thing happen the
way they have so far.
Now that we have the experience, we can do things better and you may even get a few extra
benefits to boost your career:
You may save money in the process; A chunk of money. This is not negligible nowadays when
money is not running up and down the streets. You may save in the training as you bring down
face-to-face for on-line, distance training. You may save in hardware costs, as ratio per user is
different when the user is better educated. You definitely save in maintenance when you have
good local technical skills; you may even save in the overall investment: if your procurement
plan is scaled-out in phases, you may discover in the process that private sector companies are
willing to share costs of something they see working and worth the effort. Think how you will
look when you announce you have done all this and theres still money in the till.
You will establish a good image and a presence among target population of beneficiaries. A
project well done will never be abandoned or forgotten by the community of beneficiaries. They
will probably make it their own and preserve the investment for the sake of their children. Thats
what we all want. We just dont have the time to make things the way we should: So we do it
fast, it turns sour and then everybody forgets about it, and who did it. I cannot promise you a
bronze statue in the main square, but short of that, it may even get you more votes.
You will avoid future bad press. And thats very important. Im not talking about getting you
votes, but it will definitely spare you the embarrassment of having to give explanations. Also,
bad press casts an overall bad image on the principle of the project. So in the future all
technology based initiatives are seen with distrust. We are doing a lot of damage control already
as we are. Please, lets not add more to it.

We know these are probably not arguments to convince you to carry on the idea of implementing
a project of this nature. However, this is our best shot at convincing you. Nevertheless let me
give it a last try: Definitely technology-based development projects ---if properly done-- are a
step in the right direction. It will take another paper to give you all the arguments on the potential
involved in this. Definitely it will make the administration look good and rip a lot of collateral
benefits to its implementers. Definitely it will be a tremendous help to the communities
involved, which is what we want in development.
So if it doesnt all happen in your administration, should that be a problem any longer? It should
not. For all we have said youve had enough beef in the process, to be able to take as much credit
you want or need. And finally, not only everybody will look good, but also Development
Agencies will love a project well done and successful. They may even want seconds.
Isnt it good to be in that place?

Chapter 3
Good and bad strategies for ICT projects in support of development
(ICT and Development issues: how to bring these two together?)
When bringing information and communication technology applications into a development
activity it will be crucial to keep in mind the very different characteristics, background and track
record identifying both. Im not saying this lightly; experience has proven that misconceptions of
what each of these activities can do to benefit the other, have been the determining factor for
failure or under achievement in such programs.
ICT is a set of technical applications dubbed with the power of bringing a great deal of benefits
to humanity. These alleged benefits stem from the capacity that ICT has;
a) To place any individual in touch with the global society, anywhere at anytime
b) To empower each human being to become a source of communication and information
available to the rest of humanity
c) To enable everyone to access an endless source of knowledge and information for his own
benefit.
Can we say, however, that these conditions are sufficient to grant the development wish to
whoever has the capacity to access ICT applications? Thats the million dollars question that we,
the development people are trying to respond.
The difference between ICT and development is more than a formal one. Its not just about
placing technology at the service of common good causes and address the needs of the poorest,
by giving better opportunities to the millions of disenfranchised people around the world. Sounds
good, but its not all. Theres much more to it. Actually this is only the narrow view about the
relationship between technology and development. And, quite frankly, it has not met with much
success up to now.
Granted, ICT can do all the things described here above and make of the ordinary citizen a fully
participating member of the global community. Thats the good news. On the other hand it is
expensive to implement. Thats the bad news. And, are the development results guaranteed?
Thats precisely the question.
So, lets get serious about this, and take a closer look at the issue at stake.
Who is who in this mix?
If information technology has been able to develop to a level where the benefits have become
obvious to the common citizen, it is largely because it grew up as a private sector, market

oriented venture. As such it has been successful in conveying an image and a message to the
whole world. Just look at the evolution that Internet had. Relatively quickly it was taken away
from the research lab environment and turned into a practical application, a tool at the service of
everyone willing to pay for it. However, all these applications evolved within the logics of a
market approach, as business applications, sometimes a bit too hasty (see the Dot Com debacle),
but still successful. Why do you think this is so? Just do the math and youll find the answer:
Computer sales are holding up, internet users are growing in numbers, TV sets are selling like
hot cookies, radios and other applications (fax machines, telephones etc.) are becoming standard
household commodities from low middle class up, everywhere around the world. This proves
that IT/ICT products have a consumers market with people convinced that accessing these
commodities will be of great benefit to them. People buy (not as fast as business would like to
see) and along with this, concepts about the benefits involved in accessing IT/ICT applications
trickle down to all sectors, including the poor and disenfranchised.
Development, on the other hand, provides a different approach. It involves the notion of social
responsibility in bringing the benefits of modern society to sectors that have remained marginal,
namely the poor, rural, minority, female and children. Implementation of many development
programs however, tend to generate activities that make these benefits available without
necessarily getting much involvement from the intended beneficiaries of the process. Yes, I
know, weve been working on changing the approach to a more participatory one, in order to
ensure ownership and eventual sustainability of the development activity. But lets be honest, it is
still not a widespread attitude. And when push comes to shovel, here we go again back to the
good old practices: Participation and community involvement take such a long time that, in some
cases, it becomes impossible to afford. Take an immunization campaign for example; if we allow
time for the community participation process to kick in, half of the people will be sick by then.
In ICT for development programs we tend to get a little of both approaches: Designed with the
concept of social responsibility to provide for the common good in mind, they are
implemented with the computers alone will make all this happen approach. This tactic has
proven of high risk for failure. So, whats going on? Or, more precisely: whats going wrong?
Once again, heres when bad habits kick in: We want to give time for the participatory
processes to build-in, but we are so much convinced of the power of technology to make it
happen fast, that we yield to that notion, thinking that everything is going to be alright. And it is
not. On the other hand the IT sector, as a private sector driven industry, must follow market rules,
that is, it must involve client populations from the onset in order to survive. Isnt that the
principle of participation?
At the same time, here comes another opportunity. Isnt that precisely what we are looking for in
the development field, when we talk about building sustainable programs? Thus, can ICT
provide some clues to the development field that might help solve the riddle? Thats precisely
our point. If we look at the association between ICT and development with an open and creative
mind, we will not only find the appropriate and particular conditions that need to rule this
partnership in order to make it successful, but we might find some answers to questions that the
development field has been looking for its own programs. Thats why we want to address the

issue of good and bad strategies for IT/ICT in development programs in support of development
goals.
Maybe the key word here is partnership, as opposed to the concept of one at the service of the
other (IT/ICT and Development). And, mind you, partnership is also a key word in private
sectors market oriented activities.
So, what are good strategies?
If we acknowledge the fundamental differences in origin and implementation environments
between ICT and development related activities, the process of combining them to serve a
common development objective will have to find synergies, based on the fact that there is a
common goal each of these activities pursue: to provide a better life to people and their
communities. This is not as easy as it seems and will involve lots of creativity (yes, we said
creativity, as in using your imagination). The IT/ICT environment calls for very down to earth,
practical, market driven, assumptions and decisions where the key concept is how much return
will I get for my investment. On the other hand development activities tend to be organized
along processes launched to achieve measurable development goals with more than
questionable degrees of accuracy and reality in the indicators used to measure progress towards
that goal.
But what if we combine both, taking advantage of the business oriented characteristics of the
IT/ICT environment? Thats the creativity part we need to develop in the design and
implementation of such projects. Believe me, its worth the effort. It pays and you will be
surprised by the return you may get from doing it this way.
In that context lets see which could be suitable strategies to be considered when planning ITC
applications to support development programs:
- Within a market approach strategy, look for partnerships: Never, ever attempt to do an ICT for
development project alone and just by yourself. It doesnt pay off. Too many variables out of
your control (technical issues, connectivity issues, social dynamics; you cannot possibly be an
expert in all of them). Build up partnerships in which each partner will have something at stake
in the project. Hardware providers getting a good deal; telecom companies seeing new business
opportunities in the services they will be required to provide; communities, its leaders and
development agents understanding very clearly the benefits they will get from using the
technology that will be deployed. Do your numbers first and show the beef to each of these
stakeholders. That will make the project theirs, transforming their level of involvement and
participation in it.
- Build synergies: Whatever you want to do, it has to make sense to each of the partners
participating in the project. It is not just providing services, selling commodities or, even less,
serving a common good cause goal (the common good has to be an ultimate goal but not the
objective). Synergies will emerge from the understanding of the personal interest served through
the activity (the whats in it for me? question addressed through your project for each of the
potential partners). That should be the cornerstone of the proposed marriage between these

partners. Doesnt sound too altruistic but its practical. Altruistic motives take peoples effort so
far but, bottom line, nobody will want to waste time and money in something they dont see as
sustainable in the long run. In this case sustainability is defined as: the capacity to generate
the level of income and energy required to keep the investment running after the project is over.
- Spell out your program like a business proposition: Theres no shame to it. We used social
marketing to promote and sell development concepts (health, education etc.). Why cannot we use
a market-oriented approach to make our programs sustainable? Isnt that what we want after all?
Any other ideas to achieve that?
- In the meanwhile, do the exercise; think about what will constitute your market; who are your
clients (that is who will buy what you are offering and for what reasons); is your product
correctly packaged? How will you advertise? Make sure you have a bulletproof plan for success,
keeping in mind that your final goal is the development objective. That will allow many people
in the funding and implementing side to get a good night sleep.
- Carry out your program through a well thought business plan: That is, do your market research,
do your cost-benefit analysis, do your marketing campaign, communicate, communicate,
communicate, and finally figure out how you are going to turn services that you propose into a
commodity, people will buy, using and ultimately paying for. Thats going to be your litmus
test for sustainability. A project becomes sustainable not when you start charging for services or
products but when people begin demanding and paying for them. Its not just a game of words;
think about it.
- Let the market run your project: and please, please, please dont let central governments do it.
What do we call the market in this case? The people, those who should benefit from it, they are
the market. And, if the project was done correctly, these people will flood your facilities to use
them, will pay for the services, will protect and defend the hardware and still, will come out with
a smile in their faces. Thats the market we are talking about. If this is not sustainability, what is
it then?
Bad strategies we need to avoid!
- A pure development approach: Needs to be applied with caution. No, let us take that back. A
pure development approach will not work at all. Actually it will confirm the doomsday theories
laid out by many development colleagues that all this investment left there to rot, confirms that
nobody is prepared for technology and it is not worth all the trouble and the money. And they are
right as long as they look at projects conceived and run as development projects using
technology to achieve miracles. By now, if you have carefully followed our arguments, you
know that technology by itself doesnt perform miracles, although it can make nightmares come
true.
- The common good approach may be right, but: lets be very careful about what we do in the
name of it. The concept of social responsibility is an easy way out for governments and even
donor agencies, to put the money up front and skip the lengthy process of going the nine yards in
order to do a project right. That is, to generate awareness, educate potential client population,

generate demand and develop consumption of the services and products that will lead to the
fulfillment of that common good objective. So, quite probably the concept of fulfillment of a
common good objective should not drive the thinking on how to implement a project. Better go
back to the concepts we provided in the good strategies part here above.
- The it is a social need so we should pay for it concept: This concept should not drive the
project. Development agents have assumed too quickly that because our projects are to serve a
social need, therefore we should pay for it, people will necessarily understand, accept and
value what is being done for them. We have been proven wrong so many times that we were
forced to invent the concept of sustainable projects. However we have not been able to find the
magic formula to make them all sustainable. Maybe it is because we assume too quickly that
sustainability means users pay for it or income generation. And, once again, experience is
proving us wrong. What if sustainability means more than just that? What if it means all these
other things that business know so well? That is; detecting a need, generating a product,
informing and educating the potential consumer, marketing and packaging, pricing, and
developing consumer habits towards this product or service? Once again in this particular area,
due to the specifics of the ICT environment, there is a window of opportunity to try innovative
solutions: Why not thinking that the common good is not something that needs to be provided
for, but something that people themselves could work on if they see the need for it?
- Subsidies should make it work: Wrong! First you must think or learn how the mysterious
ways of subsidy works. Then you make a decision about how you want to apply this esoteric
science into your program. We are not saying not to do it. Just think well what you are trying to
accomplish by this. Lookout for the golden rule: whatever you subsidize, be careful not to kill
the market. But you may follow the steps of what has become standard business practice:
subsidize the consumer until you have made a habit and created the need for consumption of that
product. This is a way to create a market. Not that I fully agree when Mc Donalds does it but,
hey! In this case it is for a good cause. Isnt it?
How about the old questions in Development? Do they still operate?
We are talking of the basic principles that drive development programs such as favoring rural
versus urban as target areas, poor versus less poor as target population, more developed versus
less developed as target environments where to operate in development programs. Do all these
principles apply any longer? Lets see.
The poor versus rich argument should be addressed with caution. Granted, development
programs should seek to benefit low-income sectors, but this should not constitute an argument
to justify programs targeting this sector exclusively, generating special conditions programs (a
euphemism for subsidy, assistance and imposition). Wed suggest that we dont divide the market
from the onset between poor and rich as categories in potential consumer --therefore client-population. Wed better suggest addressing our potential client population as a whole,
segmenting the audience according to different parameters, including economic levels. This will
enable us to generate different products and services targeting each. Its a different way to treat
the issue. But in this approach we might get savings in economy of scale, and erase frontiers
between categories.

Likewise, the rural versus urban issue becomes no longer a subject of division between private
sector and development initiatives. Private sector concentrates in urban because theres where the
quick buck can still be made. But theres no reason for them not to move to other areas if we
can prove theres business waiting, there too. Maybe our role (as development agents) is to
identify, define and format the market in these new areas (rural, but also minority markets) and
communicate --even attract-- private businesses to these new markets. Theres where a clever
and creative use of the development funds can be applied. The result is that we create a market
where there was none before, but we dont kill its potential of being a real, thus sustainable,
market for the business world.
At the end of the day, what is the lesson to be learned from all this? Definitely the old stereotypes
of development activities need to be re-visited. The combination between social objectives of
development and the individual initiative and freedom of choice fostered by private sector
business approach, may result in better human beings, moving ahead in their lives, in awareness
of their present condition and educated enough to know what they want to do with their lives.
In simpler terms: why dont you give it a try? You may end up having fun, getting better results,
expanding the universe of your experience, and even achieving these ideals that made us give up
the comfortable life of the corporate world, for the more complicated existence of development
work: always between two worlds, but enjoying the charm of the less developed side of the
equation.

Chapter 4
Addressing the holy equation of supply and demand in Development terms
(Access, teledensity and the economics of people and ICT)
So, by now we have a better understanding about how ICT and Development can be partners in
the endeavor of bringing better life conditions to the people intended to be served. The following
step is to understand and analyze how this partnership works. What does every partner bring to
the new equation that is being proposed here?
As we mentioned previously, what the ICT sector brings to the partnership is a private sector
approach that throws its own particular light to development projects. It fosters a new analysis
of development activities more along the lines of a market analysis, where supply and demand
are the key operating concepts defining the dynamics of the project in question.
It might be pretty intuitive to understand the relationship between supply and demand in a pure
ICT, business oriented project. The approach that a good business man would develop, when
considering a business deal, is a critical path between supply and demand, trying to measure the
risk factor that is, where and when the business of supplying goods to a market will meet and
satisfy the existing demand and how to expand it. There we come to the typical chicken and the
egg question which is: how much should I increase my supply to make my business grow
without putting myself at risk of ending with a stock in my hands? This is the question that calls
for the business flair of entrepreneurs, and that will decide whether a business succeeds or
fails.
In the development world much of this analysis still applies. Typically a supply has always been
established first, after an assessment of needs, but many times without a real sense of what the
demand out there might be. Not surprisingly this is normally one of the causes of failure to
reaching the established goals of a development activity. The hard lesson learned here is that
there is an important difference between need and demand. While a need can be identified, the
demand for the services or activities that will respond to that need is, not always, established in
the assessment phase of a project. Then, development projects invest huge amounts of funds to
respond to a detected need, to find out that demand does not meet expectations. An example of
this is given by AIDS prevention programs: How much has been invested in promoting and
providing condoms to target populations and how slowly use has gone up.
So, how should this new partnership between ICT and Development, work?
First I think it would be helpful to define a couple of concepts that are key to understanding how
ICTs could contribute to the development sector with new strategic approaches to development.
These concepts are access and teledensity.
Intuitively, access can be understood as the capacity that individuals within the beneficiary
population have, to spend time working with the technology; in laymen terms, the capacity of

an individual to spend time in front of a computer. The typical development approach then will
be to establish points (Telecenters) where these beneficiaries can spend time in front of a
computer, lack of having a computer of their own. Nothing could be so far from the reality than
this way of approaching the concept of access in ICT for development projects.
Spending time in front of a computer can be construed as exposure. Access, however is a
much more complex issue, in the context we are working. Lets not forget that first, ICTs are not
just a simple technology, but that they bring a whole new way of living reality, of interacting
with the social environment that needs to be learned and assimilated. Second, and as a corollary
to the previous statement, ICTs brings a new culture into which the individual has to buy into. It
involves new ways of processing information, new ways of relating with other individuals, new
ways of thinking. All this needs to be learned and incorporated by each individual before we can
say they have access to ICT applications that will facilitate their development process.
Actually accessing ICT is a development process in itself.
If we approach the concept of access in this manner, then, to ensure access, theres going to be
much more that exposure time required from a development activity. And this is not always
happening. Thus, we need to make sure it does.
On the other hand teledensity is a term of recent invention. It comes to us from the IT and the
marketing sector. The concept parallels the notion developed by people in marketing when they
were talking in the old times- about radio coverage as an indicator that would help to decide
whether radio was a good media to use in a marketing campaign in a given target population.
They needed to make sure that if they were going to use radio to advertise a product, there would
be enough potential listeners out there to make it worth. This concept was expanded later on to
TV but without changing the name. Now we use teledensity in a similar way, but not referring to
television sets but computers and associated paraphernalia. Shouldnt we say computer
density? Go figure. Actually the question nowadays should be: does that include Internet
coverage? Well, the answer is somewhere between yes and no. Actually no one knows, but we
use it anyway.
This is the good thing about development: At some point the word will be officially incorporated
to the Development dictionary.

Chapter 5
Whos afraid of the big bad private wolf?
(Why the private sector is so open to invest in ICT for the common good?)
The litmus test is very simple: If it makes money it is good; if it doesnt it is not.
So why does it seem that the private sector is so driven to be interested in the development of
ICT in their countries, and here I am referring to developing countries (although a similar
scenario has been proven to work in developed countries)? Simple, they have seen that any ICT
driven business venture has been successful wherever it may have been implemented.
Let us see some examples: In Ghana, we (the Learnlink project) funded the creation of tele
centers in Accra, Kumasi and the Gold Coast. It could be easy to infer that in Accra it would be
successful, but what about the rest? Well, they worked as well. How did they work? Well, that
was the interesting thing that we learned: they were not producing enough money at the
beginning so the managers added a few other applications. These were everything from selling
cookies, chewing gum, Xerox copies and stationery. And this made them work!!
We have many other examples, but the most incredible one is the following: Benin, a private
sector agricultural organization trying to instruct peasant on how to plant so their seeds would
not be eaten by ants, came to us. The director, Father Nzamudio, a US-Nigerian and a Silicon
Valley IT expert received the call, got ordered priest and was sent to Benin to run this
organization. He bet on the power of ICTs and asked us to connect that remote place so as to
train peasants, due to the fact the he could not afford to bring them to Porto Novo, a 1,000Km
down south, where the organizations HQ was.
We not only did that, using for the first time touchscreen applications for people that could not
read, but 15 years later, the USAID mission director in Macedonia, gave an example of how ITs
have penetrated the remote areas in the world. He mentioned that his son, a Peace Corps
volunteer in Benin, in that particular place, was capable to connect with him on the internet every
week!
Indeed the private sector is interested in investing: But, in order to better understand who is
interested and why they would want to invest, lets identify this Private Sector. The first
element to understand in any investors rationale is a response to the question: Are there
potential consumers/costumers, and what the competition is. Interestingly enough the most
dynamic sector in every country we have observed has been the small business sector; the vast
array of telecenters, cyber-cafes, computer repair shops that exploded in the developing world in
no more than ten years is a proof of that. Definitely this was in response of a growing mass of
consumers that, by the way, put a tremendous pressure in the ISPs (internet service providers)
that initially designed their business model just to serve was their only client base: the elite

having access to computers. We could say that this is the real private sector we are talking about
and that nowadays represent a colossal mass on money involved and moved worldwide every
day.
The big challenge that lies ahead is the capacity to serve this consumer base, meaning by this the
capacity to bring decent internet services to everybody and everywhere, in a given country. And
this is the Aquiles Heel of the equation. Governments are lagging behind in their investments
as they still think that internet services will benefit only large companies or wealthy consumers.
So they dont invest in increasing capacity or their internet access gateway into the country. ISPs
on their side deal with what they have; basically they expand services to respond to demand but
the lack of increased internet capacity forces them to a simple response: To increase
compression, meaning by this that if an internet connection has a 1-3 density now it has 1-6,
delaying by this the speed of the service. Im sure you are all experiencing that as we speak.
Interestingly enough, the other private sector, the one that we normally think about,
represented by large corporations, has not really found a vocation to invest big in most of
developing countries. Their investment strategies are basically opportunistic and take advantage
of labor skills and availability rather than of development opportunities. IT hardware maquilas
or sweat shops are distributed all over the world, although even this segment of production seems
to be taken over by the Chinese currently. Software design and production, a more sophisticated
type of activity, has mostly taken place in the so called BRICS countries. Besides that, the only
dynamic private sector we can count on in a realistic way is the one described here above.
To that effect we have to say that the greatest handicap that developing countries phase is the
poor or lack of education of its populace. Therefore if these countries want to move to higher
levels of involvement in the digital world, they will have to do two basic things: 1) improve their
education systems and 2) Develop a coherent and aggressive policy framework to develop
research and development capacity for their local IT (hardware) and ICT (applications) industry.
The interesting aspect in all that is that every single country in the development world expresses
that in official speeches but nothing really happens to that effect.
This would take care of the policy side of this equation, responding to the title of this chapter.
However the other conditions to let the IT/ICT sector grow as a response to private sector
investment, is precisely to do nothing, not to intervene!! The reason is very simple: As there is a
big gap between formulating a policy and implementing it, the current effect is that policies
become a handicap to the progress of the sector. Many IT small business will tell you how this
lack of clarity in their countries authorities just dont let them access credits, infrastructure
expansion funded by them, or new type of services they would like to develop.
So, please, please, let the private sector alone!! They will figure out and find a way to support
development, in spite of their countries policies supposedly there to help them.

Last but not least, the private sector, the one we have identified as the driving force for IT/ICT
development in developing countries, dont get discouraged because they see the future of
opportunities that lay ahead. Let me give you a couple of examples:
-

In a wired magazine of the early 2000 there was an article written by someone who
took a trip across Africa, beginning in Senegal and going east in a straight line, crossing
countries like Ghana, Mali, Benin, etc. He was trying to assess what was the level of use
of IT/ICT in these regions (not only urban but rural as well) and this is what he found: He
found that in that time, and responding to a need of the other private sector, a lot of
small business were created to respond to the demand of digitalizing documents of these
large corporations, of course at a fraction of the price they would have to pay in Europe
or the US. Turns out the these small business were essentially women that were trained,
given a desktop (in those times) and could work from home without infringing any
cultural rule that would not see with a good eye these woman leaving their homes to
make a buck.
New applications are becoming very popular in the developing world, including Africa,
the epitome of what poor countries could be: One of these is mobile money. As, for
example, teachers in many countries spend an average of 5-10 working day just to go to
the nearest town to collect their salaries, mobile money is becoming a more and more
used solution. They use mobile technology, meaning that they get a text message saying
that their salary has been paid, and mobile phone agents come around and pay their
salaries on site. So they only have to spend 1-2 day to go shopping, although the private
sector is working of making local stores receivable of e-money so they have an incentive
to stock up.

These are only a couple of examples, but theres many more. The thing is that a new ICT
application has come to the scene since I began writing this book: Mobile technology.
So stay tuned until we come to that final chapter.

Chapter 6
Do we ask them for money or do we make them partners?
(Funding ICT for development projects)
This will be the shortest chapter in this section, and this for a good reason: funding ICT project
for development is still a quite an unknown terrain.
Weve seen that the really dynamic section of the private sector is the one constituted by this vast
array of small business: When the internet became a reality in their countries, they jumped into
this opportunity and created businesses that have and are making money for them; not a lot in
each case but a huge amount when you put it together in a global perspective. Even more, in this
case the real good news is that, in the big majority of cases, these businesses have proven to be
sustainable through time.
So, what can we do? Do we ask them for money or we make them partners?
Well, let me give you an example, which I witnessed, among several others; but this deserves to
be written about:
Guatemala in the late 90s; Learnlink sponsored a project in the Quiche region, the indigenous
part of the country, speaking basically only Mayan languages. The project consisted in the
creation of telecenters in grassroots private secondary schools to teach future teachers Maya as a
language of instruction. The government declined to assume this responsibility because the
official country language policy only accepted Spanish to be the language of instructions. We run
the project in association with Enlace Quiche, a local NGO created to that effect. Well, two years
later we got the visit of a commission representing 15 villages from neighboring Mayan regions.
They came to us to say that they had seen the success of the program and, because of this; they
had invested in purchasing computers for their schools. Now, they wanted our help to set the
machines up and train the teachers. If this is not private sector funding a development project,
tell me what is it then?!
We have seen NGOs in Africa, Latin America and Asia making similar investments to create
community-based telecenters. We have seen parents chipping-in to purchase computers for their
schools, and we have seen the explosion of mobile technology application for common good
purposes. An amazing early example of this was the Cholophone concept in Peru (cholo is
the common denomination of a mestizo working class person). The cholophone concept was
very simple: people dressed in a similar uniform were walking the streets of low income sector in
Lima, the capital city, with a cellphone in their hands. So, if anybody needed to make a call they
would simple call the cholophone guy that would handle them the cellphone. We thought that
this amazing concept was the works of a big company, a cell phone company. Well, not at all, it
was just the idea of people in these low income sectors that came together and put up this

service. Was this strictly business? Was it a development oriented activity to serve these marginal
settlements that had at the time no water, electricity of phones? Your guess is as good as mine.
So, when we want to address the issue of bringing the private sector to fund development
activities, once again we need to fine tune and segment our universe. Lets see who these
different stakeholders are:
1) Governments: Although in most of the cases governments have not been able to move in a
systematic and coherent way from policy and speeches to implementation, from time to time
government institutions isolated initiatives can mobilize larger private sector businesses to
support of development activities. Some examples:
- In the Dominican Republic around 2003, the Ministry of Education sponsored a project
consisting in providing low cost computers to teachers. They got an agreement with a bank to
provide soft credits to teachers (debited from their pay-checks) and with computer vendors to
provide desktops with agreed upon specification. The program was a great success; long lines of
teachers formed in front of the banks branches from day one.
- In Macedonia, around the same time the Ministry of Education, with USAID support
through a Global Development Alliance, partnered with a local ISP to provide wireless access to
all schools in the country with the possibility for the ISP to branch out and offer wireless services
to the surrounding communities. This not only was another successful initiative but made of
Macedonia the first totally wireless country in the world, according to USAID statements.
- In Chile, the Ministry of Education funded and implemented the Enlaces project
(enlaces=linkages) bringing the private sector to invest in providing schools with computers as in
those days internet was just beginning to exist.
The issue however is that no consistent government strategies and efforts have been implemented
so far, in order to move their countries towards the digital nation goal.
2) International donor organizations: Interestingly enough the international donor
organizations, for different reasons, have been lagging in the effort. Be it for lack of vision of
their staff, which seems to be still on 1960s approaches to what developing countries need, or
for political reasons that end up distorting their decisions. Some examples:
- The World Bank spent huge amounts in purchasing computers for government
institutions, basically Ministries of Education and Health. Guatemala is one example where
computers were procured and sat in warehouses until they were outdated. Many other countries
are in similar situations.
- The One laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative, initially sponsored by the MIT in
association with World Bank and Microsoft, consisted in a big push to sell low-cost specially
designed laptops for education systems around the world. The initiative, although somehow

successful at the beginning, seems to have stalled due to the fact that governments are seduced
but not prepared to engage in the process that will make of that investment a real contribution to
education in their countries.
So, in this case, the contribution of international organizations has not made a significant impact.
It has lack of clarity and purpose but has contributed to reinforce, among the staff, the notion that
developing countries are still not prepared to receive, handle and benefit from the potential
contributions that IT/ICT can make to their development. Here comes the same old argument:
Why computers in schools that lack of everything, toilets, roofs etc., argument to which the
response could be: Yes, youre right, but even with toilets and roofs you will have the same
demotivated teacher addressing a bored class that learns little because of that.
3) The private sector: So we are back to the private sector, which seems to be the driving force
in this process on investing in IT/ICT activities having an impact in their countrys development.
We have seen that the bulk of the effort is carried out by small business, following a consumer
market that grows as the need to communicate and access to information becomes more pressing
(in many developing countries the need to communicate fast with the diaspora working in the
north in order to verify they have sent the remittance, is an important reason for the demand of
efficient Internet services). The large companies sector, still lags behind, scheming the surface of
this growing consumer market with the strategy of making a quick buck until it lasts.

So what should be the final response to the question: Do we ask for their money or we make
them partners? And mostly, is this nowadays the right question to ask? Lets see:
-

Definitely it makes no sense to ask them for money, as the driving force is made of a
myriad of mon-and-pop businesses struggling to keep their shop alivealthough
succeeding, but with great efforts.
As for the large businesses, they could give something under their Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) programs. But its peanuts and with no logic or sense other than
having a sponsorship poster showing in whatever theyve funded.
One interesting effort to organize and systematize large business is a program
implemented in Zambia under the Step-Up project, a USAID/Ministry of Education
project focusing on a systemic approach to improve education quality and performance.
This project developed places of dialogue, Education Task Forces, in each province,
bringing together the education sector and the local private sector. The dialogue begun
with the development of a 3-5 years strategic plan for education in the province (by the
education sector), presented to the private sector companies attending the Task Force
meetings. Private sector companies were then in a position to respond in a more
systematic way to the need for resources of the strategic plan leading to short, mid and
long term commitments and contributions that are making much more sense to both sides

than just individual donations here and there. Something similar I saw in Macedonia, as
well, functioning for at least 10 years with great success.
So, heres a couple of ways to work with the private sector in order to get the best results for the
effort put into it:
-

Large private sector companies like strategic thinking; it makes more sense for them,
responds to the question of whats in it for me? (as they have the opportunity to present
to the education sector their needs in terms of skills and education levels required to
support their growth), and is easier to sell to their higher ups many times in their
European or American headquarters.
As for the small business private sector, the approach will have to be different. In that
case theres no way of interacting with organized structures (guilds, chambers of
commerce or whatsoever). What needs to be done, and is done by large companies, is to
watch and analyze the evolution of the sector. This is how ICT applications such as
mobile technology (cellphones), mobile money and other are becoming raving successes
in the developing world. As of today the average cellphone penetration in any developing
country is around 80%. And low income people buy talk time for amounts as small as one
dollar that is used to send SMS or to download ring tones. Of course these talk time cards
are sold by an army of informal sector vendors that populate nowadays the urban
landscape of every city, large or small, and even villages in the developing world.
Needless to say that when you analyze the cost of phone calls using this system, it comes
at prices ridiculously high. Once again the large multinational cellphone companies
ripping off consumers, but not the higher income ones: They are just taking advantage of
the pressing need of the populace to communicate with each other.

My final thoughts on this issue of policies and IT/ICT development, are: 1) Governments are still
far from being able to implement systemic and coherent IT/ICT for development policies; 2) The
international donor organizations still have no clue on how to do it; 3) Large private sector
companies are only interested in picking up the low hanging fruits, and finally 4) The small
business private sector remains still a driving force whos evolution cannot be predicted, among
other things, because nobody, to my knowledge, has been analyzing it.
But there is hope. A last example; in many countries mobile money is being used to pay teachers,
particularly in remote areas. However this has not been the result of a government policy, it has
been the response to the pressing to keep teachers at their work stations. It was not planned;
cellphone companies just wanted to expand their coverage. It was not strategic; small business
and informal vendors are the ones delivering the salaries to the teachers upon presentation of the
SMS stating that their salary has been paid. It all came together more or less spontaneously. Is
this the future? Maybe

To be continued

THE ICT AND EDUCATION SERIES

Chapter 7
After Cutting the Ribbon in a School Lab, what?
(Computers in schools, how and for what)
The use of computers in support of education has been the most controversial education
development strategy of these last 20 years, and for a reason: Computers in schools has been
such a source of hope, frustration, successes and failures that opinions are strongly divided
between those who support it (a few) and those who doubt it (the great majority) and finally
those who are strongly opposed, mainly international development agencys staff.
The reason for this strong feeling in each of these positions is simple: It is a direct consequence
of what people think that computer can do for education. And here comes the problem. Many
people in the doubtful cohort thought that by placing computers in their schools, many things
would be resolved: Students would learn faster, easier and therefore performance would be
increased dramatically. And when they dont see that happening in the short term, they get
disappointed and doubtful. And they are right because computers are not the miracle cure for
education.
Those who strongly oppose this strategy, in general staff from donor organization, responsible
for providing funding but also for reporting results to their bosses and constituents, placed higher
hopes at the very beginning, some 20 years ago, and easily approved huge hardware procurement
for countries that still have not managed to do much with them. Hence, the frustration coming
out of these, not so good results.
The hype created by this computer strategy in the education community responded more to the
desperate need to come up with a response to address the crisis of the education system as a
whole, than thoughtful and proven education approach based on the use of this technology.
The education crisis is nothing new today: In every country around the world, with very few
exceptions, if any, school performances are under average. Student come out of school, if they
have not deserted before, with low reading skills if any- little knowledge of other subjects, and
even in developed countries not knowing basic concepts such as the name of the capital city in
their country (in the US a survey carried out around 2005, showed that 70% of students polled
confused the name of the nations capital with the name of their state capital). Teachers, on the
other hand complain that students are not interested in what they teach; they lack focus, dont
read and frequently miss class or simply drop out, especially girls.
However, so far, no real thought has been given to the roots of the problem, and countries,
ministries of education and donor organizations are still putting together education development
projects consisting in building more schools, training teachers, procuring more books and other
band aid type of activities that do nothing to address the situation as it presents itself today.

And I am not saying that all these are not necessary, but lets see: Building more schools and
training more teachers will certainly cover more children; but they will find themselves in a
classroom with bare walls and in from of a teacher making them repeat sentences. These students
will certainly be uninterested, lacking of focus, not reading, learning little and finally dropping
out. Is that a real solution? We will discuss this in more detail in the next chapters.
Only recently, and after the set of activities that lead to the publication of the Mc Kinsey report
(How the world most improved schools keep on getting better. Mona Mourshed et al., 2010), a
new Education whole system approach or systemic analysis of the sector strategy is beginning
to take shape in countries around the world (see: Understanding the system Luis I Rodriguez,
Zambia, 2013).
So, with all these fact on hand, how would anybody pretend that only by placing computers in
schools, these problems would be resolved? The logic was simply, or lets say simplistic:
Computers are attractive to youth so they will be interested in playing with them. In this
manner they would be able to learn to read, to count, to do their maths, learn their history in no
time. And that was it! Some countries, which shall remain unnamed, even begun or planned to
digitalize text books! Teachers on the other hand were apprehensive of the fact that computers
would eventually take their place. So everybody was having in their head a George Orwell
1984 scenario of a world where computers would be running the world!
The reality soon showed that this was not the case. Well, this is what I intend to describe and
discuss in this chapter. I will approach the process in three phases: 1) The reality (what did
happen); 2) The dynamic of what should have happened, and; 3) The philosophy and/or what
should be the approach to education when using technology as a tool and a resource.
1) The reality of what happened:
Basically when computers are brought to a school this is what happens: A room or a classroom is
reserved to install the computer lab. A set of technicians come and work in the room to set up
the cables and install the computers in workstations; they do the wiring, the internet connection,
and finally the security basically consisting in doubling the normal with another metal door to
secure the room and protect the equipment. Then they give the keys to the school director with
the message that he/she is ultimately responsible for the security of the very valuable equipment
inside that room. And they go.
The school director then appoints or hires a computer lab manager, normally an IT technician, in
charge of running the lab and making sure everything remains in good working conditions. The
lab manager then opens the computer lab to students for computing classes. So, all of a sudden
he/she becomes a computer sciences teacher, a new subject added to the weekly school
teaching schedule. And thats it.

The lab manager/computer sciences teacher has to deal with a set of issues: Organizing classes
for students in each grade, maintaining the lab in good working conditions (and there, oops there
was no maintenance budged assigned to that effect) and make sure theres enough supplies for
students to use the lab, such as toner and paper to say the least (and there, oops there was not
supplies budget assigned to that effect), and finally if at all possible make sure theres enough
software available to teach students different applications (and there, oops there was no software
procurement budget assigned to that effect).
So, very quickly the computer sciences class turns into a time of the day where student go, work
on the same basic issues in their computers (word, power point, excel) and thats it. Has this been
a contribution to education? Has this been a contribution to increase students performance in
school? Has this in any way or shape provided a solution to the crisis that education systems are
confronting as we speak? Definitely not!
So, what do we do? Well, the donor community provided a response: lets get away from
continuing giving technology to education systems. Is that a solution? Well, it is not but it
reflects a state of mind: These people do not deserve it, so lets get back to the chalk and talk
strategydoesnt work either but its better than nothing.
Finally, we have to say that this approach not only keeps away teachers, the real ones teaching all
the other subjects, but even in the best case scenarios, if they get to use the computer lab to teach
their subjects we need to know that all the time spent there will not be recognized by the system
as valid. So we are back to square one, or, as French like to say; A la caisse de depart!
2) The dynamic of what should have happened:
Of course it is hard to give an exact schedule for what should have happened, or even better, of
how this process should have been organized. But here are some basic benchmarks to illustrate
how it should have done, and why it hasnt worked:
-

Teachers should have been the first ones to know about the project and the process of
introducing technology in support to the education activities that they are carrying out. As
I explained here above, computers by themselves would not do the job, thus they cannot
replace the teacher. Therefore a whole induction process, going beyond the simple
training on computer use, should have taken place, allowing teachers to imagine, think
and prepare on the ways they would use this technology in support of their teaching.
The computer lab or even more, the computer in the lab should be seen as tools to be
used in teaching. To that effect several strategies could be developed; one being to take
the children to the lab for each different subject; and the other, to take computers to the
classroom placing them in tables with wheels (computers on wheels) that can be moved
around and stored in the lab at the end of the day.

To that effect, a new schedule should have been created, contemplating lab use time for
each teacher (or computer distribution in classrooms). Then the computer lab manager
finds back his/her real vocation; to be the IT technician that manages all this.

If only these three basic elements would have taken place, we would have seen a completely
different dynamic in the school. As for the details on how to deal with the details, we will cover
that in the following chapters.
The big question that still remains in the air is: Have we still done anything to improve
education? We will see.

Chapter 8
What if they dont want them?
(How do teachers respond to computers?)
It is true that, in any human group when facing a change, theres the early adapters, there are the
followers and theres the group reluctant to change. In the case of the teachers community in
general early adapters are few and the rest is divided in the two other categories. And there is a
reason for that: With only very few exceptions, teachers have never been part of the decisions to
bring technology to their school and even less of the planning process. Computers just show up
one day and they have to deal with that new reality.
Change, in a typical education system anywhere around the world, is hard to come about. These
systems tend to be extremely conservative. On the other hand teachers are not generally
rewarded for taking initiatives and, on top of that, they operate basically in isolation within their
classrooms, dealing with student that, as we have seen, are becoming more difficult to deal with.
However this picture should not get us discouraged as we have seen some very successful
change processes fostered by the introduction of technology into schools. To that effect it will be
necessary to understand what should the process consist of and how and when to put into effect
each of these steps.
As a first step it will be critical to ensure support from the local management authority, the
school principal/headmaster/directors. Normally a decision such as bringing technology to their
schools is communicated to them by the upper levels, creating a huge array of concerns and
apprehensions. Therefore it will be necessary to address them to ensure they will be able to
exercise the necessary leadership in the process that is due to start. In Macedonia, what the eskola project did, while labs were being installed, was to bring all school directors together for 2
days working meetings, three times during the first year. In these workshops not only they were
told about what would happen in their schools, as a consequence of having these computer labs,
but also time was consecrated to two other activities: 1) to let them openly express their concerns
and discuss about possible ways to approach them, so as to build consensus on how to approach
the whole change process, and; 2) the project created a space at the meeting place, with
computers for directors to get familiarized with the technology, privately, without being seen by
their staff or students during their learning curve. This exercise was so successful that school
principals became the champions for the use of technology in their schools and supporters of all
the reforms that this change process entailed.
The second step is to work with teachers. This is a tricky one: Change will not happen because
the school director tells them to change. Change has to be facilitated and made possible. A set of
elements have to be addressed to create the conditions for change. Already, by announcing the

incoming change, teachers are placed in a position of mistrust, fear, insecurity (including about
their jobs) and loss of power (as the overall masters in their classrooms).
The strategy has to contemplate at least three key steps:
1) Participation: Although decisions are taken at a higher level, teachers participation,
beyond just being informed, can help a lot to decrease the level of anxiety generated by the
news. Teacher need to be given the time to reflect not only on the implications of having this new
tool available, but also on how they intend to use it. They can provide good ideas for setting up
the lab, for example. In several occasions I saw computer labs set up not in rows of parallel
benches but with work stations set up in a circle around a pillar (that would have all the
connection cables), allowing like this the possibility for student to interact while working in their
machines. This, in all cases, was the product of suggestions coming from the teachers in the
school. Therefore, while the lab is being planned and installed, teachers should be given the
opportunity to meet among themselves, with other experts and people key to respond to their
questions and open their minds to the possibilities that the new technology will avail to them.
In this way, when the lab opens (or the laptops come, as it seems to be the new trend), we will
have a cohort of teachers having a better idea about what to do with them, and hopefully
enthusiastic with these possibilities.
2) Validation: O.k., the labs are open (or the laptops have arrived), the teachers are eager
to work with this new tool, but will they be able to? What do I mean by this? For example, in the
case of the lab, will the school schedule be re-visited in order to allow different subject matter
teachers use it during their teaching period? Even more, will the lab be open for teachers after
hours to go there and use it for their research in order to prepare their lessons? And finally, and
this is the litmus test, will the system allow innovation in the way teachers teach? And here let
me give you two examples:
- A teacher eagerly adopted the technological tool available to him and created whole new
lessons, and methodology for their students to learn, in this case it was biology. He took them to
the lab, gave them assignments that the student would explore and write about, etc. Great class,
but it turned out, at the end of the year, that the school authorities did not accept this approach.
The teacher was supposed to teach the way he was expected and all the other stuff would be
welcome, but in addition to his normal teaching; something like involving student in a hobby.
- In a school, a teacher normally used to give, as an assignment to his students, writing an
essay on a certain subject, the same year after year. Students would normally go to the
encyclopedia, copy the subject and present this to the teacher as their essays. They were all the
same. When the lab came to be, some students went to the Internet to explore about the subject in
question and wrote their own essays with information from new sources. Well, these essays were
all disqualified by the teacher. He did not take innovation as a good thing.

So, validation take a whole new meaning here; it is not just approval, it is basically a
transformation process leading to a different mind setting and understanding what could be the
new role of a teacher working with the vast array of information and experiences provided by
digital technology applications.
In order to help teachers and the system in this transition process, several initiatives have proven
to be extremely useful:
-

The development of a special area with work stations dedicated only to teachers, in many
cases in the teachers room.
The development of a web site for the school, with a chat-room for teachers, where they
can dialogue, exchange ideas, comment on their own experiences with teaching using
technology, etc.
Last, but not least, making available for teachers the possibility to purchase their own
machines (as we saw before) by providing them with soft credit and not very expensive
but good machines. This has definitely been a very positive solution for teachers in the
countries it has been developed.

3) Definition of the new role of teachers: This is the big fear haunting teachers: What if
computers replace us? As we have seen before this fear generates from a lack of understanding
of how technology can contribute to learning. The traditional Orwellian approach of the
machine mesmerizing the user and by this installing information in the viewers brain leads to
this assumption. However, we have also seen that this is not the case. Computers dont infuse
information in anybodys brain; they just provide the user with the experience of receiving
information with new formats (written, images, sound) enlarging by this the cognitive field of the
user, but not necessarily implanting information in his/her brain. Fortunately we have not lost the
use of our free will. It would be the equivalent to the case of saying that children do not need
parents anymore, as television can give them all the information and experiences they need to
grow as adults (actually this concept was hinted in a book written by another science-fiction
author: Ray Bradbury).
The apparent loss of power that teachers fear is due to the fact that they will not be the only
source of information and knowledge for their students. But this is also happening nowadays at
home, where our children constantly validate what we are saying to them, through Google.
Teachers have to realize that it is not about losing power over their children, it is about
transforming their concept of power into another concept: Mentorship and leadership. Yes, now
teachers need to understand that their role is to become mentors for their students. They will
come to the teacher to validate information, to confirm that their conclusions are correct, to
seek advice on what to do with the information/experiences they are gathering. It is called
developing independent thinking, developing creativity etc. in this new education trend
called Student-Centered Learning. This is the new role that will have to be fostered in teachers to
enable them to give the best of themselves in the new education environment created by the

coming of technology in their education world. However for this to happen, the system also
needs to take a good hard look at itself.

Some final thoughts

Ten years ago, all these changes would have seemed almost impossible. However, nowadays
many of these elements are being address in one way or another. Even more, in front of the crisis
of education systems worldwide, many professionals are seeking new approaches. For the donor
community it is becoming clearer and clearer that investing only in building schools and training
teachers is not ensuring better performance of the system. Something else needs to take place,
and we will see in a following chapter what it could be. What is clear though, is that education is
not a mechanical activity, it is more than that and requires a whole systems approach to reach
the formula that can get education out of its soul-searching crisis.

Chapter 9
When they break, do we fix them or we throw them away?
(Computer maintenance; a common deal breaker)

A common response to the question of how many computers you have in your school is: We
have 40 but only 20 are in good working conditions! And when you ask: What about the rest,
the ones not working? the response is: We are looking for a way to get them repaired The
interesting aspect of that is when you come back a year later: Questions and responses will,
most likely, be the same!!
Maintenance is the Pearl Harbor of computers in schools. You go school after school and you
the computer debris, sitting on the floor, collecting dust and spider webs, like sunken boats that
saw past glories of bringing hope to the children attending that school. The big question is: Why
nobody seems to care? Why nobody seems to do anything about it? The responses are simple:
No budget, the ministry said they would send a technician but it has never shown up, I sent
a memo to that effect but still no response
Is that what it takes for a computer to be fixed?
The answer to this paradigm seems to be disheartening. However theres other ways to tackle the
issue. Lets see.
If the introduction of this technological tool had been done according to the principles we
described in the previous chapters, the leading state on mind in a given school would have been
inspired by the concept of change: How to do things differently and how to generate a degree
of independence from the system so as to solve immediate and simple problems by ourselves.
This is the great challenge that the whole education system has to address: How to affect change
in the system to make it work.
So, if we see this maintenance issue under this perspective, we could say that computer
maintenance issues are due to:
-

A lack of policy: Certainly if the system, as such, would develop policies to validate,
encourage and support local initiatives to address and resolve simple problems such as
that one, many schools would do that. Interestingly almost all countries have adopted, as
a policy and a strategy, the concept of decentralization. But, as we can see, for the time
being these are nothing but good words, with very little implementation behind.

A lack of initiative: This is a chicken and the egg type of issue: School leaders have no
initiative because they feel disempowered by the system, or is the system so rigid that it

does not empower its local leaders (school directors) to take initiatives? The fact of the
matter is that in very few cases, according to my experience, I have seen schools looking
for creative ways to keep their computers running. The normal strategy adopted is the
memo to the regional office and the eternal wait for a response.
-

A lack of interest: The big question here is why? Why, something that was made available
to schools for the betterment of education, when it breaks it is not repaired? Many times
it is not even broken and it would take someone with a little bit of expertise to make it
work, the local technician, now available everywhere even in small towns. But, once
again arguments from the school director such as I have been made responsible for this
equipment by the ministry and if anything happens Ill have to pay for it are the
dissuasive arguments that do nothing but make things worse.

Anyway, it is clear that this issue could be locally addressed if the system would allow it, if the
people in the system would open their minds and look at the big picture, and finally if everybody
in the system would be genuinely interested in educating children instead of just securing their
jobs.
So, to end this chapter on a good note, heres some examples, success stories (as development
organization like to say), to illustrate that it can be done! All the following examples come
from schools in developing countries, in low-income sectors and/or rural areas:
-

Schools have dedicated a small part of their maintenance budget to keep a stock of paper
and toner, so the lab can operate.
Schools have managed to get an IT person/computer teacher to operate the lab. This
person has been made responsible for the upkeep of the machines (PCs and printer) and
the management of paper and toner stock.
Schools that did not get an IT person, have developed a management contract with a local
technician, who would have similar responsibilities as the IT person, but only coming for
an hour every day or something similar.
Schools have reached out to the community, parents, small businesses and other
development NGOs operating in the area, to cut all sort of deals. Parents could chip in
small amounts to buy essentials (basically paper), small business could cooperate; NGOs
could eventually lend their IT person to give a hand, etc. The principle for all this to work
is quite simple: Show the community that all their contribution is to keep a tool working
for the benefit of their children. But also for the benefit of the community such as, for
example, individuals needing to write a document or a letter could go to the lab to have it
done, and so on.
Schools have even gone further: they have opened their labs after hours to be used as a
telecenter, serving by this the community and also generating some income.
I have also witnessed schools that open the lab on weekends to rent video games,
especially in rural communities, where theres little entertainment available.

Well, these are some of the creative ways I have seen to make the best of the tool. It is all a
matter of attitude, a matter of understanding the importance and the benefit technology can bring
to our future generations, and most of all a profound understanding and an attitude change to
take the bull by the horns and deal with the elephant in the room: The crisis of the education
system.

Chapter 10
Everything is in place, so what do we do now?
(Changing the paradigm in education)

Education is in crisis, we are all beginning to understand that. The question is why and how does
this crisis manifest itself. In this chapter we will try to cast a long hard look at what education is
today and what it should be in order to become, once again, the tool providing youth with the
elements they need to succeed in todays world.
Currently, schools are not producing the type of youth capable of responding to the demands of
todays job market. Kids get out of school with very few employable skills: They can hardly
read, count and carry a very thin layer of knowledge about sciences, geography and history.
Teachers complain that students are not interested in learning what they teach; public opinion
says that teachers are poorly trained and parents prefer to get their daughters out of school at an
early age in order to marry them.
But what happens to this youth after all that has taken place? What do they do? For girls its
easy: They get married, they have children, they do the chores of the house, and when they get
older, and their husbands begin to see other women, they get frustrated and try to learn a skill to
get some degree of independence from the situation they ended up in. Boys get out to the street,
hassle, and end up becoming delinquents or getting low paying manual jobs (most of the time
both) until they manage to come up with some money and start a small business, an informal
one, or leave to another country where manual labor is in high demand and pays better. Some of
them struggle to pursue a technical career and finally end up joining the middle class, which
meant that they have to face a new set of problems in a different part of town.
And what has happened to the country in the meantime? The country continues to grow demand
for more sophisticated jobs and, if the pressure is high, bringing workers from other countries,
also from low income sectors, willing to work hard in order to send money home.
So, in this global economy of today, everybody ends up doing something, in their country or
somewhere else. Has the education system contributed in one way or another to this? Not a lot.
However all these people learned basic skills; reading, some writing and basic math. Did they
learn that in school? Most likely not; they learned most of it on the goand on the streets!
On the other hand the world of today is full of stimuli for children since an early age: TV, radio,
cell phones, billboards and food packages are full of information to which everybody is exposed
and many times need to understand in order to function in their everyday life. They need to read
an SMS, to read numbers to dial a phone, to read basic instructions, to read labels on packages
and so on. So it is not that, after leaving school, they remain complete illiterate; they acquire

what is called a functional literacy that allows them to interact with the surrounding world.
Interestingly enough they keep on sending their children to school, which explain the explosion
of enrollment rates, but obviously do not have a high expectation of what the education system
will give them in order to so better in their adult life.
So, how can we describe the children of today? I always say that since the end of the 20th
Century, kids are born with a chip in their head that we did not possess: The chip that enables
them to interact with technology from a very early age. Since their birth babies are exposed to
images and sounds that we did not use to have in our times (have you noticed that is rare to find
a home where a radio or a TV set are not turned on?). Children, at a very young age, learn how to
manipulate gadgets, including their parents cellphones, present in every home rich or poor (as
we saw before average worldwide cellphone penetration is 80%). They learn how to deal with
things, situations and interactions we, the older generations, did not have to deal with before. In
summary, they learn to solve problems, on the go, they become more independent at an early age
(the terrible case being the one where parent leave their kids at home alone during the day, while
they go to work). And then, when they turn 5, these kids are shipped out to school, many times
not to leave them at home alone while the parents are at work.
And, when they get to school, what do they find there? They find that they are seated in rowbenches, all facing a wall with a black (or white) board and a teacher that stands there saying
sentences that they have to repeat! How can these poor creatures not be bored to death!
Scientific studies are showing that children of today, in developed as well as developing
countries, have a different psycho-cognitive configuration. Since the 90s a new breed of humans
is evolving in this planet, as a consequence of the highly stimulating environment in which
children evolve since their birth and the effects it has on their brains. This new generation is
called Digital Natives as opposed to us, older generations also known as Digital Immigrants.
The following table shows the difference between both:
Digital Natives
Look for information through different sources
They can get involved in different processes at
the same time (multitasking)
Prefer to work with images and graphs instead
of text
Prefer random access to information on issues
they are working in
They function better when they work in groups
or a network
Prefer to learn by playing

Digital Immigrants
Prefer one single source to get information
from
Prefer to undertake one task at a time
Prefer to work with text rather than images
Prefer lineal and logical access to information
They prefer to work alone. They prefer that
their students work alone.
They reject the fact that people can study (and
learn) while watching TV or listening to music

Prefer to receive short term rewarding that will

make them aware of their progress

They would prefer to receive rewarding at the

end of the process

So, this is how children of this new generation are learning, not in schools but in the streets!
With these characteristics on hand it becomes even more obvious that the way the education
system is carrying out its work, it is not reaching its audience. The question then is what should
the Education System do?
In my opinion three things:
-

First, it should recognize the real source of its crisis and the need for change. It is not
about doing more of what they do: It is basically to re-inventing itself

Second, it should be willing to change. And this is not a small thing. A system that has
become so structured, for such a long time, will have a hard time looking at itself in order
to change. This willingness will emerge little by little as the system is confronted to the
more and more structured criticisms of their constituents, children and society at large.

Third, it should be able to change. And that will be the hard part. It will take strong
political will, creativity, a democratic attitude and some other skills and values that still
remain much esoteric to a typical education administration.

In a nutshell; it is not about money or making more of the same (building schools and training
teachers). It is essentially about making the system work.
To make the system work, a few things are required:
-

Understand the client; who these children are, how do they operate, how do they think,
how do they go about adapting to the particular conditions of their lives. It is not about
abstract concepts (or concepts that still remain abstract to the system), such as Student
Centered Learning or else. It is about making all this happen.

Adopt a client oriented service attitude. That is respond to the real needs of its
constituency. And by this I mean students, parents, community, civil society, economic
forces in the country, etc.

Make the organization and dynamic of the system be responsive to these elements. By
this I mean basically to open the system to its environment, become really
decentralized, communicative, creative, and forward thinking.

In the TED Talks series, Sir Ken Robinson, in his conference How to escape from the
educations Death Valley, addresses some of the key aspects of what should education tend
towards in order to respond to the current needs, expectations and configuration of todays youth.
Here are some quotes:
Education currently conveys a culture of compliance not imagination. What is required is to
individualize teaching and learning. The system has to engage curiosity, individuality and
creativity. Thats how you get then to learn. The system needs to devolve the responsibility of
educating to the school level in order to get the job done. It is not at the upper levels and their
instructions that it will happen. Education is seen now as an industrial process that can be
improved at the higher levels if they have better and more accurate data. However education is
not a mechanical process; it is a human system, an organic system. For that reason what is
critically needed is to understand the culture of a school, each single school.
Education is in a dormant state. However in organic systems, if the conditions are right, life is
inevitable. The real role of leadership in not to command and control; the real role is precisely to
eliminate control in order to let life to flourish.
Further on he adds:
Creativity is as important as literacy today! Kids are not afraid to be wrong and are willing to
take a chance. However, through the years the education system kills that. But, if youre not
prepared to be wrong you will never come with anything original. Education system does not
allow to be wrong, to make mistakes (therefore kills creativity). We are educating people out of
this creative capacity.
And in his talk under the title of Bring on the learning revolution he says:
There is a crisis of human resources; we make poor use of our talents. Education dislocates
people from their natural talents (by trying to get them all into one common mold leading to
obtain a college degree). However life is not linear, its organic; we create our life symbiotically
as we explore our talents in relation to circumstances around us. Human communities depend of
diversity of talents and not of a singular conception of ability. We currently operate under a fast
food model of education. This industrial model (or manufacturing model) is based on
linearity, conformity and batching people. In the organic model you cannot predict outcomes;
you just create the conditions for human flourishing. It is definitely not about reforming
education, it is about creating a revolution.
To that effect technologies, combined with the talent of teachers will provide an opportunity to
revolutionize education.
Should these things happen, then we will soon realize that tools, like the array of digital tools
available now, become preferred instruments to support childrens learning processes. It is

basically the opposite of what it is happening now: The digital tool is used as an instrument to
dispense the same contents that a teacher would do and not as a window to explore the world. In
this new approach, many things will have to change: Teachers becoming mentors and guides,
curricula becoming more flexible, student getting more freedom to operate, schools becoming a
place with no walls (as students, teachers and parents can also operate virtually), and most of all,
school becoming a place (physical and virtual) producing youth with the tools necessary to
respond to the development need of their countries.
Seems like and illusion but it is not. I will finish this chapter with some examples that show that
we are on the right path. We just need to turn it into a highway:
Macedonia. In a partnership with the private sector we managed to get not only all the schools
connected but to use this investment to connect the villages, neighborhood, and cities, around the
schools. This generated a dynamic stimulating small business to grow, seeking for markets in the
region, which changed Macedonias place on the map of the Balkans. The secret was on the way
school positioned themselves, now that they had Internet connection, to respond to specific
demands of the local market.
Guatemala. The story told some chapter ago, about communities responding to the use of ICT
applications to conduct teacher training programs in Mayan languages (15 communities
purchasing hardware to expand the 6 communities pilot program) not only is still working but
was recently covered by an Aljazeera program on cultural identities, as a successful
demonstration of how ICT contributed to support, preserve and expand this initiative, making the
central government to accept the teaching in Mayan languages in these regions.
Japan. The country designed a totally new education program called citizens of the world
based on the combination of several education schools (Earasmus, Ashoka, Comelius, etc.),
teaching only 5 subject: i)Reading; ii) Civic/ethics/social sciences; iii) Business mathematics; iv)
Computing; v) Languages/ cultures and religions of the world.
Zambia. The Whole System Approach strategy helped the Ministry of Education to understand
that improving education created a new spirit within the education system, as high and mid-level
officials went on unofficial visits to schools in different districts. This movement, called the aha
moment facilitated the dialogue between different levels in the hierarchy and, most important,
within the same level officials throughout the country. As a product of this, for the first time in
Zambian history all District Directors came together to strategize and plan during a week-long
working session. The outcome was that they all agreed to develop strategic plans with goals and
benchmarks for the following three years. These strategic plans were communicated to the
Provincial Direction so as to give them information to develop their own strategic plans. These
plans at both levels informed not only the national yearly work plan but also budgetary
requirements for the following year in order to have a budget that would meet the real needs of
each province and district. The 2014 budget year was the first one following this strategy.

In these new contexts the use of technology will make much more sense. In Guatemala the use of
technology definitely consolidated the position of Mayan language in a country that now has
acknowledged its bi-linguism. In Zambia the use of ICT has contributed to upgrade the
Education Management Information System (EMIS) with a closer and faster connection to the
information generated by the field at the school level, among other things. The use of e-money
for payment of salaries is also an emerging application in the sector. The use of Tablets
containing the whole primary school curricula in an interactive format is being experimented by
a group under the name of I-school, with great success and rapid expansion.

So, is it worth to keep on trying? Definitely yes!

THE ICT AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SERIES

Chapter 11
Telecenters; do we really need them?
(Do they really provide access?)

Yes they do. They provide access; but nowadays in a world that has almost 60% of 7 billion
cellphones in circulation, the concept of access seems to have become a thing of the past.
According to the ITU (International Telecommunications Union, in Geneva) today 60% of the
world population has a cellphone, 29% has a PC and 11% a Tablet. However by 2017 the
projection is that 70% of the population will have a cellphone, 17% a Tablet and 13% a PC.
It was not the case 20 years ago: The Telecenters movement was a first expression of the
grassroots claiming to access the benefits of the internet which, in those times, conveyed two
basic messages: Internet will allow you to access a world on knowledge and Internet will
allow you to communicate with whoever you want, wherever they are, at no cost at all. The
reality in the third world was that the most pressing need was to communicate with relatives
migrated up north to work and send money home. This need drove masses in cities, towns and
villages to their nearest telecenter. Definitely this is not the case today, not because the situation
has changed but because the emergence on a multiplicity of communication means has
transformed the way people communicate with each other. At the same time, nowadays it is
possible to find a computer with an internet connection in many different types of places; stores,
grocery stores, office supply stores, and many other as the popular imagination can create. So the
paradigm has definitely shifted and access doesnt seem to be an issue anymore.
So what is the issue now?
If access has become so universally available, has this access contributed to achieving the dream
of these grassroots searching to get the conditions to access a better life? Has access contributed
to the development of the lower income sectors anywhere? The answer is no! However in order
to better understand this response I would like to analyze what has been the contribution of
access to the development issues: Access to what and for what?
Definitely the communication aspect of access has been extremely successful; there is no doubt
about that. But has this generalized access contributed to improve peoples life? Lets see:
Essentially the content industry has thrived with the development of internet. The
entertainment industry is poised to grow up to $3 billion by 2016 (Global Media Report,
Mckinsey &Co, 2013), but what are the content being offered? And here is the million dollars
question: Basically video games, movies, U-tubes etc. Even more, the largest amount of these are
produced by huge media conglomerates dominated by production sites such as Hollywood,
Bollywood and Nollywood that, even if these last two are in developing countries (India and

Nigeria), provide very little contribution to making people from the grassroots achieve better
education, better jobs, better crops and a better life.
On the other hand, and yes I know what you are thinking, we have seen a vast array of
educational initiatives being developed around the world; Universities on line, schools on line,
degrees on line, cooking classes on line and so forth. However have they contributed to improve
education, skills and employability of people? Have the statistics shown a dramatic change to
that effect? Once again the answer is no!
And why not! Very simple, because what is taught on line is no different of what it is taught in a
classroom by a live teacher; methodologies have not changed and certainly they do not respond
to the mental and cultural settings of the youth of today (as described in chapter 10). So in sum
we are back to a zero game.
So this is the access picture of today:
-

On one hand we have the entertainment industry producing products in an economic

strategy targeting the large masses of potential consumers within the low income sectors.
So we have cell phone recharge cards for as little as $1, ringtones for $0.10, SMS at
$0.001, internet fees in telecenters at $1.00/hr., cellphone calls at $10.00/minute etc. Thus
a whole array of products broken down in units economically convenient to this type of
consumer. You can download movies, U-tubes to your cellphone for very little cost, get
messages, communicate through Twitter, Facebook, Whats-up and other, giving you the
sensation that you are in touch with the world. But actually youre not (and this should be
the main theme of another book).

On the other hand you have scores of people going to these on-line education schemes
that will produce them certificates saying that you have succeeded in completing the
courses offered; therefore you have the knowledge pressed into you by these courses
but nothing says (even not the statistics) that these knowledge (same as the knowledge
acquired is school) will get you going in real life; will get you a job or give you the skills
required to survive in the world of today.

So what should be done to make of this blessing in disguise that is access a real one? In other
words how could we make of this opportunity a winning card?
Quite frankly I dont know but I have some ideas. Here they go:
1) There needs to be a clear understanding at the powers that be about these issues. It is
obvious that everybody has kind of dismissed the responsibility on the basis that because
access is now not an issue, anybody can go and get whatever they need from the internet (that is
skills, education etc.). However nobody has made the chart crossing reference between access

and skill improvement, meaning by this, the correlation between increased access and
improvement of employable skills.
2) Internet service pricing: The private sector has understood the nature of the market (that/s
why I love the private sector). They know that in any developing country they cannot count on
just mid and high level consumers to make business sense, so they have adopted a two folded
strategy: On one hand they establish high prices for the real consumers (as defined here above)
and a price structure that will allow low-income sectors to buy their products. Im pretty sure that
they make good business but probably they only declare their clients and not the mass or lowincome sector users that access their services on these piece-by-piece products they sell. Thats
fine; I dont want to meddle with their business and their profits. But the consequence of that is
that ordinary people will have a hard time to take these on-line courses if they have to pay
outrageous Internet fees. Thats all.
3) So, what we need to see happening in order to have a productive use of internet is political
will from governments aware of all these issues. They should draw policies and certainly look for
investments that will make Internet not only universally available but also affordable to a
constituency larger than just the privileged classes in their nations. Will that be possible? It has
happened in some places, but only time will tell.

Quite frankly Im not very optimistic about this because government tend to contempt
themselves with easy solutions. What about the development organizations? No; they just
dont see it with the narrow lenses they use: For them it is still about digging latrines in rural
place around the world (Im being sarcastic of course), but I have little hope about them getting
further in their thinking. So lastly, what about the private sector? Well, in my perspective they are
the hope, but not because of their forward thinking but only because of their capacity to respond
to markets demand. And this market demand will come from the people, once they get fed-up of
downloading ringtones and U-tubes and still living in poverty. When the masses begin to claim
for appropriated contents and applications to really improve their lives, then we will see.
So, going back to the initial question: Do we really need Telecenters? The answer should be; not
telecenters per-se but the spirit that animated them.
This is for the time being our only hope!

Chapter 12
Content, content, content!!
(So much said, so little done)

If we are talking about myths in the ICT and Development field, the issue of content is one of
them.
As we saw in the previous chapter, content is a beast with many faces. I can see many people
satisfied with the way content has been developed and produced. Definitely the Internet is full of
it. We have seen that. However, the question for us development workers is; does the content
existing nowadays in the Internet satisfy our ambitions of reaching the development goals that
made us believe in the power of this tool as an instrument for development? Once again the
answer is no!
So, what needs to be done?
The answer to that might seem simple but actually it can be quite complicated. For all we have
seen in the previous chapter concerning content production by the big players and its effect (or
lack of) in development issues, you may obviously tend to think that the solution is to let them,
the people, produce their own contents. Thats the simple answer to the question.
In the late nineties, when the telecenters movement was in full gear, the first reaction of many
communities that got Internet access was not to tap into the wealth of knowledge promised by
this new tool. To the contrary, the first thing these communities did was to create their own
website carrying as much information they could find about their own community, in the present
and in the past. It was a way to reaffirm their existence and identity to the world; a way of
saying: Here we are, we exist! Unfortunately, as far as I know, theres been no study and
follow up about this phenomenon, a first attempt to produce content by the people to the people.
From that time to nowadays many attempts to produce digital content appropriated and
responsive to peoples development needs have been made, but the big issue has always been the
capacity of these local production efforts, carried out by individuals or NGOs, to reach a large
audience. So in the end they die for lack of support (financial or human). Thus, all local efforts,
including in the cultural domain, remained just local, without finding a way to get out there to
the larger masses of potential consumers already captured by the big mass media consortia.
So, in the end, the lets them produce their own content expression becomes nothing but a
wishful though with no real connection to reality. It is always good to put it in project proposals
or articles about using ICT applications for development, but the reality is that we are far away to
making it happened.

On the other hand the standardized production of content generated by the big consortia is
having a perverse effect: Not only it is building the so called global culture, but at the same
time it is crushing local identities and cultures. The messages conveyed by these standardized
contents do not constitute a very positive contribution to peoples development as well. The basic
messages promoting the use of violence as a privileged way of solving conflicts, the notion that
people are defenseless and only a super hero can save them, and other equally disempowering
messages, are creating a global culture that is in no way contributing to promote creativity,
individual initiative for the common good or any other set of values supporting individual and
local development strategies.
Finally, the educational content developed by developing organization still falls within the
parameters of the current formal education structure: They are top-down, lecturing and dumping
content but not fostering the qualities required by an education process leading at developing the
youth required in the world of today.

So what is the answer to the content issue? Quite frankly none can be seen as of today. Maybe
it is just a matter of time: Give the time to see the evolution of these masses of disenfranchised
youth, desperately needing a way to access the knowledge, the experience, the skills and the
human qualities required to succeed in their insertion to the current labor market in order to have
a decent life.

Chapter 13
Community Participation
(Is it just a title or a driving idea?)

Community participation, a concept that ten year ago had a lot of sense in the development
world. It was the key to ensure sustainability and ownership of any project. Community
participation enabled schools to be built, fields to be worked, immunization campaigns to be
implemented, and other development activities to come to completion. It had no sense so bring a
lot of expats or volunteers to dig latrines in a village; better get the locals to do it under the
direction of the development agent. Fine, it worked for some time.
However, nowadays Im not that sure it will work the same; I have witnessed communities
hiring workers to do the task, under many different forms of retribution, not necessarily a
salary. So this is telling us that something has changed in the initial concept of the community
as an entity.
Currently a community does not seem to respond to the same definition we gave to this
concept in the beginning of the development work, some 50 years ago: We thought about
communities being these groups living in a same place, bounded by parental links or social
linkages that would constitute a whole coherent group of people, responding to a common social
and cultural identity.
Well, it seems that today this concept is not working any longer or at least it is not operation in
the same way. Communities of today do not respond to the same parameters as they did 20 years
ago. Globalization, immigration, communication and even the shape that economic relationships
and markets have adopted are not contributing to preserve what was considered, a generation
ago, the basic structure of society.
Concepts such as solidarity, leadership and just repartition of wealth are disappearing. For
example many years ago, I witnessed in many countries and in many continents, communities
putting together their resources to send their best equipped youth (good performance in school,
for example) to a higher education or a technical education institution, so they would come back
and be of service to the community. Well, nowadays it is really hard to find such examples.
Why?, Because everybody is looking for their own interests. Even the family structure is
breaking down as a product of immigration: in a great majority male members of a family
immigrate to a country to work and send remittances, for years in a row. In such a situation what
do you think happens to the rest of the family? When it is the case of a husband, what about his
wife and children? And in the case of sons or daughters, what about their cultural connection
with their community?

So, the global society concept is beginning to take shape, through examples like the one I
mentioned, occurring all around the planet and, destroying little by little the traditional
institutions of community and family.
On the other hand, when it comes to ICT applications, the concept of community does not play a
great role as well. Can you identify any community decision in the fact that people get their
own cellphones, TVs and other gadgets? The last examples of this connection I saw them in
the 70s where, for example in Chile, in Ayquina, a 100 inhabitants remote village in the
highlands of the Atacama desert (3,500 meter high) the community decided to buy a TV that was
placed in the community center in order to be in touch with what was happening in the
countryand the world. I saw this in many other places, but it is over now.
So, today, what should we talk about if we cannot talk about communities as an operating unit?
Well this is one of the challenges for us, development workers, but in the specific case of ICT
applications for development, the discourse should be different: We should probably talk about
consumers; we should talk about density; we should talk about endorsement, or any other
concept reflecting the fact on the number of individuals adopting a specific technology for their
own purposes.
So, and as a mode of conclusion, today we should not try to project what the future could be in
terms of people adopting ICT applications, but we should be observant about what the market
says and find out how peoples opinion about how the adoption of a particular ICT application
has brought benefits to their lives. Basically we need to follow the tendencies of the market and
make projections on this basis.
The concept of community might have lost momentum, but the people have not.
What a change, isnt it?

Conclusion

Since I (we) began working in the area of ICT applications for development in 1994, a huge
amount of things have changed in the technology field. In the mid-nineties using computers in
school and other applications for development, including Telecenters, was considered illusory
conceptions generated by desk-people in their home offices in the US or Europe and dubbed
unpractical, a waste of money and certainly non-sustainable.
During the time when the USAID supported Learnlink project was alive (1996-2004),
challenging activities were carried out in 24 countries around the world. At the same time the
World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and other international donors were also
enthusiastically investing in this new trend. The cost was huge but the goal was basically to
demonstrate that ICT applications could become a really useful tool in support of development:
Thus the Telecenters in rural Ghana, India or urban marginal areas of Asuncion, Paraguay; the
remote education centers with touchscreen technology for peasants in Benin and Guatemalas
Mayan language education centers in rural communities within the Quiche area. These, as well
as many other very challenging projects, not only proved our point but also dismissed the
argument that they would not be sustainable. Actually many of these are still up and running, 20
years later!
As a matter of fact not only these initial activities around the world proved their value as a tool in
support of development activities, but also produced interesting and unexpected results. For
example it was found that among early adopters of the use of technology were women: In a
survey across Africa carried out by a journalist of Wired magazine, published in the late 90s,
he found out that many data processing and digitalization activities, contracted by foreign
companies that were in the process of digitalizing their archives, were contracted to local
companies/NGOs that would have women working from their homes. This provided an income
to these families without having the woman leaving her home, and by this, not infringing local
cultural patterns. The other group that became early adopters of digital technology applications
was obviously youth. A video of an experiment carried out in a slum in Calcutta describes this
phenomenon: A touchscreen screen was incorporated to a wall surface and let there with a
camera pointing at the scene; a young kid comes in and, out of curiosity, touches the screen that
comes alive to his surprise. He immediately calls other kids and between them all, in a few days,
were operating the computer linked to this screen. A similar example we witnessed in Asuncion,
Paraguays bus terminal where a free access Telecenter was taken over by street kids living in the
bus terminal. In a few weeks they mastered the computers and two years later they had created a
business by selling their services to train people in computer use.
Twenty years have gone by and the situation now is completely different and could have not
been predicted. Basically the technology landscape is very different but mostly, totally integrated

into todays culture with the implications on how people appropriate these tools today. ICT
applications are not any more tools that one could consider to use: Many of these applications are
so ingrained in peoples life that there is no decision process about whether to use them or not.
Cellphones are the most salient example: Who in the developed or the developing world would
even consider not having a cellphone? In the developed world people are not reading maps any
longer; they use GPS; they read kindles and carry tablets in their purses or their pockets. In the
developing world, and even in low income sectors, people are acquiring smart phones so as to
access games, internet and other applications. Even the Somalian pirates, issued from the poorest
areas of the country, do their business thanks to cellphones and other technical devices, as
depicted in the movie Captain Phillips. The amazing fact is that they use the product of their
ransoms to bring technology to their villages that now have satellite TV, solar panels and other
technology applications that definitely have increased the quality of their lives.
So we can say that today we live in a world that has been penetrated by technology to such an
extent that it has become a priority for low-income sector individuals, when it comes to make
decisions about how to invest the meager income they might get from their work. Seen from that
perspective, we can say that the use of ICT has become totally sustainable. Actually, and as a
matter of fact, probably the concept of sustainability does not even apply anymore; Technology
has just been appropriated by The People, taking ownership over all ICT applications that the
market is constantly producing.
However, and in spite of all this, we have still not seen how much the use of technology has
benefitted those sectors that are the main goal of development activities; the low-income,
disenfranchised, disempowered people around the world. Maybe this will be our conclusion; to
find out where the system has failed to put this tool at the service of development.
To this respect, two main areas come out as main themes that have been disregarded or not
sufficiently addressed: Policy and Education. The community involvement, as we saw in
previous chapters, has become a mood point as the situation has evolved to a point that
community involvement per se has ceased to be a question.
As to the policy aspects of the issue (the issue being the connection between ICT use and
development objective) it is clear that in the overall, countries and also large regional bodies,
have neglected to build up policies to address specific development objectives (that is favoring
low income sectors etc.). Policies addressing pricing of internet services, the need to invest in
expanding infrastructure, rural coverage, mobile money for rural sectors and many others, are
rare or absent in government or international organization and other large bodies in the IT/ICT
domain agendas. Yes, theres always a conference somewhere addressing these issues, and
documents recommending action; after all we need to keep these people happy and allow them to
travel from time to time. But the reality is that little is done on the groundafter returning from
these meetings. Policies basically address needs of the private sector or large multinationals but
not the commoner in the groundwhere have I seen that before?

In the case of education the situation is different. The education system has not yet taken
decisive action to address the crisis that it is confronting. Certainly no out of the box
approaches or even a real acknowledgment that in order to address this crisis a revolutionary
approach is required; Japan being one exception, although the plan still needs to be fully
implemented.
As we mentioned in chapter 10 education systems are not able to provide what youth need to
succeed in life: Offer does not meet demand. Education systems everywhere, in developing as
well as in developed countries need to re-invent themselves to respond to the needs of 21st
centurys humankind. We saw in detail the gap between education systems methods of teaching
and contents and the mindset and content needs of youth to secure their integration into the
adults world. Lets see some examples of the latter:
- We keep insisting on getting youth to read, but they dont; too busy watching TV,
playing games or sending text-messages. On the other hand nobody has thought that the
important element here is to teach youth to read the media, that is to decipher, understand and
build their own opinions on the messages encoded in what they watch, rather than interpreting
written texts.
- We keep insisting on having children memorizing information, in a time where this is
not really necessary anymore. On the other hand by stopping this practice, large spans of the
brain will be freed up for other type of activities.
- We keep insisting on children spending big amount of their time reading information in
times where this is not necessary anymore. Children have learned to look for the information
they need, when they need it. This, by the way, is one of the reasons that for them reading is
worthwhile only when they are reading something entertaining (a novel for example) and not
something educational, such a history book or the classics.
- We keep insisting on the traditional transfer of information approach (teacher teaching
and students listening). But what is needed of today is to build up a different set of skills such a
dialoguing, negotiating, conflict resolution, accepting the difference (different races, cultures,
abilities/handicaps, physical differences etc.) and seeing the world a large community to which
they belong. This is the real need of today, along with other skills still to be identified and
articulated.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Finally, an important part of the responsibility for not having exploited the potential that IT and
ICT applications could bring to development lays on us, development workers and their
organizations. To the contrary of what it used to be the Development World has taken a very
conservative approach towards integrating ICT applications into their areas of work. Education
is not an exception. What happened?

In the 70s and 80s the work of development was clear-cut; we knew who our potential
beneficiaries were, where they were and what they needed. Anthropological studies helped to
better identify these people by understanding and describing their ways of life (culture, social
organization, means of production, etc.). These would allow us to create programs responding to
their needs for development ensuring that they would not be in conflict with their cultural
identities, and securing by this the sustainability of the effort undertaken through our
interventions. This approach created a huge mass of clients happy to receive our injection of
capital and commodities. However in the long run, this did not prove conclusively that their life
standards had dramatically improved.
Now this connection seems to have been lost. We think these people havent changed, but
alas, they have. And for this fact they have ceased to respond to our rules of engagement in
development activities. Now they seem to have a mind of their own, fact that has been clearly
proven in the area of IT/ICT applications use. So the question could be: What to do now?
My initial suggestion would be to go back to the drawing board, as we did in the 70s and
study the new behavior patterns induced by the existence of this new ICT applications driven
environment. However, it is my belief, that the development assistance world should cast a
hard look at itself and see if what we are doing, the way we are doing it, is still valid in the world
of today.