Revisiting the magic box: case studies in local appropriation of Information and Communication Technologies

This report looks at the ways in which ICTs can contribute to development and poverty reduction. It explicitly reviews and builds upon research conducted by the FAO in 2001, which sought to document the uptake and impact of ICTs in small communities. This research asked whether these communities had been able to take ownership of, and appropriate ICTs for their own benefit. 

This report aims to add value to the original 2001 research, by revisiting the communities who were the subject of the 2001 case studies, and analyse what changes there have been as a result of the uptake of ICTs. The three main case studies concern communities in Uganda, Mexico and Costa Rica. Two of these case studies concern women’s community groups, and offer a significant focus of the impact of ICTs on women’s sustainable livelihoods. Issues such as how to bridge the digital divide; how to build capacity so that local people can create local content for news broadcasting; how community groups can build skills in video making in order to communicate health information, are just some of the case studies under review here.

The report also aims to discover if the four guiding principles that were set out in the 2001 research are still relevant, given the rapidly changing environment for ICT development. The four guiding principles are:

• the need to undertake more rigorous monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of projects and develop frameworks or guidelines for measuring impact
• that ‘process’ is vital to development interventions
• the need to focus on the benefits of the new technologies rather than the quantity of technologies available
• the need for strategic content to ensure that ICTs can be locally appropriated and affect development.

Three in-depth case studies are revisited and updated in order to explore the current applicability of the above guidelines, as well as new lessons to be learned. The authors note that a key lesson from revisiting the original case studies is that development agencies must now take the lead in making technologies available. Chiefly, they must learn from local communities how to provide the right mechanisms for local appropriation to take place.