Can ICTs fight poverty in Africa?

Over half of the population in Africa cannot read or write. Information needs are critical both for personal development and educational achievement. However, few practical activities supporting information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enhance such skills are in place in African schools.

A report from the UK Imfundo project argues for a pro-poor model of ICTs for Development (ICT4D) which goes beyond traditional concepts of literacy as functional reading and writing. The Information Technologies and Education for the Poor in Africa (ITEPA) component of Imfundo attempts to understand the current state of practice in the use of ICTs among very poor people in Africa (South Africa and Ghana in particular), in non-formal education and community development settings.

Most ICTs challenges are not simply related to cost or absence of reliable telephone and electricity networks. Rather, many ICTs for development projects are not sensitive to demand, do not share experience and conclude when funding ends. Some ICTs literacy courses are of poor quality. Poorly managed school programmes have curbed initial ICTs enthusiasm. Many projects fail because of unrealistic goals imposed by donors. Measurable targets are often lacking, and meaningful data are not obtained to determine what a project has achieved.

Interviews with a wide range of users and promoters of ICTs showed that:

• ICTs are often imposed without community involvement reinforcing dependency and creating elites.
• Some initiatives are set up to dump outdated, surplus and unusable equipment.
• Funds are spent prematurely to fit the artificial time frames of government and donor plans.
• Rural communities are often unrealistically expected to adopt ICTs in a few months.
• Donor agencies and national government education agencies may be in conflict with each other.

South Africa is one country where significant progress is being made. Interactive radio instruction is educating rural students – using a methodology that requires learners to stop and react to questions and exercises through verbal response while the radio programme is on the air. The emergence of telecentres, teleboutiques and cybercafes even in poor areas indicates interest and demand. Recently, a Bridges to the Future Initiative (BFI) project has begun to create multimedia to promote literacy and lifeskills learning among poor rural youth. Another BFI project is in the planning stages in Ghana, where the focus will be on multi-lingual materials for teacher training.

Across Africa, reform of telecommunications is needed to tackle the difficulties of obtaining connectivity in rural areas and allow for greater freedom to experiment with innovative solutions for ICTs. Commitment to ICTs is needed for development across a wide range of sectors, not just within government. Policy focus needs to shift away from small-scale, one-off interventions, and move towards creating sustainable programmes for advancement. Initiatives which introduce local-language based ICTs applications – for a range of educational, vocational and health promotion purposes – are essential to promote an indigenous ICTs sector.

The ITEPA team suggests the need for:

• early development of a shared vision between funders, implementers and users of ICTs projects
• wider promotion and use of open source software
• action research on how ICTs can support existing local information and communications flows and entrepreneurs’ ability to respond to local needs
• remembering that access is only part of the process: training is of little value when not quickly and regularly reinforced
• avoiding the temptation to fast track ‘successful’ small-scale pilot projects and roll them prematurely
• higher education institutions to do more to promote staff and student ICTs literacy.

ICTs are becoming more affordable and the digital divide is narrowing. Since 1975 the cost of sending digital data has decreased by a factor of 10,000 and computing power per dollar invested has increased 10,000 times. Pro-poor approaches to ICT4D are neither quick, nor simple, nor cheap – but they are critical to realising international education goals in Africa.

Source(s):
‘Information Technologies and Education for the Poor in Africa (ITEPA): Recommendations for a pro-poor ICT4D non-formal education policy. Final report for Imfundo: Partnership for IT in Education’ by Dan Wagner, Bob Day and Joseph S. Sun, March 2004 Full document.
Bridges to the Future Initiative - bridging the digital divide in literacy and technology Full document.

Funded by: UK Department for International Development

id21 Research Highlight: 7 March 2005

Further Information:
Dan Wagner and Joseph S. Sun
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104
USA

Tel: +1 215 898 9803
Fax: +1 215 898 9804
Contact the contributor: wagner@literacy.upenn.edu

University of Pennsylvania, USA

Bob Day
Non-Zero-Sum Development
P O Box 33007
Glenstantia, Pretoria, 0010
South Africa

Tel: +27 12998 8456
Contact the contributor: bday@scientia.co.za

Imfundo
The Department for International Development (DFID)
1 Palace Street
London SW1E 5HE
UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 7023 0980
Fax: +44 (0)20 7023 0976
Contact the contributor: C-Hagan@dfid.gov.uk

Imfundo, DFID, UK

Other related links:
'How appropriate is software for developing ICT literacy in Africa?'

'Communicating information for rural development'

'Avoiding irrelevant information: strengthening information and knowledge networks for the poor'

'Harnessing new communication technologies for development in Africa'

'ICT revolution: creating a southern info-underclass?'

'Are ICTs the road to riches for the poor?'