Some background to ICT4D

Do you remember the beginning of the World Summit Awards (WSA) and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the early to mid-2000? The emphasis was on “information” – understanding the information society at the time. Not too long, focus shifted from “information” to “technologies” because information was not very “sexy”.

What we saw was that the “electronic age” movement such as e-education, e-health, e-agriculture, e-government, etc. slowly moved away from the importance of information to seeing technologies as the panacea to the development challenges. This led to a new movement about information communication “technology” for development (ICT4D). In other words, how do we better “Communicate” “Information” using “Technology”? The focus has since been on technologies instead of the information.

We saw the revolution around information communication technology for development (ICT4D) and the various subsets like information communication technology for agriculture (ICT4Ag), information communication technology for health (ICT4H), information communication technology for education (ICT4E), among others. In all these, the definition has been “the use of” information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the development challenges within the various sectors.

In general, the ICT4D era has been characterised by efforts to promote the emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development, and specifically for agricultural and rural development (ICT4Ag). The era saw the development, testing, piloting, and promotion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for adoption to improve the traditional development initiatives. In other words, technologies that better support delivery of traditional/conventional services relating to health, agriculture, education, governance, among others.

Why we should move away from the technology-driven development era

In no doubt, we have seen so much improvement with the promotion of information communication technologies but at the expense of “information”. Non-governmental organisations, the private sector, governments, and farmer organisations have taken advantage of the technologies to improve their service delivery. Within the agricultural sector, we have seen innovators developing and experimenting with various information and communication technologies for agriculture (ICT4Ag). We have seen isolated success cases of these technologies helping farmers, agribusinesses and governments become more efficient in the delivery of their services. But majority of them have been missing the point by seeing their technologies as the game changer!

The truth is that the ICT4D/ICT4Ag revolution has laid a strong foundation for a new era of digitalisation, digitalisation for development (D4D) or digitalisation for agriculture (D4Ag). The new D4D (D4Ag) era should not be about technologies that communicate information. We need to go back and explore the importance of “information” in addressing our development challenges. Technology is just one of the tools to realise the benefits of the information for development and we need to go back and understand the other tools and pay equal attention to all of them.

Check back to read my next blog on the other tools to complement the technologies for an information-driven development (digitalisation for development)!