Don’t idolise DPI. Enable countries to build national data exchange infrastructure that makes data exchange DPIs useful. Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has become one of the most influential ideas in digital development. Digital identity, payments and data exchange are increasingly described as the foundational “rails” upon which countries can build digital services. The metaphor is…
Category: Mobile
Digital Technologies Are Temporal; Data Is Enduring
Agriculture has long been viewed as a fertile ground for technological innovation. Over the years, governments, donors, development agencies, and private companies have invested heavily in ICT-enabled solutions to address persistent challenges such as low productivity, limited market access, climate risks, financial exclusion, and weak extension services. Drawing on my work in ICT4D, D4D, D4Ag,…
Lack of data in a time of data overload – Agriculture
For the past two decades, I have worked on e-Agriculture, ICTs for Agriculture and Digital Agriculture as a practitioner, researcher, development officer, and now a policy adviser. My conclusion is that, for digital solutions and services to be sustained, scaled and then accelerate smallholder agriculture transformation, we need a better approach to data management at…
D4Ag (D4D) should be about Information not Technology!
In my first blog in this series “It’s Time to Phase Out ICT4D (ICT4Ag) and Embrace D4D (D4Ag)!”, I argued that the concept of ICTs for development, both in literal sense and its delivery has focussed on promoting “technologies” to support communication of information for development (information communication technologies (ICTs). I concluded that, technology is…
It’s Time to Phase Out ICT4D (ICT4Ag) and Embrace D4D (D4Ag)!
The era of ICT4D (ICT4Ag) has laid a strong foundation for a new era and it is time for the international development sector to embrace a new terminology and approach – D4D (D4Ag).