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Asia, Africa and Latin America can learn from each other, says Jac Stienen
The Netherlands based International Institute of Communication and Development (IICD) has been supporting local organisations in harnessing the potential of ICTs for sustainable development. Through its country programmes and thematic networks, it has done interesting work in Africa and Latin America. Jac Stienen, the Managing Director of IICD, shares his views and experiences on the changes IICD has undergone over the years, about its work in the South and on the learnings from IICDs work, in an interview with Manish Kumar of OneWorld South Asia.
Could you please share with our readers about the mission and goal of IICD?
The International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) is a Dutch independent non-profit organisation and was founded in 1997 with the purpose to assist local partners in the South to use the potential of ICTs for sustainable development. The approach of IICD is based on two types of activities: Country Programmes and Thematic Networks. A Country Program helps local partner organisations to develop an ICT strategy for certain sectors IICD works in livelihood (agriculture), education, governance, health and environment sectors to initiate projects on using ICTs for a development activity and to improve their skills and knowledge. Thematic networks support country programme activities by collecting ICT4D experience and promote knowledge sharing on ICT for development in the above mentioned sectors and specific themes. The final goal of this strategic approach is to help countries to implement ICT as a tool for development and initiate new ICT related activities without direct assistance of IICD. Currently IICD has country programmes in Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Ecuador, Ghana, Jamaica, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
You have been working in the area of ICT and sustainable development since 1997. What changes has IICD undergone over the years in terms of its policy, focus, and approaches?
Over the years we have not changed our policy as such, but based on experiences defined our focus and policy more precisely. Initially, our plan was to implement ICTs in a wide range of countries in the South. Experience taught us relatively early, that our approach would be much more successful if we focused on a certain number of countries, extended our stay and gave more assistance to our local partners within the field of capacity development and knowledge sharing. So we scaled down and deepened our support for local activities and projects.
Around 2000, we made a shift in our policy and strategy. We realised that in order to make ICTs for development sustainable, we had to focus more on embedding. Embedding means that you try to institutionalise the use of ICTs for development on a national or sector policy level. Lately, we pay, for example, more attention to linking local partners with other national, international NGOs and governmental institutions to guarantee (financial) support for existing or new activities. We have also increased the number of project activities, mainstreamed activities in different sectors and paid more attention to capacity building of our partners who facilitate our project partners with for example training, technical support and such.
How do you ensure effective deployment of ICTs for sustainable development?
Embedding is the key-word to sustainable development. We realised quite soon that initiating projects alone was not enough to make full use of the potential of ICTs to stimulate sustainable development. Projects do set an example and are able to make local people and policymakers on a national or sector level aware of the advantages of using ICTs, but in order to make these effects sustainable one has to invest in capacity building and upscaling of activities. Capacity building fulfils the needs of local partners to enlarge individual skills and knowledge and secondly it fulfils the need to enlarge the organisational capacities such as internal structures and procedures. Through upscaling, linking our local partners to a network of private, public and non-profit partners, existing or new initiatives on ICT for development are likely to be continued through the support of this network. A policy on ICT for development will ensure the sustainability of its effects.
IICD primarily works with African and Latin American countries. What has been your experience so far?
We have learned that there is no unequivocal approach for every country. Of course we use the same instruments to support a country programme, but how long and how much support is needed for every country depends on local needs. I think that that is the success of our work. IICDs philosophy is that our assistance can only be effective if what we do is asked for by local partners, meets local demands and is supported by multiple stakeholders for example private partners, government, grass root organisations - per sector. We show local partners the possibilities of using ICTs in a certain environment or sector. We help them to define their own needs and formulate those projects of which they think will help them to improve sustainable development. We strongly believe in an approach that is demand-driven and based on local ownership and multiple stakeholder involvement.
Another thing that we have learned over the past few years is that the process of implementing new technologies, make people adapt them and use them for their own purposes, takes time. Making a change is one thing, but in order to make a difference on the long term one needs to invest time in strengthening the capacity of local partners to make effective use of ICTs and embed the use of ICTs in policy. So basically, there is no difference between working in a Latin American or African country. The impact of our work, the speed of process is largely defined by the local needs, the support from local and governmental partners and the experience of local partners to co-operate with development organisations and the possibilities to facilitate the whole process with the help of local technical consultants, training partners and so on.
Why is Asia not a priority region for IICD?
IICD is but a small organisation, we have to make choices. When we decided to focus on a limited number of countries and deepen our support to local activities instead of enlarging our scope of attention, we only had country programmes in Africa and Latin America. If, at that time, we would have been active in Asia, we would have focussed on that region. It is as simple as that.
In the last few years, telecentre initiatives have caught the attention of donors as well as governments and CSOs. What role do you see for these telecentres in the countries you are working in?
Telecentre bring connectivity to end-users that is their main goal. But connectivity as such has little impact on development; you need to use it in a setting that is defined by local partners. In the livelihood sector for example, telecentres can serve small scaled enterprises to get market information and make themselves more visible. In education, telecentres can support long distance learning, especially useful for people living in remote areas. In health, telecentres can be used for telemedicine, to help small hospitals or health centres to diagnose specific diseases with the help of medical specialists in larger hospitals. Telecentres are a perfect example of how ICTs can contribute to sustainable development. But as I stated earlier, also for telecentres it is very important that it is set up to meet local demands and is run by local partners. The adaptation of ICTs as a tool to stimulate development is likely to fail if you build telecentres without participation of local people.
Do you think ICTs can contribute to the creation of alternative livelihood opportunities in developing countries? Do you have any such project experience?
One of our goals is to make people aware of the possibilities of modern technologies for sustainable development. Sustainable development can be explained as improving basic conditions of subsistence life, but can also be narrowed down to improving peoples socio-economical situation (livelihood). We assist local partners that focus on offering an alternative way of earning a living. We do have quite some experience within livelihood. For example, in Ecuador, we worked closely together with an organisation called FEPTCE whose goal it is to improve quality of life for local population groups, from an integrated, sustainable standpoint, with alternative income through community tourism. IICD helped to build the organisation itself, in order to reach more community organizations working throughout Ecuador, and enhance their Community Tourism activities. A second example is the support of The Resource Cooperative Society (RSC) in Zambia. Their aim is to create employment for disadvantaged women and youth from the community. The training centre empowers women and youth by training them in life skills like ceramics and cooking, thus increasing self-reliance of members of the community. IICD supported the centres training activities by improving documentation, administration and marketing, increasing network and information sharing with the Zambian and international community and increasing the access to learning opportunities for centre staff and community members.
How can community people particularly youth and women, be brought in the larger knowledge network of projects and programmes?
Gender equality is one of the seven guiding principles in our work. We too experienced that the involvement of women has a positive influence on the sustainability of development activities. Therefore, IICD makes sure that women are equally participating in different activities like training, workshops and networking.
The MDG+5 review highlight the slow progress of developing countries towards achieving the MDGs. Can ICTs speed up the progress?
We recently finished an impact study on the impact of our work in Bolivia which clearly showed that ICTs helped to attain two Millenium Development Goals: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and achieving universal primary education. Getting access to up-to-date market prices and the market helped local farmers in Bolivia to negotiate better prices for their products. Through distance learning teachers have been able to improve their skills to improve their chances on the job market. Teacher training programs are developed to strengthen education programmes. ICTs also helped local communities to express themselves and put pressure in government to address their needs. These are but a few examples of how ICTs can contribute to sustainable development. In how far ICTs can speed up the process, I cant say. But it does help to make a change.
Lack of pro-poor governance is a major obstacle in achieving the MDGs. How can ICTs help improve the governance processes at various levels?
ICTs can improve government processes in two ways. Firstly by offering tools that support local communities to express their needs and pressure policy-makers. In Bolivia for example IICD helped CIDOB to increase the information and knowledge on land rights and management for indigenous people. Secondly by offering tools to increase the visibility of and information on public services among a wider audience, especially in the more densely populated and remote areas. A good example is the Kinondoni project in Tanzania. Kinondoni is a municipality within Dar es Salaam with over more than a million people. With assistance of IICD a municipal website was launched that made local government more transparent by providing information about health, education, transport and industries. In addition, civil servants are using ICTs to collect and manage information on a range of subjects, making government service more efficient. The Kinandoni approach showed how ICTs can improve municipal governance and communication between citizens and government. It is that successful that within Tanzania, when discussing e-governance, one uses the catchphrase the Kinondoni approach. IICD is frequently requested to organise seminars on this approach.
Finally, what lessons do you think Asia can learn from Africa and Latin America and vice versa in the area of ICT for development?
We have no experience in Asia which makes it hard to advice on how to implement ICTs for development. We do see though, that Asia is quite successful in ICT for development, especially India. IICD gives financial support to the so called South-South exchange in order to support knowledge sharing between Asia and Africa. Some interesting lessons are learned over there, like for example that websites are much more successful if they contain locally relevant content and are written in a local language. But those are just very practical operational learning points. More interesting is to see what we can learn form each others methodology. Asia could learn from our experience in Africa and Latin America that it is very useful to define a sector-wide approach and involve local partners in the process of project formulation, implementation, capacity building and information networking. Also Asia could learn form our experience that a critical mass of (small scaled) ICT initiatives is more likely to have a long term impact on a sector than one or two large ICT-projects. Vice versa we can learn form Asian experience that public-private partnerships give an incredible boost to implementing ICTs for development. Furthermore, we see that India is quite successful partly because they have more conducive institutional settings. It is not a lesson as such, but it is helpful to understand why some initiatives hardly come of the ground.
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