Notes from the the II Encuentro Internacional TIC para la Cooperación al Desarrollo (Development Cooperation 2.0: II International Meeting on ICT for Development Cooperation) held in Gijón, Spain, on February 10-12th, 2009. More notes on this event: cooperacion2.0_2009. More notes on this series of events: cooperacion2.0.
Participative conclusions
(unsorted contributions from the audience)
- Need for applied research on ITC4D processes, modelling and scaling
- Need for collaborative work among inst.
- Nothing about us without us
- Technological determinism: Mobiles are hammers and everything looks like a nail
- Richness on diversity of views
- Need for R&D agenda with South as shaper and agent
- Development 1st, ICT as resources and tools
- Don´t forget the users, they’re also stakeholders in ICT-based solutions
- Multi-stakeholder approach
- Spanish Coop to draw on available expertise for advice
- Next stage on ICT4D: focus on KM, agenda transformation, along with dev agenda too… towards a Development 2.0?
- Debate on ICT4D largely over, but still there underneath. More evidence, models?
- Build awareness
- Empower Southern actors for ICT4D innovation
- Scale of problems are huge, but analysis helps to disaggregate in order to facilitate interventions.
- Don’t discard pilots yet
- ICTs can even serve as a stimulus for self-esteem in gaining more capacity by people
- This presents a significant opportunity
- Incorporate socio-emotional factors in ICT4D -related work
- Knowledge and experience-based approaches, understanding models, process (the how’s?)
- Then assess those kinds of resulting projects programmes to see how relevant such models/processes
- Adequate KM is very important, hard to truly know what´s going on, but rigorous methods, evidence-based needed
- Demand-driven projects interventions – do users have an input?
- Detect real problems, then elaborate joint solutions
- ICT4D is not new, there is considerable work already and learning; beneficiaries also present practices themselves (thanks for ICTs…?)
- Capacity development
Debate
(unsorted ramblings)
Vikas Nath: Wake up call that ICT4D have to focus on the “D”.
Merryl Ford: how do we know how, when and where we succeeded? How do we build the agenda? How do we reach the stage to collaborate in building together the agenda?
Anriette Esterhuysen: Development is continuous, and there are new challenges and everywhere, not only in developing countries or during crises. We need knowledge management, to keep learnings in mind. And look to small initiatives with small but really effective impact.
Najat Rochdi: Development 2.0 implies a huge shift, bringing in a new concept of multilateralism. We need to bring new stakeholders in.
Ismael Peña-López: What or who are development institutions? In a world 2.0 where everyone participates, institutions are in dire crisis of identity. We should bring in not only development institutions, governments or communities to whom we address development actions, but also the citizens that can enable them in the developed world by means of ICTs. Development 2.0 is not about institutions, it’s about people in both developing and developed countries.
Anriette Esterhuysen: Significant gaps in access to infrastructure makes it still difficult to link micro-to-micro levels of development cooperation. Notwithstanding, people are driven by commitment and come together to run projects. We have to let them build these projects on their own. To promote smooth evolution of projects instead of leaping from one to the other.
Vikas Nath: Cooperation has to balance powers, and be made from an even and empowered point of view. Countries have to enter the cooperation landscape in a position of strength. Cooperation 2.0 is the solution to balance powers. But we’re not seeing it: giving aid is somehow legitimizing donor countries to intervene at their own will in developing countries. And we have to end that.
Najat Rochdi: Cooperation 2.0 towards co-development.
Ismael Peña-López: we have to be able to list an inventory of all the resources available (funding, natural resources, human resources, knowledge), see who’s got what, and engage in a conversation on how to better allocate and exchange these resources. ICT4D are surely about knowledge management and the transmission of knowledge, not the transmission of “atoms”. And, the more countries specialize, the more likely we are to find ICT4D is the leading issue in Development Cooperation in general, as it is knowledge unbalance what really makes development differences dire (let aside humanitarian aid for emergencies).
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