First wrong assumption: development is a matter of technology.

Second wrong assumption: development is a matter of information.

Third wrong assumption: information technologies are equal to development.

I’m afraid these assumptions are leading the camp of the official representation at the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS). The long PrepComs have shown that some governments and agencies try to focus on wider distribution of ICTs in developing countries rather than dealing with societal perspectives of information. Though the civil society and various sectors of the society have raised issues of social, e-conomic and cultural development, the results of the PrepComs are rather poor. However, the PapComs show little concern for a social and human rights based approach. In the minds of the profitable organisation ‘bureaucrats without borders’, technology supersedes content.

Haven’t I mentioned a ‘technological divide’? It is on purpose, because I believe this is the least important issue if the others are not taken into consideration. If we are looking at ICTs supporting sustainable development, access to computers and Internet is far from being the answer. Over fifty years of failed attempts to promote development in Third World countries, particularly Africa and Latin America, have demonstrated that the paradigms of development could not be dictated by the North and that the development agendas of bilateral and multilateral organisations had not taken into consideration social, political and cultural factors that determine social change and development. People are poor because of social inequality which embraces much more than just access to information. Development paradigms have gone through various phases to realise this.

The first phase, in the fifties and sixties, bet on the introduction of new technologies and techniques to improve agriculture, at a time where the rural population in most developing countries was still a majority. Little consideration was given to how the international market operates, who fixes the prices, and who, in the end, benefits from the work of those poor peasants that are now living in worst conditions than 40 years ago. Today, there is less productive land for the poor and more for the wealthy. The land was more productive forty years ago but was exhausted by intensive harvesting of commodity crops.

The second paradigm, during the seventies and eighties, recognised that technology alone is not the silver bullet, and that information and knowledge are also important to help the rural population to improve their living conditions. The assumption, however, had a dangerous arrogant slant: “we have the knowledge, we know what the poor need, we will gracefully share our knowledge with people in developing countries”, without consideration to the local knowledge cumulated over hundreds of years, by cultures that were alive and well while pests ravaged Europe.

In recent years, the role of communication in development and social change has been acknowledged. A number of development organisations began to understand that information and communication is not the same thing. Information alone does not generate changes, whereas communication –which implies participation, sharing knowledge in a horizontal way, and respect for diversity - is key to social change.

Many development programmes even today don’t use participatory approaches and seldom involve communities in the decision making process, as it clashes with institutional agendas.

This last decade of incredible expansion of the new Internet based information technologies, was initially presented as the magic box containing the answers for poverty, exclusion and underdevelopment. We have seen a kind of competition whereby development agencies and corporate interests teamed to achieve equality through ‘Internet for all’ or ‘e-mail for all’. The marvellous technology feats that are promoted as vehicle for knowledge dissemination and equal access to information. In other words, democracy could be achieved by accessing Internet. Much is said about technology and very little about contents.

The emerging models range from the commercially driven Internet Cafés or Cyber cafés, to more socially oriented models that involve not only setting up computer stations, but providing adequate training and developing local contents. These are called Telecentres, Community Media Centres, Village Knowledge Centres, Information Kiosks, Public Cabins, Info Plazas, Telecottages, among other names, depending on the institutional sponsorship and the region of the world. Few, however, linked the ICTs push to existing organisations, existing development projects and existing communities that watched these developments from a prudent distance and were seldom really involved. For one success story of ICTs in development, there are fifty failures. The very year a particular ICT project is implemented, people claim success, guided more by enthusiasm than reality check. We should evaluate all these experiences after four or five years, to see if they are really contributing to development. Very few will pass the test. Already, independent evaluations are generally critical of most existing projects.

Briefly, we have referred already to the development paradigms that are vertical, that show a certain level of arrogance from North to South, and that respond to institutional agendas rather than to the real needs of the communities. To understand the failures we should seriously concentrate on how the Internet and the World Wide Web have been shaped: largely in English, with contents that have little to do with the interests of the poor in developing countries. 90% of the contents of the World Wide Web is irrelevant to 90% of the population of the Third World. Are we saying that there is no role for the New Information and Communication Technologies to improve the lives of the rural poor? There is an important role for ICTs at the service of rural populations, but only if they are envisioned from the perspective of users and through their active participation. The discourse on ICT4D is often well crafted for institutional reports, but seldom reflects the ground reality.

A smaller world with bigger communities
For ICTs to contribute to the development of the rural poor, certain conditions have to be met, and these are:

Ownership and appropriation: This can only be achieved through a process of participation from the inception of each project. This is a foremost condition particularly when seeking for sustainability, which has been the weakest aspect in most of the current experiences. Ownership and appropriation refer not only to technology but also to the ownership of the communication process and capacity development to understand the importance of communication, knowledge and networking in social development. When communities acquire the necessary skills to manage ICTs as a tool at the service of development and education.

Some questions that could guide our reflection every time we face a new project: Who sets the agenda, international agencies or communities? Which are the mechanisms of consultation with the intended beneficiaries or partners? Do they participate in decision-making since the inception? How much of the effort is devoted to technology and how much to content development? Are ICTs benefiting the poorest segment of society? Is international cooperation dealing with community ownership?

Development of local contents: It is equivalent to “localising” the www Access to the World Wide Web should not prevent each local experience to develop its own demand-driven content, as it is done at the Village Knowledge Centres in Chennai, India.

Language and cultural pertinence: It relates with the development of local content, accessing to information in their own language, that is culturally appropriate. Language is the vehicle that communities use to communicate; but it is also the essence of their identity. Strengthening cultural values through communication tools, including ICTs, can only benefit long-term sustainable social development. Communities are often menaced and at risk of internal divisions because of external influences, religious or political. By bolstering local identity, communities are better equipped to face the ongoing cultural negotiation process.

Convergence and networking: Both are essential for sustainability of the communication process. We want to make the world smaller and communities bigger, however, paradoxically, that many of the ICT4D projects are born as deserted islands, with very little rapport with other similar experiences in the same province, country or region. Networking is important for information exchange and for capacity building of newer experiences.

As for convergence, opportunities exist to build on existing communication processes, such as community radio, which has grown rapidly, seems more culturally pertinent and is adapted to the need of communities. ICT projects have a lot to learn from community radio in terms of local management, creation of local contents, networking, or the use of appropriate technology. ICT projects must converge with local schools, libraries, development projects and social organisations to be effective in helping to improve the lives of the rural poor.

Appropriate technology: It also relates to sustainability. During decades we have discussed the need of appropriate technologies for development, particularly in the fields of agriculture and health. However, when it comes to information technologies, projects are largely market-driven. Independent evaluations have shown that in rural multimedia projects, users often pay no attention to computers, but are keen to use the telephone or the photocopier. Partly, the reason is the lack of useful contents but it is also the type of technology being utilised, which is not appropriate to the local context. The Simputer project may help to bridge this gap.

It may be apt to say “Leave access behind and adopt process, mind more about contents and less about machines”.