Title: Open ICT for Development
Date (accessed): 26/11/2009
Type of information: wiki
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"This wiki is an attempt to collaboratively build the theoretical and empirical understanding of Openness and its applicability to the field of human development, and ICT4D in general."

Interesting sub-section:
Open Development: Edited Volume and Conference 2010
This is a collaborative online space dedicated to the forthcoming edited volume on Open Development through the application of ICTs. It is also the online resource for the upcoming IDRC-sponsored expert meeting on "Open Development: Technological, organizational and social innovations transforming the developing world" to be held in Ottawa, Canada on March 25-26, 2010.

Title: African Languages in a Digital Age. Challenges and opportunities for indigenous language computing
Author: Don Osborn
Pages: 176 pp.
ISBN: 978-07969-2249-6
e-ISBN 978-1-55250-473-4
Publisher: HSRC Press/IDRC
Date (published): November 2009
Date (accessed): 05/10/2009
Type of information: printed book
Language: English
On-line access: only table of contents and order form
Abstract:
With increasing numbers of computers and diffusion of the internet around the world, localisation of the technology and the content it carries into the many languages people speak is becoming an ever more important area for discussion and action. Localisation, simply put, includes translation and cultural adaptation of user interfaces and software applications, as well as the creation and translation of internet content in diverse languages. It is essential in making information and communication technology more accessible to the populations of the poorer countries, increasing its relevance to their lives, needs, and aspirations, and ultimately in bridging the ‘digital divide’.

Localisation is a new and growing field of inquiry. This book identifies issues, concerns, priorities, and lines of research and is intended as a baseline study in defining localisation in Africa and how it is important for development and education in the long term.
Contents:
1. Introduction

2. Background
Importance of African languages and implications for ICT
What is localisation?
Overlapping regional contexts: localisation where?
Who localises?
What is the current state of localisation across this region?

3. Introducing ‘localisation ecology’
An ecological perspective of the environment for localisation
The ‘PLETES’ model
Dynamic complexes within localisation ecology
Relevance to questions of ICT and localisation

4. Linguistic context
Languages, dialects, and linguistic geography
Sociolinguistics and language change
Oral and literate traditions
Language and language in education policies
Basic literacy, pluriliteracy, and user skills
Terminology and accommodation of ICT concepts

5. Technical context 1: physical access
Access: physical and soft
Basic infrastructure
Computer hardware and operating systems
Connectivity and internet policy

6. Technical context 2: internationalisation
The facilitating technical environment
Handling complex scripts: from ASCII to Unicode
The ‘last mile’ of internationalisation

7. African language text, encoding and fonts
Non-Latin African scripts and ICT
Typology of Latin-based African orthographies
Evolution of African Language text use in ICT
Fonts

8. Keyboards and input systems
Keyboards
Keyboards for Africa
Alternative input methods

9. Defining languages in ICT: tags and locales
Languages and the ISO-639 standards
Locale data for African languages

10. Internet
E-mail
Internationalisation and the web
Web content in and about African languages
Internationalised domain names

11. Software localisation
Applications and operating systems
Trends in proprietary software
Trends in FOSS
Software Localisation in African languages
Web interfaces

12. Mobile technology and other specialised applications
Miniaturisation of ICT
Trends in Africa
Audio dimensions: voice, text-to-speech (TTS), and speech recognition
Geographic information systems (GIS)
Computer assisted translation (CAT)

13. Achieving sustainable localisation
Needs by kind of localisation and localiser
Understanding the needs of localisers
Analysis of needs from a Pan-African perspective
Facilitating communication about localisation

14. Summary and recommendations
Major themes
Strategic perspectives
Conferences and workshops
Training and public education on localisation
Information resources and networking
Languages, policy and planning
Basic localisation, and ICT policies and programmes
Africa and ICT standards for localisation
Advanced applications, tools and research
Conclusion

Title: A Response to "A Dialogue on ICTs, Human Development, Growth and Poverty Reduction"
Author: Ethan Zuckerman
Source: Publius Project
Publisher: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Date (published): 18/09/2009
Date (accessed): 05/10/2009
Type of information: essay
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
If we imagine Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle falling asleep in a developing nation in 1998 and awaking today, it's likely that he'd be fascinated and surprised by mobile phones. When Rip went to sleep, only a few hundred million people had access to mobile phones, and most lived in wealthy nations. A decade later, the ITU sees 4.1 billion mobile phone accounts, two-thirds of them in the developing world. The changes brought by mobile phones are both subtle and omnipresent - mobile phone numbers painted above shop doors allow merchants to untether from their stalls; carpentry ads scrawled on road signs turn a craftsman with a phone into an independent, mobile business; secure money transfers from abroad pay the village school fees that grant a child an education.

Title: Gender, ICTs, Human Development and Prosperity
Author: Nancy Spence
Source: Publius Project
Publisher: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Date (published): 17/09/2009
Date (accessed): 05/10/2009
Type of information: essay
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Plus ca change! Much has changed in the past 6 years since the first Harvard Forum. In particular, mobile phone access has jumped in every region and in most countries of the World. From research sketched in the Forum’s background paper, and research starting more from a gender lens, phone access for women, mostly mobiles, is greatest where total access is greatest – highest in Asia, next in South and Central America, and lowest in Africa. In Asian countries, mobile phone access and use is becoming universal – through market supply and demand and, particularly for the poorest of the poor, also through the provision or support activities of non-profits.

Title: Social Enterprise to Mobiles – The Curious Case of a Propped up ICTD Theory
Author: Anita Gurumurthy
Source: Publius Project
Publisher: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Date (published): 17/09/2009
Date (accessed): 05/10/2009
Type of information: essay
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Appropriating the tremendous potential of new ICTs for meeting development challenges requires a sound theoretical basis – drawing from the social theories of ICTs and connecting them to the experience and values of development thought and practice. However, the dominant ICTD discourse has, in its steadfast loyalty to techno-determinism and neo-liberalism, largely adopted an atheoretical stance. It has unabashedly glossed over empirical evidence in not interrogating the failure of the social enterprise model both in ensuring sustainability and in meeting socio-economic goals in a manner that promotes equity. Instead, in an eternal search for new narratives aligned with market interests, ICTD has now chosen to deploy a watered down empiricism to over valorise the market-led mobile telephony model without critically examining its full implications for development practice and possibilities. By reposing firm faith in 'win-win' partnerships, ICTD practice has depoliticized development, recasting notions of the 'public' and of 'inclusion' in a corporatised rhetoric of the 'user community' and the 'poor at the bottom-of-the-pyramid', respectively.

Title: A Response to "A Dialogue on ICTs, Human Development, Growth and Poverty Reduction"
Author: Hernan Galperin
Source: Publius Project
Publisher: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Date (published): 21/09/2009
Date (accessed): 05/10/2009
Type of information: essay
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
In general terms, I found the paper (A Dialogue on ICTs, Human Development, Growth, and Poverty Reduction) fascinating and provocative, as it is one of the first attempts that I am aware of to link two insofar separate fields, i.e., organizational theory and ICT4D. The comments below are intended to contribute to building this new framework, which hopefully could help not only to orient grant-making but also to advance the ICT4D field in general. They start from the more theoretical to those closer to real-world issues in the ICT4D field, and stress points of weakness which I think if addressed would strengthen the new framework. I also suggest areas to which the openness concept could be extended.

Title: Communication and Human Development: The Freedom Connection?
Duration: 1:24:50
Source: YouTube
Publisher: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Date (published): 28/09/2009
Date (accessed): 04/10/2009
Type of information: video
Language: English
On-line access: yes
Abstract:
Professors Michael Spence and Amartya Sen join leading ICT (Information-Communication Technology) experts Yochai Benkler and Clotilde Fonseca in a public discussion of the role of communication and ICTs in human development, growth and poverty reduction. Michael Best will moderate the discussion. What has changed, been learned, not been learned, needs to be learned, needs to be done most urgently?

This talk was organized by the International Development Research Center, and hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University on September 23, 2009.

Title: Capital, Power, and the Next Step in Decentralization
Author: Yochai Benkler
Source: Publius Project
Publisher: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Date (published): 16/09/2009
Date (accessed): 28/09/2009
Type of information: essay
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
As we think of ICTs for development, we must understand that the challenge is a focus on widespread distribution of high-capacity devices, in the hands of a highly skilled population, over open networks running simple and non-proprietary standards. Devices must be cheap enough to be widely distributed as basic background features, owned by individuals in a pattern uncorrelated with pre-existing power relations. Devices must be accompanied with skills training in the use of the device and the open network, so that the difficulty of use does not continue to drive people to the simpler devices that deliver the more predictable, controlled, and “safe” applications. In the near future, this may mean programs focused on women, much as micro-lending has been, or youths and children. In the longer term, it must mean an emphasis on cheap computers from the lineage of the personal computer, not souped-up mobile phones. Or, in the alternative, it means that we need a heavier focus on regulatory interventions that will require mobile phones and phone networks to be more open and flexible—although this is a harder row to hoe. And in all events it means devices coupled with training.

Title: A Response to "A Dialogue on ICTs, Human Development, Growth and Poverty Reduction"
Author: Onno Purbo
Source: Publius Project
Publisher: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Date (published): 21/09/2009
Date (accessed): 28/09/2009
Type of information: essay
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Unfortunately, in practice in the grassroots, a knowledge-based society is not about the concepts or terms “universal access”, “openness”, and “innovation”. It is more about *how* to create a movement within the society / community to get universal access, to embed openness in a culture, to help innovation flourish among the 240 million Indonesians. Unlike most western countries, we Indonesians cannot rely on the government too heavily. Create a self-financed, sustainable, self-propelled movement within such large number of people with minimal support from the government is an art in itself.

Title: Broadening the Agenda for ICT for Poverty Reduction
Author: Ophelia Mascarenhas
Source: Publius Project
Publisher: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Date (published): 21/09/2009
Date (accessed): 28/09/2009
Type of information: essay
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Six years down the line the debate still continues. In the developing countries the explosive increase in the use of ICTs has not been matched with a tremendous decline in poverty or socio-economic inequalities. Have financial resources for the BOP been lured and diverted to mobiles instead of other needs? Could the outflow of capital directly in terms of airtime tariffs and purchases of equipment and indirectly through the construction of massive billboards, TV slots and promotional campaigns been better used to reduce poverty?