The Potential Role of Information and Communications Technology in Development Computers & Society COMP1220 Dr. Ashley G. Hamilton-Taylor, Dept. of Computing,

The Potential Role of Information and Communications Technology in

Development

Computers & SocietyCOMP1220

Dr. Ashley G. Hamilton-Taylor, Dept. of Computing, UWI, Mona

The Promise of ICTAdoption of ICT is supposed to bring benefits

Private sector productivity, e-commerceGovernment efficiencyHealth service improvementEducational enhancement via e-learningCommunication/media outlet Cultural Arts exposure and marketing

ICT industryKnowledge-based economySoftware Industry

The Reality of ICT

There have been few winners in the developing world thus far

India – US$420M - US$8.7BBrazil – US$100M/yearPhilippines

Even among winners, the ICT industry has not transformed life for the majority in most cases

ICT Development Taxonomy

Taxonomy of New Software Exporting Nations - Erran Carmel - EJISDC 2003

The transnationalization of Brazil’s software industryRaul Gouvea*http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/iteiit20071a6_en.pdf

ICT Development

Upper tier (3 and above) ICT countries tend to have strong educational systems, particularly in mathematics and the sciences.

Many of the ICT industry plans in lower-tier ICT countries do not focus on this

They focus on “computer literacy” and basic “IT”, e.g. CXC IT

Developing countries in the Lower tiers of ICT

Produce fairly large numbers of “computer literate” users, who can do data entry and other office-type work.

E.g. Jamaican ICT - call centre industry

Produce fair numbers of technicians and system administrators who can install, repair and manage systems.

Developing countries in the Lower tiers of ICT

Produce fair numbers of persons who can design basic websites, but much fewer.Some entry-level university graduates who are software designers, web designers, and hardware designers

e.g. in Jamaica about 200 per year.Some countries in Africa are taking a more pro-active approach, e.g. Uganda, Ethiopia, Botswana

Developing countries in the Lower tiers of ICT

Produce (and retain) few highly skilled software designers, few top web designers, few who can develop complex web systems and fewer hardware designers

e.g. Jamaica probably 20-40 per year

ICT industries are built around highly skilled individuals and (often small) teams

The loss of a few key persons can do serious damage

Many of the ICT industry plans in less developed countries do not focus on this

Training, retention, and promotion/support of key people

ICT AweMost high-tech products are so badly designed that they make the users feel incompetent.

The users assume that their difficulties are due to the high intellectual properties of the technology. 

• It can do all these wonderful things, but I can’t understand it.

This leads to an awe of high-tech experts and high-tech itself.This awe contributes to the belief that high-tech is the solution for the problems of the worldIt also leads to an awe of those who created it

Developing WorldPro-active Approach

We want our people to master ICT and become its creators and we are willing to invest in them, their startups, and their productsWe will limit foreign purchases as much as possible for self-investment

The other approachThe people who created ICT are foreign – therefore they know best, and their products are bestLets bring in some foreign experts to advise on how to set up an ICT industryIf our local people knew so much, they would be abroad

One is reminded of the words of Marcus Garvey:

“If you have no confidence in yourself, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence you have won even before you have started.”

“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.”

Developing countries and ICT

Successful countries We find some statistics on their ICT export earnings

The other countries We find some statistics on their usage of ICT

• But not the impact of the usage

No import or export figures

Push for adoption of ICT and development of network infrastructure

• Increasingly louder, esp in Africa

network infrastructure owned by multinationalsAT&T fibre ring around Africa

Flow fibre ring around Jamaica, C&W

These will carry all data, video, and voice eventually• Is external control of this a good thing?

Flattening The World -The Prospects for Fiber Optic Technology in Africa, Ebenezer Malcalm

Idealistic View of ICT DevelopmentE-Powering Jamaica 2012 National ICT Strategic Planhttp://www.cito.gov.jm/node/10

Development and ICTMany projects are supposed to help the lower-tier ICT developing countries

Some benefits do accrue, but use is not usually optimal. • e.g. Jamaica spent 10% of GDP 2000-2006 on ICT but

productivity is falling (http://devdata.worldbank.org/ict/jam_ict.pdf)

Benefits are often not measured nor analysedInadequate requirements study of the problems and issues is common. Foreign aid often returns to donor in purchases of equipment, software and consultancyMany pilot projects that are not sustainable

Nalaka Gunawardene, “Waiting for Pilots to Land in Tunis”, Nov 2005, Islam Online

“As the UN-convened World Summit on the Information Society ends, there are still too many pilots hovering around, looking for landing space.”“I see them as ‘picture postcard opportunities’ for roving development workers. There is a seductive allure in images of school children playing with a computer, a Buddhist monk using a mobile phone, or tribal people trying out a palm-top. They lull us into believing that we are fixing the world’s ills with geeky gadgets.”

E-learning Push

Many policy makers in the developing world are enamored by the reputed power of e-learning

rush to invest vast sums, without cost-benefit/pilot studies and reviewing the research

technology has a very short lifespan

Educational Technology Studies in the USA

Study from 2004 to 2005 of the use of mathematics and reading software in 132 schools across 33 schools districts

“on average, after one year, products did not increase or decrease test scores by amounts that were statistically different from zero” (US Department of Education, 2007)

Cost of E-learning can be high

One E-learning project in India for remedial Mathematics was effective, but…

It cost 6.7 times more than an effective Mathematics tutoring project for the same target group of students

Poverty Action Lab at MIT study,

(Banerjee, Duflo, Linden, 2003).

MIT Epistemology and Learning Research Group

Research Approach to Educational TechnologyChildren learn best by constructing artifacts (constructionism)Created LOGO language to use programming to create mathematical figures

• (Mindstorms, Papert, 1980)

Piloted ‘School of the Future’ in low-income Boston school

http://www.electronic-school.com/0696f2.html

But over 10 years later, the school is failinghttp://boston.k12.ma.us/hennigan/

MIT Epistemology and Learning Research Group

Since 1971, the educational technology research of the MIT group failed to produce positive results on any consistent basis in developed countries

“The Logo project as espoused by Seymour Papert and his collaborators at MIT has, to date, failed to meet what I take to be its most important goals” despite “great political, public and funding support” for over 25 years (O’Shea and Koschmann, 1997)

However, MIT Researchers Negroponte and Papert have launched a major project to extend their work to every corner of the developing world:

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC)

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project

MIT Media Lab drivenNicholas NegroponteSeymour PapertLaunched with Kofi Annan, 2007

Designed for developing countriesWater resistant, can be charged by solar-panel or yo-yo hand-generatorBuilt-in mesh network that connects to other OLPC’sOne OLPC can connect to the internet and other nearby OLPC’s can connect through it

Cost: US$188 (aiming at $100)Minimum purchase quantity: 100,000 (was 1 million)

PCs for the poor: as good as their hype? Waleed al-Shobakky, 31 July 2006

“Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, Nigeria and Thailand — have each pledged to buy one million [OLPC] units, even before putting their hands on the final product or knowing its exact specifications.”

“India had also shown interest but this month pulled out. Education secretary Sudeep Banerjee said the laptops could be "detrimental to the growth of creative and analytical abilities of the child" and that the money would be better spent on more classrooms and teachers.”

OLPC Project ProblemsProblems

Hardly any educational software developedLittle or no collaboration with ministries or educators in developing countries

‘There was a lack of documentation, support and methods to integrate the PCs into school curricula, teacher training, and the like. OLPC seemed to think that just by handing out laptops, everything would sort itself out.’

One clunky laptop per child - The Economist, Jan 4th 2008

OLPC in NigeriaNigeria cancelled a US$100+ million order for one million OLPC laptops ordered by the previous administration. "What is the sense of introducing One Laptop per Child when they don't have seats to sit down and learn; when they don't have uniforms to go to school in, where they don't have facilities?"

BBC interview with Nigerian Minister of Education , Dr Igwe Aja-Nwachuku

• (BBC, 27 November 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094695.stm )

OLPC Nigerian Pilot ProgramPilot program at a rural Nigerian primary school,

40 out of 300 OLPC laptops broke down or were stolen within five monthsMuch game playing, picture taking, browsingUrgent steps had to be taken when “some of the pupils were found to be accessing pornography through the laptops.” The ‘childrens laptop’ does not ship with protective filtering software.

(BBC, Nov 28, 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7115348.stm )

OLPC PhilosophyNicholas Negroponte:

“Why would a kid in the developing world need a laptop of all things when they might not have food, they probably in some cases don’t live beyond the age of five, they don’t have drinking water, and the parents earn a dollar a day or less? Take the word laptop, and substitute the word education, and nobody would say that.”

Does laptop=education?

OLPC PhilosophyNicholas Negroponte:

“One looks at it slightly differently, in terms of education being an element of security, an element of eliminating terrorism by eliminating poverty, eliminating lack of communication”

One Laptop Per Child: Changing Learning, Changing Minds. Undated video, circa 2007, Technology Review, MIT

http://dotsub.com/view/170314e6-34cc-4b64-84d2-483ac5bb800c

OLPC Philosophy

“If we project any sort of democratic world, we have to assume that education, and learning to think differently, and that means learning to learn how to think, is going to be an essential contribution, maybe the essential contribution to that.”

Seymour Papert

Paternalistic Technocentric Philosophy

If they have to learn how to learn how to thinkThey don’t know how to thinkTheir indigenous knowledge systems did not teach them how to thinkTheir culture did not teach them how to thinkTheir existing educational system did not teach them how to think

• Although the developing world is a prime source for skilled workers

So all of the above are not worthy of retention and should be replaced by a superior form of thinking, and thinking about thinking

"I’ve thought for a while that sending laptops to developing countries is simply the 21st century equivalent of sending bibles to the colonies…"

Python language author Guido van Rossum

http://radian.org/notebook/sic-transit-gloria-laptopi

e-Learning glitch - Multibillion US-dollar project stuck in pilot phase - High schools still to receive computer equipment

Jamaica Gleaner Tuesday | March 25, 2008Tyrone Reid, Enterprise Reporter

Major glitches in the Government's e-Learning programme have delayed the implementation of the multibillion-dollar education initiative by almost a year.The pilot phase of the pricey programme was scheduled to start in September 2006 and end in June 2007. That did not happen. The two subsequent months - July and August 2007 - were to be used to study the pilot ... That too did not happen.The e-Learning programme ... is projected to cost in the region of US$50 million (approximately J$3.45 billion) over a three to four-year period….

'Equipment contract delayed project'published: Tuesday | March 25, 2008 http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080325/lead/lead2.html

At the end of February this year, just over US$30.2 million was signed in contractual arrangements and an additional J$403 million has been spent.

In an interview this month, Hugh Cross, executive director of the Universal Access Fund Company Limited, told The Gleaner that his company had given J$418 million to the e-Learning programme up to that time

The Real Cost of E-learningLet us consider a high school of 1500 students that is given a laboratory with 50 computers, to accommodate classes of approximately 45 students. At 6 hours per day, 5 days per week, this lab will provide approximately 1 hour of computer time per student per week This school would require ten fifty-computer labs to do e-learning work for 2 hours/week work for each of five subjects, or approx US$500,000 per high school to replace these computers every four years.

Demmers and O’Neil, 2001. Leavers and Takers: Alternative perspectives on universal access to telecommunications technologies. Techne, Spring, p.1-10.

“Whether you agree that access to technology in developing nations is detrimental to the mainstream of their cultural heritage, the reality in the world today is that a predominantly Western approach to the use of technology is subverting these cultures at an accelerating rate.”

“A new form of cultural imperialism is emerging as tribal communities become wired to the Internet, gain access to satellite television, ….”

Conclusion

ICT has the potential to be beneficial in developing countries, but only if strong pro-active economic, educational, social, and cultural policies are carefully designed and implemented.If this path is not followed, underdevelopment will be exacerbated via social and cultural destruction, an increased economic burden of ICT imports, and external control of informationExpose the issues, Address the prevalent Belief System about Technology. Target:

Policy makers and the Business SectorCommunity, religious and social groupsEducators and Parents