ICTs for Development blog
Catch up on the most recent posts from our Centre for Digital Development blog.
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Big data and development in India. The hype and the reality
Chris Foster
8 September 2020
Many around the world celebrated the agreement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a new agenda for transformative development by 2030. But, practitioners and policy makers were left scratching their heads as to how they were going to monitor the detailed 169 targets and ever more numerous indicators, never mind understanding and achieving these […]
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How Widespread are Digital Water Payments in Ghana?
Godfred Amankwaa
6 August 2020
Digital systems are seen as important elements in the governance and management of the water sector. For instance, systems such as digital meters, IoT applications, digital payments, etc can significantly improve aspects of water service delivery and access. But are these new technologies widely adopted as yet, particularly in the global South context? The open […]
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Context and Digital Start-Ups in the Global South
Richard Heeks
13 July 2020
How does context affect new digital start-ups in the global South? The open-access paper, “Embeddedness of Digital Start-Ups in Development Contexts” provides some answers, using the Triple Embeddedness Framework: Based on a study of 19 digital start-ups and 20 other start-up ecosystem organisations, this research makes three main conclusions. 1. Hybrid Embeddedness. These young enterprises […]
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Positive Deviance: A Data-Powered Approach to the Covid-19 Response
Richard Heeks
5 May 2020
Nations around the world are struggling with their response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, they seek guidance on what works best in terms of preventive measures, treatments, and public health, economic and other policies. Can we use the novel approach of data-powered positive deviance to improve the guidance being offered? Positive Deviance and Covid-19 […]
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Protecting Gig Workers During Covid-19: What Platforms Must Do
Richard Heeks
27 April 2020
The estimated 50 million gig workers worldwide have been particularly hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. How are their platforms responding, and what more should platforms do? Reports indicate half of gig workers have lost their jobs. Those still working perform functions essential to society, yet they have lost two-thirds of their income on average. Many face […]
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Second round of Fairwork’s yearly platform ratings in South Africa launched!
Richard Heeks
18 March 2020
The Fairwork South Africa 2020 report highlights the precarious nature of work in the South African gig economy. This research is particularly timely in light of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, which has brought the risks faced by front-line gig workers into sharp relief. The uncertainty that has gripped the world in the wake of the […]
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Rural Resilience Impact of ICTs-in-Agriculture
Richard Heeks
28 January 2020
What impact do ICT-in-agriculture projects have on rural resilience? To cope with short-term shocks (e.g. conflict, economic crisis) and long-term trends (e.g. climate change), rural areas in developing countries must become more resilient. Yet we currently know very little about the impact that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can have on resilience-building. To address this […]
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Ride-hailing Platform Asymmetries between Riders and Driver-partners in Lagos, Nigeria.
danielarubayi
9 January 2020
Platform companies, with the help of data, have the potential to formalise the processes of transport systems in global South cities, especially in African cities which are characterised with informal processes. For ride-hailing platforms, this will help improve safety and security for both drivers and riders and reduce the likelihood of workers who attempt to […]
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Addressing Institutional Voids in Nigeria’s Agricultural Finance Markets through Agri-finance Platforms
ezeomahbookie
5 December 2019
In my previous blog “Crowdfarming: Platform-enabled Investment in Nigerian Agriculture”, I talked about how digital platforms are being mainstreamed into agricultural finance markets in Nigeria. This blog describes how digital platforms are addressing some of the underlying problems which have constrained rural farmer’s access to agricultural finance thereby creating gaps which manifest as institutional voids […]
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ICTs and Precision Development: Towards Personalised Development
Richard Heeks
5 November 2019
Are ICTs about to deliver a new type of socio-economic development: personalised development? ICTs can only have a significant development impact if they work at scale; touching the lives of thousands or better still millions of people. Traditionally, this meant a uniform approach where everyone gets to use the same application in the same way. […]
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