By Dale Rutstein
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Local staff
printing a birth certificate at Mityana hospital in Uganda using technology
called Mobile Vital Records System. ©UNICEF/Uganda/2013/Sibiloni
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C4D, S4D and now ICT4D. The latest “4D”
could represent one of the most important social and economic development
trends in years. Communication technologies have long been seen as development
“silver bullets.”
First radio was going to boost
productivity for rural farmers, then TV sets were supposed to replace teachers
in remote classrooms, then computers were to become the great equalizers.
Outsized expectations have almost always exceeded Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) realities for development.
But ICTs could finally be coming of age
– due to the rapid spread of cell phones and internet – and their impact is
reaching far beyond text message weather and commodity price reports for rural
farmers. In a many ways digital technology and wireless communication networks
are now over-shooting expectations and starting to deliver development
dividends that generate their own forward momentum.
Best of all, in many instances, end
users in impoverished regions are having their say and formulating the
framework of the latest generation of ICT for development: ICT4D.
In Zambia’s Southern Province health
worker volunteers are trained to use SMS technology known as Remind MI (Remind
Mother and Infant) in delivering results and reminders to clients of the rural
health centre.
Things are moving so quickly that
research and documentation can hardly keep up with the diffusion of ICT4D
innovations. To help map and analyze these developments the UNICEF Office of
Research – Innocenti is releasing a new report called “Children, ICTs and Development: Capturing the potential,
meeting the challenges” which polls 35 leading experts in the
field and analyses major research on the use of ICTs to improve the situation
of vulnerable children. The report could be the first effort to specifically
study the relationship between ICT4D and efforts to improve the situation of
children.
UNICEF has recently launched a global innovation unit
pioneering the use of these and other new technologies, and has dedicated its
November 2014 State of the World’s Children report to the theme of “Innovation
for Equity.” The evidence of positive impact is mounting.
The case of Zambia’s U-reporters is inspiring. With UNICEF help young
people are using a simple SMS application to engage with policy makers on
burning issues.
More than 25,000 youth across Zambia – almost half female – are
using SMS to access confidential, quality HIV-STI services. Zambia’s U-Reporter
network is focused on HIV prevention, but will soon expand to address other
needs.
In Uganda, similar technology is going
even further. Through U
Report, more than 200,000 young people are connecting, discussing and
mapping issues from sanitation in schools to gender discrimination. The
network’s most recent SMS polls have covered, child poverty, birth registration,
child health days, women’s access to credit.
Connected by SMS, this vast network is gathering hard evidence and generating data maps
to pressure leaders for change. According to one report “Information
collected from these channels will be used to build a real time ‘accountability
chain.’”
In China the “10m2 of Love” smartphone app is mapping a
growing list of breastfeeding rooms in workplaces and public buildings which
meet ILO standards. Across 60 cities the app is helping families navigate to
the nearest breastfeeding space and encouraging Chinese employers to embrace
Child Rights Business Principles in the work place.
Woven into China’s popular social media
networks, the app mobilizes crowd-sourced quality control, provides contact
details for hundreds of trained breastfeeding peer counselors and galvanizes an
increasingly passionate breastfeeding advocacy movement. Before the launch of
this ICT campaign UNICEF had never partnered with volunteers in China!
Despite the clear up-side, the
development community still needs to exercise caution, as the new research
shows the ICT4D experience for children also contains its share of challenges.
The study shows that girls are still
less likely to benefit than boys, and while rural access is expanding it is
still well behind urban areas. Cost is also a major obstacle which could mean
that “quick fix” ICT4D interventions have the potential to widen inequities.
The necessity of rooting ICT4D strategies deeply in the local cultural context
is highlighted.
Watch this space because I will
continue to devote much of this blog to the impact of new interactive
communication technologies on child rights.
(Blogger note: This is my first blog
post since joining the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti team. Our new
study “Children, ICTs and Development: Capturing the potential, meeting the
challenges,” has been jointly produced with the ICT4D Centre at Royal Holloway,
University of London and Jigsaw Consult. It will be launched at the “Digitally
Connected symposium on children, youth and digital media” hosted by the Berkman
Center for Internet & Society and UNICEF on April 28-30, 2014 at Harvard
University.)
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