I think that the most important lesson to take away from this course is that any development effort needs to begin with a bottom up grassroots approach. If an organization or a non-profit attempts to swoop in, bring a community some form of technology it deems applicable, and then leave, nothing is going to be accomplished. This is relevant to many failed development projects, specifically in terms of the failure of kiosks that were placed in grocery stores.
This concept is relevant to the human centered design approach we learned about in class. The tenet “hear” involves interacting with the community, talking to them, and understanding what they feel the community needs in terms of development projects. This approach not only allows for the potential success of projects because they are targeting issues people actually feel are relevant, but it also integrates the community into the project. Integrating community members into development projects is important as it allows for channels of communication between the developer and the recipients.
Next, I think an important concept in ICT4D is that program implementers need to adequately make sure they have built up technological capacity among the recipients, before they leave. This is especially important in terms of ICT’s that are integrated into the education sector. From the readings and various research done for the sector project a big problem identified was that with programs aimed at implementing technology into the classrooms the teachers did not incorporate it into their lessons due to their lack of knowledge of how to use it. This design fault is relative to the one laptop per child initiative.
Lastly, I think an important idea to think about is that new development projects should center their approach on local knowledge. Instead of bringing a completely new idea/technology into a developing country, they should focus on pre existing knowledge. This involves first communicating with community members to gauge the extent of local knowledge available, and the specifics of it. This approach allows for less time spent on building capacity and more time catering the specifics of the actual program so that it will yield positive results.
These are just some of the important lessons learned throughout this course, but there are plenty more. ICT4D showed me that there is no one “right” way to approach development, and that a lot of projects do fail. The important thing in development projects is that despite all the failures, it is vital to celebrate the small victory of one project being successful. This is because after the success of one project, we are one step closer to improving the quality of lives of people in developing countries. With that knowledge in mind, the high number of development projects that have failed in the past suddenly do not seem that significant anymore.