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WhyCT for D

You know, I don’t think you can discuss this kind of work without somebody wondering what the point of it all is. I’m talking about my own work, the whole philosophy behind me being here. Somebody is asking a question, and that question is: What can possibly develop from ICT development in developing countries?

It’s a good question. I didn’t really have a clear answer when I came here. Honestly, part of the reason I came here was to probe the issue. Technology is great, yes — utterly fabulous, let’s get that straight. But does that fabulousness hold within the context of rural Nigeria? Does it translate into Hausa? A lot of these people are dying from diseases borne through their food, water, and each other. Most of them rely on subsistence farming to make it through life. Whither information technology in this sort of climate?

There are some abstract notions that have been bandied about, which purport something or other about education and connection, but what the hell does all that mean? Information and communication are usually good things, yes. Certainly it is nice for Canadian kids to speak to Nigerian kids over MSN. But how does this transmute into actual, you know, development? What is the action plan here?

I think I’ve got a few decent answers. At least for Nigeria — I can’t speak too much as to other parts of the world, but I’d imagine a lot of this is relatively universal. From what I can tell, the old “people who need water and medicine don’t need technology” line of thinking stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of a developing country’s realities and problems.

This is not an exhaustive list of answers. This is merely what’s occurred to me. I have about 20 other half-formed ideas. I’d be interested in hearing what has occurred to my fellow NetCorpers.

• ICTs facilitate economic development. Development work is, I believe, popularly conceived of in terms of house-building, sanitation, inoculation, that sort of thing. These are important and useful activities because they satisfy immediate and undeniable needs of local populations. However, sustainability is a key concept here. The goal of development work is not merely to alleviate woes in the short term, but to build an environment where these woes are eliminated entirely. Band-aids are nice, but they fall off.

  What is the fundamental problem, then? In Nigeria, it’s largely economic. There’s a serious lack of industry in Nigeria — maybe I’ll discuss it more later, because it’s a huge issue, and there’s whole lot of other issues at the root of it. But right now the important thing is the subsequent impact on the availability of gainful employment, which is to say, there is none. Poverty in Nigeria doesn’t arise from a lack of money; there’s scads of money. The problem is that it doesn’t filter down to the majority of the population, because there’s no infrastructure for it. To be fair, a system of proper government spending would help considerably, but handouts cannot be the only solution. Nigeria is a capitalist nations, and will be the foreseeable future, so it’s got to implement proper capitalist trappings if anyone is going to get anywhere.

  Now you might think: well, everyone’s just providing for themselves through subsistence farming, and everyone’s eating, and isn’t that good enough? Subsistence farming is nice, but it doesn’t work in a vacuum, because you still need to pay for housing, medicine, etc. Even if you expand to cash crops, you’re still trapped in a country of 99 million other farmers that are selling the same thing as you. Basic trades simply don’t generate enough resources to accommodate a “developed” lifestyle (with some exceptions.) You need real industry with real jobs.

  It’s basically undeniable that ICTs facilitate industrial development. Even if you don’t believe that ICTs, when properly used, are powerful enhancers of productivity (and if you don’t, read a book goddammit), you can’t deny that the realities of surviving in a global economy demand participation in the infotechnowebosphere. So part of what I’m doing here is helping industry to grow.

• ICTs provide opportunities to the middle class. People tend to conceptualize African countries as massive wastelands filled with throngs of skinny, screaming, starving children. (Also there are elephants and giraffes.) This is an inaccurate picture. As it turns out, there are plenty of highly literate, intelligent young adults, who are not starving, but aren’t going anywhere either. They live in mudhuts with chickens like everyone else, and they suffer from (more or less) the same diseases. Their futures are bleak, because there are no real opportunities for them (see above.) To coin a phrase, all they need is a chance.

  To call these people the middle-class is perhaps misleading but basically accurate. There are plenty of people in abject poverty, and for these people, ICTs are admittedly not directly applicable. But there are even more people who live in the same sort of basic conditions, but have enough capital for, say, school. The problem is that a diploma is worth even less than it is in Canada.

  Like it or not, the bigwigs are into technology these days, and technical-ability equals employ-ability. So being able to learn about computers is potentially a huge deal for these people.

  Furthermore, the Internet in particular offers a tremendous opportunity for personal development. This is a twofold opportunity: on one hand, there’s the potential for self-education. On the other hand, there’s the potential for exploring avenues in an international context. I have known many people at Fantsuam who have researched scholarships and such for attending school abroad. So part of what I’m doing here is helping these people to explore their own opportunities.

• ICTs are what’s wanted. This one is really simple. People here are interested in ICTs. They want access to them, and they want to know more. They want to be involved in what appears to be a Really Big Thing.

  Now it’s easy to write this one off, but be careful. Us Northerners have a tendency to be rather paternalistic in our dealings with the South. There is definitely a “we know best” attitude — just ask anyone in a volunteer-sending organization, it’s something they have to constantly struggle with. Admittedly, it’s hard to say whether this attitude actually has any merit or not. To be sure, conditions in the North are notably better than they are in the South, so apparently we’re doing something right. On the other hand, most of us really don’t know squat about the reality on the ground here (see above.) So if people in rural Nigeria are saying “we want to use computers,” perhaps we shouldn’t be second-guessing them; perhaps we should be helping them to fulfill on that desire. So part of what I’m doing here is just that.

• ICTs build capacity at NGOs. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it, but I believe most people sort of miss this in picturing the way development works — it is accomplished largely through the work of NGOs (not by lone volunteers building houses, or by financial aid being funneled into corrupt governments.) So contributing to an NGO is contributing to development. This is one thing that VSO really gets right; their entire model is built on partnerships with local NGOs. VSO Program Offices set high-level goals for development in a country, but the NGOs are the ones that actually implement those goals, and it is the responsibility of people like myself to help them. Very often this means interacting exclusively with a host NGO, as in my case. My work is directed at improving Fantsuam’s capacity, and my interactions with the “locals” are strictly social.

  And it’s clear that ICTs are helpful to an organization like Fantsuam. A simple but indisputable example: Fantsuam runs a microfinance institution with about 2000 clients. At this level, paper record-keeping is unfeasible, so they upgraded to Excel several years ago. Now, as they continue to grow, their spreadsheets are becoming increasingly unwieldy, and they require a more specialized solution. So part of what I’m doing here is giving them the solution that they need.

• ICTs help NGOs find funding. Another incredibly straightforward one. E-mail, websites, etc. help NGOs connect with international organizations that can fund their operations. So being able to get connected, and being able to build a respectable web presence is crucial to a place like Fantsuam. So part of what I’m doing is teaching them how to do that.

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