ICTD

Microfinance Institutions (MFI) are sought to combine transparent sustainability with poverty reduction. Apart from this commonality, they can be as different as their markets, cultures and technologies. While much design for MFIs, nevertheless, ...

Delivering new technology solutions in a well established IT-educated consumer market largely depends on the usefulness and usability of the solution. However, this is very different from delivering ICT solutions in developing regions where there are ...

Patient data collection and emergency health service is the primary challenge in developing countries. Risk assessment of pregnant mother and healthcare based on priority is almost impossible in present health service of Bangladesh. A pilot study was ...

We present our experiences with an SMS-based system for providing transit information based solely on existing cellular and GPS networks. The aim is to permit the development of information services that do not rely on a central authority or complex web ...

Donor and government funded Internet kiosks, telecentres and community multimedia centres continue to be implemented in developing countries, yet many remain underutilised, and subsequently shut down. This paper argues that a large part of this is ...

We combine data from a field survey with transaction log data from a mobile phone operator to provide new insight into daily patterns of mobile phone use in Rwanda. The analysis is divided into three parts. First, we present a statistical comparison of ...

This paper describes an ongoing research project exploring the business practices of mobile entrepreneurs, specifically mobile food vendors, and the potential use of location aware and mobile phone-based application to support their information needs. ...

Although para-social workers (PSW) carry the primary responsibility in providing essential services to the growing population of orphans and vulnerable children in Tanzania, they are often not paid for this work. Moreover, PSWs are unable to access ...

The progress of developing countries towards an information society has entailed a strong demand for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) access solutions that are able to cope with the infrastructural and cultural requirements specific to ...

This paper introduces the construct of Self-Efficacy as a method to measure the impact that ICT-enhanced teacher training has on teachers. Firstly, Self-Efficacy and its related sub-constructs, Computer Self-Efficacy and Teacher Self-Efficacy, are ...

Studies to understand the impact that demographic and socio-economic factors have in the use of cell phones have been traditionally carried out by social and technical researchers through the use of questionnaires and personal interviews. In recent ...

In this paper, we examine the deployment of a group of technology centers serving people with disabilities in five Latin American countries: Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela. We explore the impacts of such training courses on the ...

This paper is a study of the pilot of AppLab Question Box, a voice telephony-based information service for the rural poor implemented in two districts in Uganda from April through September 2009. The purposes of the pilot were as follows: to test the ...

While many technologies remain out-of-reach for households in the developing world, one exception to this rule is that of entertainment technologies. Even in poor communities, there is a strong drive to own devices such as TVs and, increasingly, DVD ...

This article proposes an analytical framework to better understand the role that information and communication technology (ICT) skills play in improving employment opportunities for low-income groups. The paper draws upon research with over seventy non-...

This study seeks to explain the phenomenon of e-government initiatives in developing countries through the lens of the actor-network theory. Part of this theory is made up of the sociology of translation, which was employed as a crucial framework for ...

This paper presents Open Data Kit (ODK), an extensible, open-source suite of tools designed to build information services for developing regions. ODK currently provides four tools to this end: Collect, Aggregate, Voice, and Build. Collect is a mobile ...

Many children, especially in the developing world, must share a computer at school. Often, more advanced or aggressive students dominate, leaving others frustrated and disengaged. One promising approach is to provide each student with their own input ...

Numerous developing countries are currently executing or planning---pouring both hope and money into---projects that introduce technology into their educational systems. This paper puts forth the assertion that developing world ICT-in-education projects ...

The Multiple Mice project demonstrated the financial [1] and learning [2] benefits of enabling students in resource-constrained schools to share one computer. In India, the lack of Multiple Mice authoring tools coupled with teachers' low computer ...

We present a study on using storytelling for teaching skills to low-income workers in the developing world. Taking a cue from work on using dramatized stories and video to promote technology use and agricultural and HIV/AIDS education, we investigated ...

One of the greatest challenges in designing applications for developing communities is that potential users may have limited literacy. Past work in UI design for low-literate users has focused on illiteracy as the inability to read per se, with little ...

The Indian government has undertaken an ambitious strategy for financial inclusion (FI) as part of its development agenda. With the aid of technology-enabled branchless banking initiatives, this drive has been successful in regards to extending access---...

Organizations (private, public), large and small, are increasingly facing more challenges due scarcity of resources, short delivery time requirement, frequent emergence of new technologies, demand for wide variety of competencies, and limited ...

The paper presents the findings of a village level exploration seeking to investigate the pattern of access and use of a telecentre and its services by different socio-economic groups. It also examines how the pattern of access and use is shaped by the ...

Significant investments are being made into distance education programs around the world. Yet there is no clear understanding of the effectiveness of such programs, or what makes a distance education program successful. This is in part because the ...

Citizens across the world are constantly innovating new mechanisms of holding their governments accountable for their actions. One such mechanism that is gaining popularity in developing countries is E-governance. Using two case studies of Online Public ...

Several nations around the world have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) since 2008. Ratifying states commit that national law will guarantee rights enumerated in the CRPD. The use of Assistive Technology (AT) ...

We present Collage, a software application designed for classroom presentations for school teachers in the developing world. An in-depth investigation of teaching practices in several schools in India led us to believe that a simple tool that enabled ...

In this research we test the hypothesis that institutional interests and lack of data have led to fragmented models to measure digital development, thus distorting policy design. A qualitative analysis was performed on 55 different models (including ...