ICT for Development: Empowerment or Exploitation?

This report is based on the experiences of the Reflect ICTs project, a participatory information and communication technology (ICT) project with pilots in Burundi, India and Uganda. The report explores the value of information and communication technology for development ( ICT4D) from a rights and empowerment perspective. It asks the questions:

• Can ICTs enable people to actively challenge and change the power structures which keep them poor and marginalised?
• If so, what are the conditions for this to happen?
• Is the simple provision of access and training enough, or are there other dimensions that we need to be aware of and deal with?

From the report:
"ICTs can be used to strengthen local traditions and cultures of communication, but only by design: people need to appropriate the technology and give it functions which suit their needs and motivations. This requires sensitivity to the communication practices and prejudices of the people in question, both in the way the technologies are designed and marketed, and the way that they are chosen and introduced within a project."