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Project processes.Hypothesis : - Sustainability is said to be closely associated with the planning process of an activity, and its inclusion of both the target group and in some cases the long term indirect beneficiaries.
Having stated above the need for “connecting” to the clients, it is interesting to consider the project processes involved in these case studies. In the development community generally the premise that participation by users of a service in its planning and implementation leads to a greater sense of ownership and therefore a greater sustainability has gained considerable momentum. It is said that if people own a service then they will be willing to pay higher rates for the service, and perhaps undertake volunteer work to ensure the service is maintained.
The case studies offer very little evidence to support this premise. In the case of information technology there may be a need to distinguish between ownership of the technology, and ownership of the information provided (or the deliverables).
In each of the case studies discussed below the focus is on ownership of the information by the community, not the ownership of the ICTs.
Ownership of information MIGIS is a clear case in point. It is a tool for the community to use. The communities that ended up using it would have been unlikely to conceive it, and do not own or retain the equipment. A clear case where the question is not so much their ownership of the ICT but their ownership of the outputs.
Participatory processes to establish information needs In the cases of CARDIN, MANAGE, Revistazo and Deniva, the inclusion of, or activity based on ICTs was conceived by the NGO and although implemented with due sensitivity to its clients, it cannot be said to have been planned participatively. However, some sense of ownership of the ICTs may well have been generated by the needs surveys.
FOOD specifically reports that its plans were designed in consultation with the artisans, NGOs and women cooperatives
ACISAM works closely with the community, planning the details of each action. “The topics are based on community themes. When entering a community initially they will do an assessment (community diagnosis) of the community to identify themes, as well as the most vulnerable groups, those who are the most needy for the project. They involve a few of these people in the first community video, show it to the rest of the community, and then, once a group of people (usually groups of 10 - 15 youths from 15 - 28 yrs old) are enthusiastic and committed to the training process (which takes 6 months), they'll let them start taking on their own projects based on their own themes. The important thing to ACISAM is to help construct alternative means for communication at a local level, and this has both a technical and a conceptual side to it as well. However, the overall involvement of ICTs in advocacy and education was an informed decision taken by the NGO.” ACISAM Case Study
“The services/facilities on Gyandoot have been chosen through a participatory process involving the community, government officials and the Gyandoot team. During the formation of the project proposal, a detailed RRA/PRA exercise was taken up involving the villagers and the community. The selection of the services was a result of this interactive exercise and was based upon the advice and the felt needs of the villagers.” Gyandoot Case Study.
Similarly KUMINFO collects data from villages, and it is the responsibility of the villagers to provide that data. The study admits “The data is not forthcoming because there is nothing in it for these target groups as far as funding of their activities is concerned since they incur cost in gathering and bringing data. There is also a format for collecting the data and they sometimes find it difficult getting it into that format.” The classic “no funding, no co-operation” is perhaps evident that the community do not own the project, and this may be due to the large area that KUMINFO deals with in and around Kumasi. In this case the lack of consultation perhaps caused a weakness. It is not clear whether target groups were consulted on the data collection format, whether they were asked if they wanted to participate in data collection, or who made those decisions?
We see that there were connections and consultations in the planning process of the project and have a description of some consultative processes and the kind and extent of ownership. However there is little evidence that people feel ownership of the information (to some extent it is implicit by willingness to pay). Ownership of the ICT per se by the community is not necessarily a feature of all the case studies. Community committees do operate and manage the ICTs in the cases of FOOD, MANAGE and Gyandoot, although it is not clear what the current levels of ownership and “buy-in” are.
Ownership by communities can grow with sufficient dialogue and consultation. Other studies[1] show that an exit strategy that desires to hand over technology to a target group can be planned and be successful regardless of the entry strategy. In these case studies Digital Village intends to fully hand over the ICT assets to the community without future NGO control, and a number of other cases may do in the longer term. The other studies consider ICTs role in the context of ongoing institutional and community development.
Gender: Gender did not seem to be an issue with any organisation except with regards to Gyandoot’s internet cafes. Here the issue was lack of access by men. They could only access the facilities through their wives or a female member of their family. How this affects the traditional social roles was not noted. In contrast MIGIS noted that the use of technology during the PRA exercise did not create barriers to either men or women’s participation.
The studies describe a variety of approaches in project processes and seem to support the hypothesis. There is some evidence from within the studies that participatory planning processes enhance the project as a whole, although this seems to be more in terms of tailoring the ICT activities to the information needs as opposed to an intended ownership of the ICT activity by the target group. |
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