In Search of the Elusive ICT4D
Matti Tedre

The mainstream Tanzanian press equals development with ICT and ICT with development.

Why is there such a hype? Is there a hype cycle? Why is there this media portrayal of ICT and development? How has research covered the topic?

One of the strongest claims made are that you do fight poverty with cell phones, and that mobiles bring people money quite quickly through a mobile revolution, or create a lot of jobs, because the role of technology in development is well known and is a key to economic growth, the revolution is sustainable and there are no downsides, because mobile phones are better than aid and even better than aid.

There is good research backing this, but there’s also good research being critique with some euphoric statements.

A survey on 12 rural villages in Tanzania wiht 400 respondents showed that a majority earned $41-$83 and spent a third of the income in phone bills. Notwithstanding, it has to be said that there is a lot of informal economy, goods exchange, etc. so these figures should be taken with a grain of salt.

In fact, 75.25% disagreed that cost of mobile phones was justified by the benefits, while they reduced time and concentration from other important activities and making them forgo other important things.

So, what is happening in there? Don’t people in Africa read headlines?

A second set of interviews were performed asking why people owned a cell phone, what for, how did it affect their own lives, what were the costs, what was the relationship with benefits, and whether there was a choice at all (in using, in supporting costs, etc.)

First of all, there is a huge difference between rural and urban Iringa (Tanzania). In rural Iringa people pay for airtime vouchers but also for recharging the batteries of their mobile phones, a cost you have to bear even if you only get calls. And it was a high cost indeed.

One of the main reasons to own a phone, despite costs, is that it precisely saves other (higher) costs, like travelling… though the trade-off was neither clear nor always in the same sense.

Same with time: on the one hand, you save time for not travelling around, but you have to walk to a power centre to recharge the phone, instead of working in my shamba and attending my cattle.

There was no evidence of high rates of phone sharing, for matters of availability, of privacy, etc. And beeping can be found disturbing and, over all, consumes a lot of battery.

At the social level, many people stated the dangers or the negative effects of phone usage: corrupts children if not well monitored, destructive if not well used, lying through phones…

On the other hand, people state that they give up things because of the phone, but just few of them could list exactly what.

So, why phones:

• Because they want to communicate, to talk to each other… like everywhere else in the world.
• They want to be in touch with the world, not to be disconnected.
• They want, too, to simplify communications, thereby improving my living standards.

About job creation, it looks like there is more job redistribution than creation: if the demand for plumbing services does not rise, what the phone will do is not create more plumbing jobs, but channel them to the one plumber that is reachable (i.e. has a phone). On the other fact, it is also true that there is a direct impact on jobs, in the ICT and mobile sectors.

Outcomes?

• A side outcome of mobile telephony is that people who have never been part of the formal economy now become a part of it an even start to pay taxes (VAT), because they pay bills in real money (no goods exchange allowed with telcos, mind you).
• Saves money but costs money.
• Saves time but takes time.
• When investikng a significant portion of their income in mobiles, people’s capability to invest in other things is reduced, which may hinder development.

Three dogmas that we should challenge:

• Delusion of universality of technology: technology is not value-free, not culturally neutral, not universal; local contingencies do matter.
• Belief in progress through technology: technology does not progess in the course of time; progress is not inevitable; and progress has not a direction. We do have a choice.
• Faith in liberation: some kinds of technology not inevitably create benevolent social forms; technology not always empowers people and liberates them from oppression and poverty.

(side note: Matti Tedre consciously took a very provocative approach and forgetting that his speech has a specific relaxed, friendly context would be really unfair ;) The discussion that followed — unquotable here — was very rich and constructive)

Empowering network development cooperation models
Manuel Acevedo

Objectives of the thesis: to characterize networked development cooperation and propose a model for it; and to examine the degree of appropriateness of “enabling networks” that are most appropriate for development cooperation.

One of the main problems today for analysing networks is that everything seems to be a network or to be in one. So a first question should be to clearly identify what is and what not a network.

Despite the aforementioned aspect, development work and the development system does not seem to be really networked and instead be adapting very slowly to the Network Society.

Hypotheses:

• The adoption of network processes and structures would contribute to the “efficacy of aid”.
• The introduction of net main strategies conditions success adoption.
• The functional profiles of “enabling types” of networks, once in place, are more appropriate for development cooperation.

Conceptual elements: human development (Sen), network society (Castells), openness and access to information (IDRC), innovation as a driver of change and development 2.0 framework (Heeks).

The main purpose is to explore network-based development cooperation mechanisms and see whether capacity is more widespread, whether freedom complements talent, and whether networks are good operational mechanisms to get those results.

We can categorize networks according to purpose (knowledge, project, policy, etc.), morphology, constituents (staff, organizations, volunteers, etc.), working style…

While a representational network acts on behalf of its members, an enabling member pursues the strengthening of the capabilities of the members of the network, taking advantage of the attributes of the network, providing tools, methodologies, helping non-members to join in, etc.

The research will gather evidence on how is/are the cooperation network(s) like and how do they work. After that, the intensity of the network (network intensity index, NII) will be measured to test their performance, especially idenfiying the weaknesses so recommendations for improvement can be made. Issues that the index will cover are structure, management, functionality and results. The difficulty will be, of course, in defining the appropriate indicators and collecting all the data.

Some networks that will be analyzed are Telecentre.org, APC in Latin America and the Caribbean, InfoDesarrollo (Peru), TICBolivia, CONGDE, IICD. These are very different networks.

Understanding informal ICT micro-enterprises in developing countries
Christopher Foster

What are ICT micro-enterprises: ICTs as the key input for new products and services; less than 1o employees, majority are owner-operator:

• Mobile and media micro-enterprises: handset distirbutors and retailers, airtime and SIM resellers.
• PC and Internet micro-enterprises: goldfarming, LAN houses, PC assembly and reuse.

Informal success relates to niche strategies: niche markets, niche in price, in technology, in arrangements, in customer service…

Micro-enterprises are normally built around networks of enterprises, or ecosystems of ICT micro-enterprises that actually co-operate. Indeed, supply chains are very important in this area.

On the other hand, the sector has some instabilities: the local context, instabilities of technologies, of policies, etc.

A critique to the literature would be that is often focuses on local practices, some small cases, not broad enough scenarios or approaches. We have to see what unique aspects of ICT micro-enterprise over non ICT- micro-enterprises are relevant, and especially relevant in developing countries. And, indeed, how are they related with government policies.

A strong point to consider is the approach on the base-of-the-pyramid and co-creation, in the sense of the uneven relationship between formal and informal, big and micro, etc.

Yet, this is related to another point, which is what is the role of clustering in sustainability, impact, relationships of power, etc.

Modification of ICT in response to instabilities and livelihoods and risk reduction are also approaches to consider.

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: what about the non-commercial dimension of ICT micro-enterprises that, like many telecentres do, they also provide a meeting place and other social components? A: It surely can be translated as part of the niche strategies that they design [Definitely :)]

Richard Sleight: how can other organizations be involved in micro-entrepreneurship? A: that is a difficult to answer question. Probably joining clusters, influencing regulation… but it is surely an open question.

Richard Sleight: does it make a difference if the micro-enterprise is the main/sole source of income or if it’s just a part of the income sources? A: There certainly are strategies and tactics to reduce risk and diversify their business models, so it is just possible that different models bring different research results.

Top 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D fails
Clint Rogers

Adaptation of video for Tele Echography
Alejandro Tovar de Dueñas

A solution to provide tele-diagnosis to be used for people in remote areas, be them rural areas, a ship in the middle of the sea, etc. A solution that makes video imags from any echography device to be reachable real-time anywhere desired.

The requirements are very high: quality has to be good enough to enable a correct diagnosis, but the constrains are also many, amongst many the quality of the connectivity. Special installations are avoided, so once the video is captured, it is streamed through the net by a streaming server, and any client can access the signal without the need of any kind of software installation, just a web browser.

A key issue is how to capture the maximum frame rate possible with a midrange PC for the possible VGA modes.

Discussion

Alejandra Pimentel: Are there any network requirements? A: Any network that supports IP protocols and 300Kbps of bandwidth.

Mazhar Ali: What about security in the transmission of sensitive data? A: Access to the video, though free, can be made private by creating accounts both on the streaming server and the client side.

Ugo Vallauri: Could the video be saved instead of streamed, and sent asynchronously afterwards by e-mail or any other way? A: It could be very easy to do to even establish a procedure where the patient is told to follow some simple instructions and send the video their physician.

Development of a real-time digital wireless tele-stethoscope for isolated rural areas in the developing world
Ignacio Foche

Why real time telemedicine instead of store-and-forward:

• More knowledge about patient’s status.
• Local health personnel less qualified.
• BUT: Higher costs for telecommunication infrastructures.

So, the goal of this project is to lower the costs of infrastructures while being able to provide real time telemedicine. But this is no easy problem to solve: the quality needed to send good information valid for diagnosis is very high. This puts a lot of stress both in the sound card and the bandwidth (or pay highest costs or have landlines). Thus, both hardware and software had to be developed to create a capturing device, to digitize and amplify the signal, to send the signal and to retrieve/represent it.

Further research implies substituting the PC with a smartphone, make all the operations through a website, design a stethoscope-oriented software CODEC, thinking in how to apply it in disaster situations, or automatic support and diagnosis.

Discussion

Christopher Foch: has there been any research on how the patients feel for not having their physician face-to-face with them? What about physicians, being “substituted” by a device? A: in general, even if people prefer face-to-face interaction, the departure point is no diagnosis at all, so it is not about substitution, but about provision. Besides, some physicians have stated that, technically, they’d rather have this digital stethoscope, as it allows amplification, which sometimes is very beneficial.

Biniam Goshu Meknonnen: What if the network fails? A: The device won’t work because it was designed for a real-time interaction, but it could certainly be modified to work in a store-and-forward mode.

Soraya Hidalgo: what’s the cost of it all? A: It adds 120€ to the total cost of a new stethoscope (circa +20%) and, of course, a PC connected to the Internet is needed.

netWORKS: Open Source Software to visualize and analyze networks of human development. Center for Development Cooperation, BarcelonaTECH. With the collaboration of Information Works
Lucas Pardo

netWORKS is a data warehouse to help to visualize development cooperation projects. The aim behind this visualization tool is to optimize the resources used to evaluate and sponsor projects (e.g. at a development cooperation agency) and also to visualize the networks that explicitly or implicitly form when different organizations work in development projects.

netWORKS, the tool, is free, and Information Works, the company behind it, is working to get funding to implement it in development cooperation agencies or any other kind of organization working for development.

The tool enables the user to quickly identify the most relevant actors in one field or in one place. It also helps in identifying points of intersection between two or more organizations or between two or more fields of work. It is actually easy to see what organizations are relate one to each other, which one is a key node or a hub that many others work with, which projects are related in a way that they cover similar issues and could end teaming up and working together, etc.

A good exercise to do is analyzing personal networks: searching for a contact, the visualization shows who is a central person but also what people are strongly related amongst them so that they form a team or an active and close community. It also will show who is only slightly connected to that community — through one or two nodes — and would benefit from a closer and broader relationship with the rest of the members of that community.

The tool can also help in finding out the best contact, how diversified or specialized is a person. It can indeed help to find or to decide how to choose a non-existing profile: by performing complex queries, it is possible to cross data from projects, people and topics and find out, within the database, who would be the best candidate to lead the next project.

Using Affordable Technology for Digital Storytelling in Rural Africa
Marcus Duveskog

A workshop was developed to educate on HIV and AIDS issues. The workshop was designed as a game, combining storytelling with HCG gaming concepts. The workshop used a platform that was collectively designed on a participatory design basis, and was used with XO-1 laptops.

The course run on 10 sessions in several weeks, with 11-15 y.o. children in Tanzania, and its theme was dreams, figuring out ambitions and interests of children, and figuring out the treats in reaching goals/dreams. Children were asked to come up with strategies to overcome potential life challenges.

Some of the threats were death of parents, keeping the health, not being able to get school fees, bad performance at school, becoming a prostitute, etc.

The workshop consisted in sharing the dream, sharing the challenges, one of them related to HIV and friendship and another one related to choosing a life partner/marriage.

The “HIV” challenge was about how will being infected with HIV affect reaching one’s goals, interaction with their peers (family, friends, etc.), having a life partner/marriage, etc.

More information about the workshop can be found at http://www.cs.joensuu.fi/games/ukombozi/.

The workshop succeeded in enabling students to use the technology in creative and expressive ways. It was good that everything started from the student, and that the whole story came from them, as the conclusions on HIV/AIDS became more legitimate as they came from their peers.

Discussion

Vanessa Frías-Martinez: can the workshop scale? can other schools implement it? A: The workshop is being modellized (publication forthcoming) and should provide some guidelines on how to reuse it, thought the project the workshop is part of does not plan to repeat it anywhere else.

Ugo Vallauri: did the workshop depend heavily to the technological solution chosen? A: It does not seem that the kids felt they were tied to a specific solution, but used it in a very natural way.

Development, Capabilities and Technology – an Evaluative Framework
Mathias Hatakka

What is the development potential of Open Content and Internet Resources? But… what is development? And how can we measure it?

There are several evaluation frameworks that aim at measuring development, but they usually are complex and hard to be put into practice. Besides, many frameworks are more about enabling development rather than development itself: enabling of freedoms, removal of barriers to such freedoms, etc. That is, indeed, the core of Amartya Sen‘s Capability Approach.

Some of the problems of the Capability Approach Framework is that it does not take into account the role of technology, the importance of context, and the difference amongst potential functionings and achieved functionings. Enabling something does not mean that people actually choose to do something.

A proposed framework would link initial intervention with a capability set of potential functionings (intended and unintended) that would open up a choice. This choice would determine actual achieved functionings restricted by some conversion factors (personal, social, environmental). Indeed, Conversion Factors both affect the capability set and the achieved functionings.

The framework is being tested in the Bangladesh Virtual Classroom, where e-learning is provided through mobile phones. And the test has shown that the technological part of the project works perfectly, and that the main problems come from the Conversion Factors.

As concluding remarks, it can be said that the framework can be used for planning and evaluation of projects; it definitely shows the importance of context, and that bottom-up is needed. The problem with the framework is that it is very difficult to capture capabilities and make them part of the scheme.

Discussion

Christopher Foster: how can the different factors be integrated, how can the individualist approach turn into a collective approach and vice-versa? A: It is not solved: so far, the framework looks very much into the context and some individualities scape at its scope.

Virtual realities on the periphery: towards an anthropology of e-learning and Development
Izak Van Zyl

In South Saharan Africa there have been a few e-learning ventures — Khanya, MELISSA, Life Project — to strengthen educational capacity and encourage grassroots participation. But can we really measure the adoption or the impact of such programmes? How do we perform a social synthesis of this context? What are the narratives, the experiences?

The research will have an anthropological perspective of the previous ventures, incorporating other case studies (RE-ACT, PICTURE) and will hence perform an ethnography.

Argument: in interacting through digital media as a sociocultural practice, communities have begun to fashion “virtual realities” with have been significant in configuring modern forms of identity, participation, collective belonging, etc.

The dissertation will argue for an inclusive practical framework in which to adopt e-learning design, particularly given peripheral virtual realities, being the aim to localise social and cultural paradigms at the heart of ICT4D: an anthropology of e-learning and development.

Discussion

Tim Unwin suggests exploring e-learning literature to frame the research.

Ismael Peña-López suggests exploring distance learning, web 2.0 ethnographic studies and storytelling.

MLearning: an Inclusive Approach
Alamdar Khan

The MKFC learning model is based on Opit LMS plus online social and communication networks. The reason to use the mobile to provide e-learning is because most students live in remote rural areas of Pakistan, have scarce access to the Internet, but the penetration of mobile phones is very high.

The research will focus on collaboration, ubiquitousness, efficiency and quality of education. The goal will be to see how an hybrid learning model can enhance interactivity, inclusiveness, flexibility and accessibility.

The methodology will be based on a two-part online survey to the students: an online questionnaire and skype meetings and interviews.

Discussion

Matti Tedre: if one of the results of the research is to build a model of m-learning for development, will it be a technological model? a pedagogical model? a financial model? The suggestion is that the research should be focusing on just one of these and not try to catch all. A: The project is just a part of a whole programme where a multidisciplinary team is covering all the different aspects.

Heli Haapkyla: How is it that the pedagogical model is based on mobiles, but the researcher explains that there’ll be a social networking site component that will take place online. A: This is the general model, now used in Sweden and the idea is that it can also be applied in Pakistan in a hybrid model (SMS + online where available).

Ismael Peña-López: How is it that we assess an m-Learning project and the questionnaire and interviews are on a web survey or via VoIP? A: The project has actually partnered with local schools that have Internet access, and they are collaborating in all the stages of the research, including assessment and online surveys and interviews.

Telco Industry Research in ICTD: Telefónica R&D, mobiles and development
Vanessa Frías-Martinez

ICT4D research and private sector research in ICT4D

We have witnessed an evolution in ICT research and ICT4D research. During the 50s, there was ICT research without the ‘D’. It was mainly about governments using computers and measuring their impact. During the mid 90s, governments and NGOs began to use intensivelly ICTs to foster development; we saw the raise of telecentres, PCs and landlines and research around these topics. Lastly, in the mid 2005s, the private sector enters the arena of ICT4D research.

What are the roles of actors in ICT4D?:

• Governments: incentive packages to accelerate actors’ involvement; access to population at large and infrastructures.
• Private sector: R&D in hardware, software, services, infrastructures to innovate or adapt technology to new uses and users; access to customers base.
• NGOs & Intl. organizations, academia: access and understanding of local population and their needs.

Some examples:

• Intel PC Classmate: Intel developed a cheap laptop adapted to kids and which came with (not free) educational software also developed within the project. To provide connectivity, partnerships were established with public internet providers.
• Nokia Life Tools: C1 and C2 cheap cell phones with an adapted software that cna provide agriculture information, educational content, etc. Again, public-private partnerships are crucial to localize content, etc.
• Ineveneo analyses standard solutions in the market and does research on how to adapt them to developing countries.
• M-Pesa used the GSM mobile network to turn it into a mobile banking network.

Contributions so far:

• Hardware: adapted hardware lowering costs or setting up new specific features, etc.
• Software: adapting content in local language, new specific needs for specific users, etc.
• Content, services: new specific content and services that make full sense indeveloping countries, after analysing their needs, context, etc.

ICT4D research at Telefónica I+D

At Telefónica I+D, instead of developing new hardware or software, the focus is put on behaviour: as technology usage leaves a large trace of data behind, it is possible to perform quantitative analysis with the huge usage databases available. This quantitative analysis will come to complement many other qualitative researches that are often the ones taking place in developing countries.

In the case of Telefónica, 66% of their customers are mobile users in developing countries, thus their research will be a quantitative one and focused in mobile phones.

Telefónica stores data from each and every call, anonymized, encrypted and always with an opt-out option, so they can be used for research but very difficultly for other unfair purposes.

Data are mainly used for two main purposes:

1. To improve the service, through usage analysis and pattern recognition.
2. To provide policy recommendations, by combining data on mobile usage with micro- and macro-economic indicators.

There are, of course some limitations: the representativeness of the sample; the kind of usage (work, personal, etc.) of the mobile phone; the importance of plans or prices; the impact in data and pattern recognition of mobile phone sharing (though mobile sharing is not as usual in Latin America as it is in Africa); etc.

Gender and mobile phones project

Goal: to understand gender-related differences in mobile usage.

Data: behavioural variablesw (number of calls, duration, expenses), social variables (degree of the social network, weight of the contacts, frequency of communications), mobility variables (diameter of mobility, diameter of social network).

The characterization of the results showed that, in general, women (in comparison to men) make/get more out/in-coming calls, make the calls longer, expend more, and have a higher out-degree and weight of their social networks.

Causality tests proved to be less conclusive than characterizations, thus why there is a need to gather more data and define better algorithms.

Socio-economic indicators and cellphones

Goal: to understand the relationship between socio-economic indicators and the usage of mobile phones.

Own data are combined with national statistical institutes’ data.

It is possible, for instance, to know where a telephone is operated by asking the communications tower that handles the call. And this can be compared with geographical data that locates people and wealth indices. Now, we can test the relationships between wealth and telephone usage in a specific geographical area (location of usage is made through towers and not data from billing because only 10% of the users are on contract, being the rest of them users of pre-paid SIM cards).

Research question: does education level influence the SMS/voice/MMS behaviour? does socio-economic levels influence levels of usage or expense? etc.

Mobility patterns

By asking the communication towers we can tell where a phone call was made and, hence, how a calling person moved around while using their mobile phone (side note: 90% of people spent most of the time in just two places).

This can be combined and see where the social network of a person is located, what is the area of influence of a specific user, etc.

Research question: what is the impact of government epidemic alerts in the mobility of people? Can we trace through mobile phones whether people are more likely to stay at home if the government says that there is a high risk of contamination of H1N1 Flu?

The “areas of influence” were modelled during each of these three stages and changes of mobility patterns were looked for.

Results show that 80% of the population only reduced their mobility once in stage 2, but not during stage 1 (medical alert). This shows that the medical alert does not work, but that more interventional approaches (closing common infrastructures) does work, though it is also true that there is a side effect of increased mobility of people visiting other infrastructures (e.g. leisure ones).

Another research that related mobility patterns and urban planning showed that people spend much more time in (and move to) places that are along underground lines.

Discussion

Pablo Arribas: what is the influence of education in mobile phone usage and the other way round? A: It is difficult to find causality with the data available (CDR, or call data records), so we should stay at the correlation or relationship levels.

Marije Geldof: how can you trust the data that comes from third parties (i.e. national statistics institutes)? A: Normally these are official data are validated at the international level, methodologies agreed, etc.

Ugo Vallauri: is data shared or available between companies? A: companies are on their way to share it, but not yet.

Christopher Foster: will these data be publicly available? A: protocols are being set up so that researchers can be visitors at Telefónica’s research centres.

Ismael Peña-López: if Telefónica reaches a quasi-monopolistic situation in a given country, could that influence users behaviours and thus “corrupt” the data set? A: yep, perfectly possible.

e‐Government in the Global South: machine politics as usual?
Ramlal Satyan

Machine politics: electoral/democratic competition and exchange of (in)tangible services for electoral support; political inerference in the bureaucracy; intermnediaries between state and clients; gatekeeping and information hoarding.

The starting point of the research is that politics shapes e-government: there are political incentives and policy outcomes in technology use, and thus technology becomes not neutral.

The fact that poor people rely on intermediaries only aggravates this problem. The expectations are that poor people need to maintain good/cordial relationships with intermediaries, and that these leverage over bureaucracy and telecentres, telecentres are being captured by intermediaries, having these the ability to hoard information and maintain monopolies (gatekeeping).

Some open research problems: no difference might arise; clientelism encompasses more than just (a set of) services; choice of location and e-gov services; telecentres are a form of extra mediation; methods: within cases over time, or between cases?; training in network analysis.

Ward Berenschot Riot politics: communal violence and state society mediation in Gujarat, India.

ICT for accountability, transparency and participation
Johan Hellström

In the last year, of all the national elections in Africa, only one was considered fair in its process: Ghana. In the meanwhile, many people have lost their right to information. Is there a field in ICT for Governance? can we narrow into ICT4 transparency? ICT4 Democracy?

The project is to use crowdsourcing tools to monitor 2011 national Ghana elections.

Do we have a theoretical framework?

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: I suggest some lines to explore: (1) Knowledge Gap Theory; (2) the debate on whether direct democracy might actually worsen democracy, because it will get people out of the system due to the high costs of being an active citizen; (3) talking to Evgeny Morozov and Ethan Zuckerman; (4) consulting data from the Freedom on the Net index and the OpenNet Initiative (ONI).

Standardization and Regulatory Challenges in the implementation of e‐Government in Ethiopia
Jorro Yigezu Balcha

The development of ICT infrastructure, literacy rate, lack of commitment from leaders, human resources, development issues, political instabilities, legal and standardization issues, etc. are mentioned as the major challenges in the implementation of e-government services. Ethiopia is no exception in this aspect.

Among others, there are dire standardization challenges: local language issue, the process itself of standardization, lack of trained manpower in the area, enforcement of the standards, coordination of major stakeholders, etc.

Regulatory challenges: Manpower issues, lack of legislatures to support the service, enforcement.

The stakeholders that are involved in the process of standardization and preparation of legal framework don’t have equal sense about the importance and urgency of the standards and legal frameworks and their approval and enforcement.

Observing the EHAS-URJC case: symbiosis among ICT4D projects, research and postgraduate teaching
Javier Simó

The EHAS Foundation and ICT4D

How can telecommunications help in development? Who benefits from our technology? Is technology neutral? What and which are the real needs?

Let’s be humble and rigorous. Let’s address one only problem and keep working on it for decades, improving and improving… let’s do as much as possible to make telemedicine to be a useful and sustainable development tool for isolated rural areas in Latin America. This is the aim of EHAS Foundation.

The first thing that was done was a problem tree. Then, communication networks were conceived in order to try and solve the different (communication) problems identified. And, over those networks, create, adapt or improve applications to provide medical services. Everything was to be done with a local partner, always.

A core aim has always been sharing and transferring knowledge, learning together.

EHAS usually works in isolated areas, without any kind (or definitely expensive as satellite) of communications infrastructure, and with snail-mail based services. Thus, the idea is to set up broadband appropriate technologies over which run common services.

The Napo Network, for instance, covers 500Km in the Amazon region, from Iquitos to the border between Peru and Equador, and links several primary healthcare centres and healthcare workers.

How is practice, research and teaching in ICT4D put together?

In a first stage, some “just development – no research” solutions are put into practice. They are based in narrow-band communications, with adapted sets of standard solutions. The problem is that these solutions, though technically sexy (e.g. send e-mail via VHF radio) are often unsustainable: they are too difficult to implement, and difficult to use.

On the other end there’s the possibility to wait until ubiquitous solutions brind all common services everywhere. Which, besides illusory, provides little interest.

The solution is low-cost appropriate technology that requires lots of research and development. Good results are only possible after long-term research and high investments.

But once the network is built, the network itself becomes a laboratory: it permits to evaluate technology, improve strategies for sustainability, a shared infrastructure for several purposes, a platform over which to develop new services (tele-stethoscopy, health info-systems, tele-microscopy), etc. Lots of research subjects arise once the technology is put at work.

After 12 years working this way — development, research, development, research, etc. — it was time to share formally, so here came the URJC’s M.Sc. in Telecommunication Networks for Developing Countries. The master provides an excellent framework where M.Sc. theses can be done.