It seems like we had just written about Bridge International the other day and the dangers of locking whole educational systems into for-profit industries and their paint by number pedagogies and school in a box systems. And here we are again as Uganda’s education minister just announced that the government is closing 63 schools at sites operated by the Bridge International Academies (BIA) due to national standards being ignored and the “life and safety” of some 12,000 children were endangered because of poor hygiene and sanitation.” Yes, they do have educational standards (even a teacher training curriculum!) in Uganda and they are not for you to ignore, Bridge. I am looking for corroborating reports or further detail about what the poor hygiene and sanitation refers to, but I can’t imagine it is positive.
Read MoreFrom Jubilation to Condemnation: Kenya's Digital Literacy Programme - Top Tips for Success
In April 2013, the Uhuru Kenyatta government, also referred to as the Jubilee Coalition, announced plans to realize a campaign promise to provide every Kenyan child with a solar laptop. The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) promise was initially met with “jubilation.” Yet, by the time the Uhuru government marked 100 days in office, a growing chorus of condemnation directed at the initiative had emerged in the blogosphere, and in online and print newspapers. Fast forward three years and multiple failed tenders later and the laptops have been turned into tablets and they have finally arrived after being manufactured in China. Hooray?!
Read MoreA load of trash.......A brief look at e-waste
Recently I watched two non-ICT4D related, but fascinating documentaries: Cowspiracy – a film exposing the impact of humans’ consumption or animal products on the environment; and The True Cost – discusses the effects of fast fashion on the developing nations that the western world outsources production to. First of all, I would encourage anyone to watch the two films. As with all documentaries, they are not without bias, however, they present some interesting data and facts that are not often discussed or debated in mainstream media – and they should be.
Read MoreTerrorism, Facebook and media ethics: 'do no harm’?
Regular readers of this blog site will know that the Panoply Digital team are no strangers to adding a touch of the personal to our blog post; we’re a small team who are friends as well as colleagues, and our work will always have a human element because we work in a field we are passionate about and with people we care about. This particular blog post has a deeply human element, more so than other ones I’ve done; I’ve written in the past about my love for Bangladesh and my deep connections there, and so last month’s terror attack in Dhaka cut very deeply. My partner and I knew some of the victims personally; others were friends, family and colleagues of people we know. It’s also been a month of trying to reconcile the Bangladesh I know and love with this new side of Bangladesh that I don’t recognise - and indeed, the vast majority of Bangladeshis don’t recognise either; everyone I have spoken to is deeply and profoundly shocked, to their very core. Without wanting to sound glib about such a terrible event, one of the things that I have been musing on in this past month is the role that social media, and particularly Facebook, played in the attack.
Read MoreBaking the divide into the (mobile) design: South Korea and Tanzania and home-grown technology
A rather belated post for the week but I just returned from the UK where I defended my thesis at University College London on mobile learning in higher education. In that defense, I was critiqued on a whole range of issues but one question that particularly stuck was how would I know (mobile) learning if I were to see it. What does it look like, particularly in a mobile context? How do we know it when we see it and how does it render differently in different regions? How do we design for it?
Read MoreThe one about Brexit
Whilst we don’t really know the full extent of the outcome of Brexit yet, a lot has come to the surface about its impact on foreign aid. Not least of the all the devaluation of the pound reducing the value of aid by roughly $1.9 billion, with the combined cost of loss to developing countries through aid, trade and remittances estimated to be $3.8 billion.
Read MoreWhy 2016 Could Be a Turning Point for Youth Employment in Kenya - And the Role of ICTs
With all of the very disappointing news that has happened in the past month globally, I thought I'd write about a topic that is something to cheer: 2016 is shaping up to be a turning point for youth employment in Kenya.
Read MoreICT4D and Micro and Small Enterprises
In my final months before moving on from the GSMA to start-up Panoply Digital, I had been working closely with Ronda Zelezny-Green and Ernst & Young scoping out new areas of programmatic focus for M4D under the umbrella ‘Economic Inclusion’. The mandate was to identify innovative ways that technology could be used to enable inclusive and productive participation in the digital economy for micro and small enterprises (MSMEs).
Read MoreTeaching Coding to Kids: Caveats and Initiatives from Africa and Asia
Teaching coding to children is, if press reports are to be believed, an educational imperative, some sort of literacy that children can’t live without in the 21st century. We see initiatives throughout the world in the UK (with the express goal of creating a ‘code-literate’ society), the EU, and elsewhere, all presenting the imperative of CODE.org that “leaders and trend-setters all agree on one thing.” Coding=core literacy.
Read MoreDigital Bangladesh? Are we really connecting the unconnected?
Work-wise, our team at Panoply Digital is working on two mobile services aimed at women in Bangladesh: one with South Africa-based Praekelt Foundation, the Girl Effect and BRAC, and the other with BBC Media Action Bangladesh. So we’ve been looking again at the more recent evidence around mobile and mobile Internet in Bangladesh. Who are the haves and the have-nots?
Read MoreJune 2016 London ICT4D Meetup: Smart Cities Workshop - (Future) Solutions for the UK & Beyond
Resilience. Urban Expansion. Internet of Things. Climate Change. Green Energy. Big Data. Sustainability. Inclusion.
These are all buzzwords associated with the Smart Cities concept, but what do they all mean and what is the relevance to ICT4D? Please join us at the London ICT4D Meetup on Tuesday 28 June 2016 at 6:30pm at the GSMA HQ to find out more. We're even hosting an IoT Design Workshop you will not want to miss!
Read MoreCareer Post: Transitioning to Tech - How It Worked for Me
When I tell most people that my first profession was in the field of education, I am often greeted with disbelief. Questions such as “How did you go from teaching to technology?” often follow the initial shock, and increasingly I am beginning to understand why this happens. Before I discuss these reasons, I will first give a brief overview of my professional background.
Read MoreAdolescent Girls’ Access to Education in Conflict-Affected Settings: Report and Takeaways
In this post, I wanted to pick up on some of the excellent review offered by Melanne Verveer and draw some further attention to the recent report titled “Closing the Gap: Adolescent Girls’ Access to Education in Conflict-Affected Settings” from the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. The report itself is well worth a read as it provides a necessary context for truly understanding the scale of the problem and why current efforts are falling short.
Read More3 great reasons to attend the ICT4D London Meetup on 31st May
Panoply Digital’s Lauren Dawes and Ronda Zelezny-Green are co-organisers of the London ICT4D group, which organizes regular events and ICT4D meetups for London’s ICT4D and digital development community. This month's event, held at the GSMA office on Tuesday 31st May, is a pretty special one - and we have three great reasons for you to attend.
Something is different....
If this is not your first visit here, you might notice something different. And for those who are coming here for the first time, let me save you the suspense, Panoply Digital have had a website makeover. With much thanks to our colleague Michael Gallagher who has worked tirelessly on the transition, we have refreshed our look and feel and also built up our ever-growing portfolio of work. The past 12 months have been incredibly busy for us here at Panoply Digital
Read MoreWoman in Mobile Spotlight: Amone Gbedemah
In my last Woman in Mobile Spotlight, I featured an edtech teacherpreneur who has devoted the past few years to making mobile learning products with research-based impacts in Ireland and beyond. In this edition, I will share highlights from Amone Gbedemah, a qualified engineer and senior executive in a London-based mobile network operator.
Read MoreNo more pink phones: getting more women in tech
International Girls in ICT Day, organized by the ITU, is an annual event held on the fourth Thursday of every April. This global event aims to raise awareness and highlight the need to empower and encourage girls and young women to consider studies and careers in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). There is a massive gender divide around the numbers of women in tech: women only hold around 17% of jobs in tech companies globally, with numbers of women particularly low at the tech giants like Apple and Microsoft, but also much more exacerbated in emerging markets in parts of Africa and Asia.
Read MoreRhetoric, Neoliberalism, and Edtech in Liberia, Ethiopia, and South Africa
The allure of educational technology in serving those who have remain underserved for so long is tough to resist. It drives us in the educational community towards totalizing terms: the seamless, ubiquitous, and evidence-based results of technological interventions. The end-to-end solution, the driving of test scores, the tables and rankings, the address of the digital divide, the stock photos of children gleaming over tablets in otherwise modest classrooms. I understand why we adopt the neoliberal, totalizing rhetoric put forth by the private community in providing these services. It makes sense. It is a vision, however hollow, of a better future. And it continues to miss the mark. We see evidence of this throughout the developing world (and developed as well) most recently manifest in Liberia as it has been announced that “the entire pre-primary and primary education system would be outsourced to Bridge International Academies to manage.”
Read MoreCare about WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption? Then try these….
With WhatsApp’s recent move to implement end-to-end encryption, the topic of security has received a fresh new injection of debate and discussion. In fact, the team here at Panoply Digital have spoken about the topic in recent weeks here and here. ICTworks have also just posted an excellent article on practical applications for privacy protection and digital security in development here. I have always taken a fairly liberal approach to people’s rights and online security. I supported the mission of WikiLeaks to ‘bring important news and information to the public’ (although perhaps not my fellow Australian’s seemingly narcissistic motivations); I cheered Edward Snowden along (whilst incredulously observing his naivety); I abhorred the NSA spying scandal; and was pleasantly surprised by Apple’s recent stand against the FBI. What I hadn’t spent a lot of time doing however, was securing myself!
Read MoreGender, mobile learning, M&E and ethics: Panoply Digital at the Bond T4D event
This week, Panoply Digital were invited to speak at the Bond Technology for Development group meeting. The Bond T4D group is a London-based group who hold regular meetings and sessions to discuss aspects around ICT4D, including developments, information on emerging trends, and sharing best and worst practices.
Ronda Zelezny-Green and Alexandra Tyers were two of three speakers at this month’s event, speaking about our experiences with gender, mobile learning, international development and research.
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