Upcoming events

11 December 2020: Sophie Vos and Hella Schaefers will present at the IFIPJW conference the Food Security Project "Sustainability and Ethics by Design". On 15 December 2020 at 13h CET: Anna Bon will defend her PhD thesis "Intervention or Collaboration? Redesigning Information and Communication Technologies for Development" in the Aula of Maastricht University.

Proceedings Workshop DigDiv DigHum now available

On Tuesday 7 July 2020 the WebSci’20 Workshop: Digital (In)Equality, Digital Inclusion, Digital Humanism took place, this year, a virtual event. The workshop moderators were Hans Akkermans, Victor de Boer and Anna Bon. Keynote speakers: Mirjam de Bruijn, Richard Heeks and Leen Zevenbergen. See all papers at: ACM WebSci'20 DigDivDigHum Workshop Final Proceedings: [PDF].

Recent events

26 November at 10h CET, Sophie Vos and Hella Schaefers present their paper about Sustainability & Ethics by Design at the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute. 18 November at 13.30 - Guest lecture by Anna Bon at the VU bachelor course: Global Prosperity & Development. 7 July 2020 - Workshop Digital (In)Equality, Digital Inclusion and Digital Humanism (DigDivDigHum), was collocated at the WebScience Conference. 30 March - 31 May: the ICT4D course at VU, this year virtually due to Corona. 7 February 2020 VU meets Rijks I-Ecosysteem. 9, 10 January 2020: General meeting at UDS Campus, Tamale, Ghana. 13 - 18 January 2020: Workshop in Bamako with farmers from AOPP about the Seed value chain.

Intervention or Collaboration?

9 August 2019 - the second edition of the book: Intervention or Collaboration ? Rethinking ICT4D, by Anna Bon has been published.

W4RA and Bolesian: AI4good

W4RA started a strategic partnership in AI4good, Bolesian’s expertise in artificial intelligence can contribute to the W4RA’s mission to support farmer-managed regreening activities specifically by enhancing information, communication and knowledge sharing for rural development. W4RA and Bolesian are working on various projects related to ICT4D: from detection of tree loss in rural Mali to digital storytelling in rural Ghana. To be continued...

W4RA and AOPP perform analysis of emerging Seed Value Chain in rural Mali

AOPP is a farmer organization in Mali, with more than 250 member farmer cooperatives, and a footprint in the whole of the country. VU and AOPP have worked together since 2011 to help improve the food security situation in Mali, in the effort to this with sustainable agro-ecological innovations. Essential is the information exchange in the valule chain, for a performing market.
Participative, collaborative information analysis workshops are done, to elicit the tacit knowledge which is necessary for selforganization of the network. This project started in February 2019 and will be carried out in the coming months.

W4RA events

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The Web alliance for Regreening in Africa

Although the Internet offers a wealth of information, and the World Wide Web has become today's paradigm of information and knowledge sharing on the planet, it is still inaccessible to the illiterate and to most rural communities. Moreover, most websites offering information about Africa are written in English, French, and other European languages. Few, however, contain relevant content information in local African languages. Furthermore, the Web is only accessible with an Internet connection, which most rural households do not have, relying instead on radio and mobile phones for communication. These are all important obstacles to overcome. But we believe this is possible to achieve - due to today's advanced ICT technologies and the local and international technical-scientific expertise present in the W4RA collaboration program.

Watch the W4RA films

The Web of Voices – documentary

Contact

W4RA – Web alliance for Regreening in Africa

visiting address:

The Network Institute
VU University Amsterdam
De Boelelaan 1081
1081 HV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

phone + 31 20 5989074

Chair of W4RA:
Prof. Dr. J.M. (Hans) Akkermans

For more info about W4RA, please send a message to:

Anna Bon – a.bon@vu.nl
or
Wendelien Tuyp – w.tuijp@vu.nl