Siying Zhang’s master research was about how to design a participatory Covid-19 app. The events of this year 2020, have more than ever demonstrated the link between social networks and the spread of infectious diseases. No one can deny that opportunities are offered by the digitized society to prevent and control a contagious virus. However, […]
Over the past decades information system developers and knowledge engineers in ICT projects in wealthy regions of the world have come to realize that technical work can only be successful when situated in a broader organizational context. However, for low-resource environments (such as for example rural Africa), where contextual embedding is even more demanding given […]
19 June 2019 — Mathieu Ouedraogo, president of Réseau MARP, NGO in Burkina Faso and long-term team member and partner of W4RA and VU Amsterdam, has won the prestigious Land for Life Award, issued by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). We congratulate Mathieu with all his achievements, over many decades, to support […]
In the framework of the W4RA research program to tackle Global Challenges and bridge the Digital Divide, five students Information Science set out to map the contours of digital exclusion within our own urban, wealthy, and highly connected context. Carlbandro Edoga and Marc Hegeman examined the obstacles homeless people face in urban areas of the […]
AOPP and the W4RA team will continue collaboration on the topic of Food Security in rural Mali, focusing on the information and knowledge sharing, which is necessary to improve value chains for seeds. This project is made possible through a recent grant from Nuffic in the OKP NFP-TMT-RC program, for which we are very thankful. […]
The annual project-based field course “ICT for Development In The Field” will be given this year for the second time, coordinated by VU together with UNIMAS, the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. This course offers master students Information Science, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence a unique experience, as it involves close collaboration with local rural and often […]
For several decades ICT4D practitioners over the world — funded by international development donor agencies or private funds — have tried to empower disadvantaged communities by providing them with ICT solutions. However, this has not not always worked out successfully. Often, technologies have been deployed for the “poor” without knowing their needs or assessing their […]
In recent years, critical research literature in ICT4D has grown. It is widely accepted that theory is to inform practice. However, the inverse directionality, practice informs theory, is much less present in ICT4D, including in critical research. In this paper, we discuss ways how ICT4D research and theory may be better informed by practice — […]
