Richard Heeks on ICT4D 2.0

July 24th, 2008 Tags: BOP, ICTD Posted in News 1 Comment »

Richard Heek’s article, ICT4D 2.0 – The Next Phase of Applying ICT for International Development, in the June 2008 (Vol. 41, No. 6) issue of IEEE’s Computer presents a coherent trajectory of the history and evolution of ICT4D and then casts into the emerging challenges and possibilities for the next development phase.

There is no sharp dividing line that lets us say, “ICT4D 1.0 stopped here; ICT4D 2.0 began here.” On the ground, there is a sense of evolution, not discontinuity. And yet … something messy, fuzzy but new, is emerging. It makes sense to see what happens if we give this a label.

The shift from ICT4D 1.0 to 2.0 is assessed from different perspectives (content, interaction, services and production) with Heeks then situating initiatitves into three categories of pro, para and per-poor efforts. Pro-poor innovations dervive from outside of the targetted communities but are undertaken on behalf of the poor; para-poor initiatives are undertaken alongside poor communities; and per-poor efforts mark innovations around processes, new products and business models that are devised by the poor with reference to their own self-defined needs and wants (for good examples of this last, see for the Abaporu Project website).

We have seen that ICT4D 2.0 focuses on reframing the poor. Where ICT4D 1.0 marginalized them, allowing a supply-driven focus, ICT4D 2.0 centralizes them, creating a demand-driven focus. Where ICT4D 1.0 – fortified by the “bottom of the pyramid” concept – characterized the poor largely as passive consumers, ICT4D 2.0 sees them as active producers and innovators.

This article is from a special issue of Computer dedicated to Information and Communication Technologies for Development. Click here for the Table of Contents.
Click here to download the Introduction to the special issue by guest editors Kentaro Toyama and M. Bernadine Dias.