It’s Sunday – time for a big post! A few days ago I posted a couple of things about Negroponte’s $100 laptop. One of the things that I mentioned was the common criticism, which extends to ICTs for development in general, that there are more pressing problems in developing countries than the lack of ICTs. This got me thinking about how we justify the ICT4D agenda and sent me back to the Millennium Declaration in a quest for answers. What follows is a fairly lengthy analysis of the Millennium Declaration, what it says about ICTs for development and how this relates to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). What it boils down to is that the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs do make it clear that ICTs should be leveraged in whatever way possible to facilitate development efforts. But, to get a complete picture of how they are to do this and what are the intended outcomes, we have to look beyond both the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs. Click below to read on…
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It’s fairly widely recognized that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important for developing countries, although there are always a few who differ in their opinions. One of the primary defining documents for current development efforts is the UN’s Millennium Declaration (UNMD) on which the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are based. What I want to do here is to analyze the UNMD to determine what it actually says, or suggests, regarding ICTs and development, and especially, education. As I’ve mentioned in the past, documents of this nature are sometimes criticized for being rather vague in terms of their descriptive and prescriptive function. This is not entirely a fair criticism because these types of documents need to be regarded as living documents that can continue to serve their function even though the issues that they aim to address change over time. Therefore what is perceived as vagueness or ambiguity, is better described as a necessary openness to allow for different interpretations in a rapidly changing world.
The primary aim of the UNMD, as stated in the document itself, is to acknowledge globalization and promote it in a positive light. It is claimed that the central challenge for development is to ensure that the benefits of globalization are evenly shared and distributed. The implications of these claims are that development efforts must focus on the need to create a shared future and that this requires that policies and measures that affect the global population must correspond to the needs of all, especially developing countries.
So what is the view of globalization that is being promoted here? Well, the UNMD doesn’t tell us that, but I think we do have to be clear about it. Obviously, globalization means different things to different people at different times. But, in a general sense, I would say that what we refer to as globalization concerns the increasing interconnectedness of social institutions due to growth in international trade and internationalization of production processes, fueled by the increased speed at which information is transferred across the world. The key words here are “interconnectedness”, “international trade and production processes”, and “information”. Hence, globalization is an economic trend that transcends borders by making use of information technologies. If we accept this definition, I don’t see how we can discuss globalization, as it presents itself today, without acknowledging the central importance of ICTs to the concept itself. So, we see, right at the outset, that although ICTs are have not been explicitly mentioned yet, they are of central importance to the primary aims of the UNMD.
ICTs are not mentioned in the UNMD until in section 20, and then only in a very vague context. There it is stated that we need “To ensure that the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication technologies, in conformity with recommendations contained in the ECOSOC 2000 Ministerial Declaration (ECOSOC2K), are available to all.” Hence, ICTs should be available to all, but to find out why, we have to look at the ECOSOC2K. This is important, because, while the UNMD is vague about the purpose of ICTs, the ECOSOC2K is not. It specifically address the relationship between ICTs, the knowledge-based economy and development as is made quite clear in the subtitle of the document, “Development and international cooperation in the twenty-first century: the role of information technology in the context of a knowledge-based global economy.” Paragraph 2. clarifies this position, where it states that “… [ICTs] are central to the creation of the emerging global knowledge-based economy and can play an important role in accelerating growth, in promoting sustainable development and eradicating poverty in developing countries as well as countries with economies in transition and in facilitating their effective integration into the global economy.”
The ECOSOC2K goes on to make a very good case for ICTs for development in terms of capacity building and providing opportunities for change. Furthermore, it associates goals with economical prospects that are consistent with a global society that values all kinds of knowledge. It places great emphasis on the importance of harnessing the potential of ICTs in education to increase human and institutional capacity to access, utilize and generate knowledge. This is seen as necessary to create a conducive environment for participation in international markets. What is especially interesting about these recommendations, is that these last few points are stated in general terms and may be taken to apply equally to developed and developing countries. Though this is not explicitly stated, we can surmise that it is the authors’ belief that the goals being promoted are of equal value to everyone. That is to say, that developed countries will benefit from the inclusion of developing countries in the knowledge-based society, not only the other way around, because we are creating an “emerging global knowledge-based economy” that requires input from diverse sources.
The overall language of ECOSOC2K and how the knowledge-based economy is construed, suggests certain approaches to education. The knowledge-based economy is considered to be based on widespread generation and utilization of knowledge. The goal then for human resource development is to strengthen “… the production, acquisition, absorption and dissemination of knowledge products.” Integration in the knowledge-based economy is therefore based on specific processes, with which we can associate certain key skills:
knowledge production: the ability to use and generate knowledge,
knowledge acquisition: the ability to locate and evaluate relevant knowledge,
knowledge absorption: the ability to learn from others’ knowledge,
knowledge dissemination: the ability to produce reflections of one’s own knowledge, i.e. information, to share with others for their learning benefit (see here for why I say “reflections of knowledge”).
It would be absurd to deny the importance of literacy and computer skills, and it is by no means my intention to do so. What I wish to highlight is that this view of the knowledge-based economy suggests additional skills that are central to the need for “capacity building” and a “conducive environment” described in the ECOSOC2K. These are the skills that are not necessarily directly related to the use of ICTs, but are indirectly related, and necessary, as they constitute the key skills related to an ICT driven knowledge-based economy. Hence, the justification for ICTs in development education is clear – these are the tools that define the knowledge-based economy, just as machines were the tools that defined the industrial age. But it is not enough that people are able to use the tools, they have to be able to use them in a way that is consistent with the values of the society that they are meant to serve. In this instance, that means being able to engage in knowledge work and to be able to use ICTs to maximize the outcomes of that work.
It is very clear that this is the thinking behind the ECOSOC2K. Since the UNMD references the ECOSOC2K to clarify the role of ICTs in development efforts, the cultivation of skills related to the knowledge-based economy are encompassed by the MDGs. Since ICTs are only mentioned in target 7 of goal 8, which states, “In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies – especially information and communications technologies”, we have to assume that this goal is related to section 20 of the UNMD, and therefore, further defined by the ECOSOC2K. The alternative is to concede that this important section of the UNMD simply didn’t make it into the MDGs. In any case, it is clearly stated in the UNMD and therefore a concrete resolution of the UN General Assembly, and I think that WSIS was intended to illustrate the development community’s commitment to ICTs for development.
This interpretation raises the question of whether efforts to monitor and measure the impact of initiatives related to the UNMD and the MDGs are measuring what has been outlined above, i.e. the promotion of skills related to the knowledge-based economy. There are some good examples, such as infoDev’s “Monitoring and evaluation of ICT in education projects”, which includes an excellent chapter on indicators that specifically discusses the “Learning of “21st century
