Licencia y el registro sanitario en el MINSA

The default position for many people working in ICT4D is to build centralized solutions to local problems – things that ‘integrate’ and ‘scale’. With little local ownership and engagement, many of these top down approaches fail to appreciate the culture of technology and its users.”

Ken Banks, founder of FrontlineSMS, January 2009.

1. Risk of falling in love with technology

During a brainstorming session at the iHub, organised by M-Prep and BriteSkills162, on the “possible negative impact of technology on teaching”, all sorts of risks and concerns were brought up: risk of technology replacing people (teachers), risk of forgetting the importance of face to face communication, risk of making work longer for the non- technologically savvy and more complicated rather than faster and easier, risk of forgetting the context in which technology is developed. In sum, the risk of falling in love with the technology and forgetting the reason why those services are created in the first place: the people and their socio-economic well being. One would almost think coming into to this “meet-up” that risks were more important than opportunities, however as the meeting went on, the subject was slightly redefined and these risks, after being listed, were considered manageable. The conversation concluded on the fact that technology was there to stay, for the better, not for the worse.

It is not only about scaling up projects; there is first a need focus on people’s needs to make sure technology has a positive impact, and not the contrary, on a country’s socio-economic

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BriteSkills is “a service that allows students and any other persons in need of learning to look for tutors offering unique lessons, reserve lessons and attend them. It brings on one platform many experts on different skills thereby enabling students to learn new skills at affordable rates. (http://www.briteskills.com/)

growth. This can at times prove challenging for the tech community especially since the mobile phone has become an increasingly affordable and available, easy-to-use and socially valorising ICT tool. Indeed, it is difficult to not be enthusiastic about the mobile phone’s and the possibilities afforded by its multiple value added services, but the “hype” around the technology can blur the reality of the African context. The challenge for these ICT entrepreneurs is thus to make sure they take into account the context in which the value added services are deployed and assessing the needs of their targeted customers before finding the solutions.

If Kenya has been so successful in developing mobile value added services, taking full advantage of the mobile boom, it is because ICT entrepreneurs have understood that for their services to be bought, they would need to answer people’s existent needs, providing local information at affordable prices. By integrating those criteria, innovators are making sure that they are creating a service, not only accessible to the largest part of the population but also worth paying for. As the e-learning 2012 report’s survey indicated, people would invest in m- learning services only both the financial value and the educative value of the service were guaranteed. Interestingly, making sure that a service will be used and adopted by the customer naturally limits the risks of using ICT4D inadequately, or “as a justification for projects that wouldn’t be justifiable any other way”.163 It thus could be argued that a mobile service aiming at achieving sustainability, will likely apply a developmental ICT model, and therefore reap socio-economic benefits.

1. The role of civil society

Because, it is not the role of the ICT community to think in development terms – although it has been suggested that ICT projects by providing sustainable models also respond to people’s most urgent needs – non governmental organizations are also there to temper the hype and have an full part to play in realising an inclusive African information society. NGOs oversee and “customise” VAS for developmental purposes. They provide the balance to a market-oriented service industry and help ensure that universal service objectives are pursued by governments. 164 Moreover, they have been tailoring mobile and crowed-based

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R.W Harris, “ICT for Poverty alleviation” 2004:

http://www.apdip.net/publications/iespprimers/ICTs4PovertyAlleviation.pdf

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technologies (e.g. Ushahidi) to improve governance and democracy; aspects we have not explored in this paper, with for example services monitoring social unrest, mobilising voters, disseminating election results or tracking human rights violations.

It has been questioned whether NGOs should be investing in technology devices for development purposes rather than directly in buying drugs or building schools and hospitals. Chowdhury Nuimuddin is right “poor can’t eat high speed internet access”, however nothing says that these two types of investments are mutually exclusive, on the contrary hand in hand they will prove more efficient in promoting growth. As suggested throughout the paper, ICTs alone will not have a great impact on development; but, if it “does not make bad development good, it does make good development better”165, and it is important to invest in ICTs to exploit their added value. Who better than NGOs, collaborating with local business ventures, can make sure that ICTs are used in adequate ways? Again, as Valerie Amos (UN Under- Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief) suggests, coordination is key, between the “structured humanitarian system and the relative loosely organized volunteer and technical communities.”166