Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World (Episode 14) – Nnenna Nwakanma on “Working WITH, not FOR”

This is the fourteenth episode of our podcast based on the vignettes contributed by friends and colleagues to Tim Unwin’s new book Digital Technologies in an Unequal World: An Empancipatory Manfesto. In it, Nnenna Nwakanma tells the story of her experiences having asked to visit a “school that the media has touted as the ‘model’” of good use of digital tech in education in a West African country. As she notes, “I needed to see things for myself, where the rubber hits the road. I also refused any ‘official’ or ‘media-related’ accompaniment”. The vignette reports on the schocks she encountered when she visited. As she concludes “When are we going to stop working FOR stakeholders and start working WITH them?”

The full vignette can be read here.

All audio files relating to the book are also available on our podcast with a new episode every week.

Nnenna from the internet’ is a voice for systemic policy changes for development through open, rights-based and human-centred technology. She is a champion for empowering internet and information access, freedom of expression, open data, open government, and the open web. She was proclaimed as one of the 100 Most Influential Africans of 2021 (Côte d’Ivoire)

Full details of the book are available through the following links:


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Tom is a UN Senior Executive and Chief of Learning Innovation at ITCILO. With global experience in learning innovation, digital transformation, and foresight, he leads impactful programmes on inclusive capacity development. A speaker, strategist, and facilitator, he collaborates worldwide to foster sustainable, tech-enabled solutions for digital inclusion. Full details of the book are available through … Continue reading Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World (Episode 24) – Tom Wambeke on “Beyond the Cable: ‘The embrace of co-designed, plural futures'”
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