In the run-up to this year’s UN General Assembly, the Office of the DG of the UN Office in Geneva has launched a novel initiative on big conversations driving the big goals of the SDGs as part of their Perception Change Project. The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D is delighted to have been invited to participate in this initiative, alongside other leading figures in the ICT4D world including Houlin Zhao (SG of the ITU, and one of our Honorary Patrons), Kathy Calvin (President and CEIO, UN Foundation), and Nicholas Negroponte (Founder MIT Media Lab).
Our stories are about the question “What are the biggest hopes and challenges we face in providing reliable ICT access to communities as we work towards improved sustainable development?”
This was my response:
Seeing the eyes of a group of street children in Ethiopia light up when I let them play with my laptop in February 2002 convinced me in an instant of the potential of technology to be used effectively for learning by some of the poorest people in the world. However, the plethora of global initiatives that have been designed to use ICTs to contribute to reducing poverty through economic growth over the last 15 years have had the consequence of dramatically increasing inequality at the same time. The poorest and most marginalised have not benefited sufficiently from the promise of ICTs.
Few people pay appropriate attention to the dark side of technology, and yet we must understand this, and change it, if this potential is fully to be realised for all. In the context of the SDGs, there is a fundamental challenge. To be sure ICTs can contribute to the achievement of the SDGs, but few people sufficiently highlight their unsustainability: ICTs have seriously negative environmental impacts, and their usual business model is built on a fundamentally unsustainable logic. In terms of environmental impact, for example, they have contributed to substantially increased electricity demand, and the amount of waste in space is now presenting very serious threats to future satellite deployment. The business model, whereby people are encouraged to replace their mobile phones every couple of years, and new hardware often requires the next generation of software, which in turn then requires new hardware, is good for business, but not for sustainability.
If we are serious about using ICTs for sustainable development, we must do much more to address negative aspects such as these, so that the poorest individuals, communities and countries can indeed benefit.
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Members of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D are delighted to be participating in the 
Following an opening by Professor Gloria Agyemang (Head of the School of Management at Royal Holloway, University of London), keynotes were given by Hans Bressers (University if Twente), Diane Holt (University of Essex), Shaun McCarthy (Action Sustainability), Joseph Sarkis (Foisie Business School, Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Tim Unwin (UNESCO Chair in ICT4D), and Natalia Yakovleva (Newcastle University). Joseph Sarkis and Tim Unwin both focused specifically on ICTs, sustainability and the SDGS, highlighting both the positive and more problematic aspects of the relationships between technology and sustainable development.
To coincide with the recent publication of Tim Unwin’s new book entitled 
Members of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D participated in the 
It also enabled us to engage in the kick-off meeting of the 
The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D featured prominently at the ITU’s 
This was an opportunity for me to explore the relevance to the European context of some of my ideas about ICTs and inequality gleaned from research and practice in Africa and Asia. In essence, my argument was that we need to balance the economic growth agenda with much greater focus on using ICTs to reduce inequalities if we are truly to use ICTs to support greater European integration. To do this, I concluded by suggesting that we need to concentrate on seven key actions:
The ITU is preparing a new book, provisionally to be entitled “ICT4SDGs: Economic Growth, Innovation and
I have been invited to lead on a 6,000 word chapter, provisionally entitled “Sustainability in Development: Critical Elements” that has an initial summary as follows: “the chapter identifies how ICTs engage with the sustainability agenda and the various elements of the ecosystem (such as: education, finance/capital, infrastructure, policy, market, culture/environment, opportunities) and the stakeholders that are indispensable for ensuring resilient and sustainable development activities in developing countries in spite of some chronic shortages coupled with fast changing and fluid situations that can negatively hamper the efforts”.
ICT4D Collective 