Tim Unwin visited Cape Town between 23rd and 30th August to carry forward our work led by Maria Rosa Lorini with migrants in South Africa as part of the MIDEQ Hub. This visit focused especially on dissemination, monitoring and evaluation, and training skills, but it also provided an excellent opportunity to work with other colleagues in MIDEQ from the South African lead team at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and also the work package on creative resistance and well-being from the University of Glasgow
We held two workshops at the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town with the group of migrants who have been trained in video production and in the safe, wise and secure use of digtital tech through our MIDEQ intervention. The first of these concentrated on ways through which these videos can be disseminated more widely, as well as the importance of rigorous monitoring and evaluation for us to understand the impact of these videos. Key ideas to emerge from the workshop were: that it is better to produce something of, say, 60% quality, rather than aiming to produce something of 95% quality but failing to deliver anything; the ways that short videos on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok can be used to direct other migrants to their Fusion Avenue videos on YouTube; and the need for individuals in any loosely knit organisation to take responsibility for some aspect of its work. We also explored the top five tips on Instagram success that Michelle Carlin had suggested.
The migrants had recently held a training workshop on safe, wise and secure use of digital tech for other migrants at Rugby, and so our second workshop was to draw out lessons from this and provide them with additional advice on how to train others. This involved them in delivering short training segments and having feedback from each other on what went well and what aspects they might try to improve.
As part of our dissemination strategy and in order to help make our work sustainable beyond the duration of funding from the UKRI GCRF, we also used the opportunity to have very productive practical discussions with organisations working at the interface between migration and digital tech about ways through which the migrants’ skills in video production could be used to make further videos for these organisations in the future. Among the organisations with whom we explored future collaboration on a range of modalities are the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town, the Adonis Musati Project, the University of Cape Town’s Refugee Rights Unit, Cape Town TV, Phillipi TV, Africa Unite, Ubunthu-Betu in Samora Machel and JL Zwane in Gugulethu.
Finally, this visit provided an excellent opportunity to work together with colleagues from other work packages within MIDEQ, namely our South African country lead team ked by Dr. Faisal Garba at UCT, and Dr. Gameli Tordzro from the Univeristy of Glasgow. Gameli is a highly engaging and charismatic artist and musican whose research is in creative arts and translating cultures, language and education with a focus on African diaspora music, video film production, story and storytelling. He was in Cape Town working with about 25 migrants at Africa Unite to weave a story in words, music and culture about the experiences of African migrants, and it was truly humbling to watch them develop their very moving collective story and performance.
As of 1st August 2023, the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at Royal Holloway, University of London has reverted to its original identity as the ICT4D Collective. We are a group of very diverse researchers and practitioners from across the world, bound together by our commitment to the highest possible quality of research-practice relating to the use of digital technologies in the interests of the world’s poorest and most marginalised people.
Our last engagement as members of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D: meeting staff and students at the NIC’s ICT and Electronics Innovation Lab in Pokhara, Nepal, July 2023
The Collective and the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D
The original ICT4D Collective was created in 2004, and evolved through an agreement in 2007 between UNESCO and Royal Holloway, University of London into the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development). UNESCO Chairs are groups of researchers in specific institutions undertaking work of direct relevance to UNESCO’s fields of competence, and they promote “international inter-university cooperation and networking to enhance institutional capacities through knowledge sharing and collaborative work”. Members of our UNESCO Chair have been very proud to have been associated with UNESCO for the last 16 years, and to have collaborated closely with many good friends in UNESCO’s Paris headquarters and field offices. We were also honoured that Houlin Zhao, the Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) between January 2015 and January 2023, and Jean Philbert Nsengimana, former Minister of Youth and Information and Communication Technology (MYICT) from Rwanda, were our Honorary Patrons.
The following are some of the things we have particularly enjoyed engaging in over the last 16 years:
Working together collegially in a truly multidisciplinary context, involving colleagues from Computer Science, Geography, Information Security, Law and Managament at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Creating one of the largest groups of postgraduates completing PhDs in the field of ICT4D during the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Crafting an extensive partnership network involving governments, the private sector and civil society, and sharing the lessons we have learnt about making partnerships successful.
Contributing our experiences in global discussions around the role of digital tech in international development, especially in the UN’s WSIS process (since its origins in 2003), and UNESCO’s many gatherings relating to education and technology.
Working on the ground in support of diverse groups of marginalised people, especially those with disabilities, out of school youth, women in patriarchal societies, and migrants and refugees.
We are now re-energised as the ICT4D Collective, with 22 founding members drawn from 13 countries – we welcome new members who share our aims and principles. Quick links to our research and practice are available below:
See also the ICT4D Facebook Group which we established in 2007 and now has >5,500 members
An exciting future…
We all look forward to continuing the work started by the original ICT4D Collective almost 20 years ago, although we remain very sad that the new leadership team at Royal Holloway, University of London did not see value in the institution continuing to have a UNESCO Chair. Perhaps we represented voices from the past; perhaps we have been too critical and anarchic; perhaps we have just been honest and spoken truth to power. Whatever the reason, we will continue to have fun working together, we will continue to challenge the status quo, we will continue to point out the many harms caused by the use of digital tech, and we will continue to work with and support the world’s poorest and most marginalised peoples.
Particiants on the DESC walk photographes beneath the statue of Rousseau as the sun sets
The Digital Environment System Coalition (DESC) convened two sessions (403 and 204) on 16th and 18th March at this year’s WSIS Annual Forum held in Geneva. The first was a walk which we believe to be the first ever such event held during a WSIS annual forum, and the second was a more traditional session within the cavernous CIGG. Both sessions were convened by the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at Royal Hollloway, University of London which provides the Secretariat to DESC, in association with INIT (the Inter-Islamic Network on IT), the WWRF (Wireless World Research Forum), ICT4D.AT, and RC-DISC (the Research Cluster for Digital Inequality and Social Change at the University of Canberra).
Experiencing digital environment interactions in the “place” of Geneva (Session 403): the DESC Walk
We experience things differently when we walk, when we talk together, and when we interact with the real physical environment. We feel the fresh air on our faces, smell the vegetation, hear the noise of running water, and touch the rough rocks on the slopes. We interact differently with each other. We pause and contemplate where we are. Our minds engage in ways that are so, so different from when we sit in large conference halls.
This DESC walk provided an opportunity for participants (i) to share their own research and practice relating to the interactions between digital tech and the environment, (ii) to discuss the positive and negative impacts of digital tech specifically on the biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and lithosphere, and (iii) to make recommendations concerning the further development of YouthDESC. In essence, individual participants brought the group to a halt at locations that they felt were most appropriate for them along the walk and shared information about themselves and their research/practice, and we also stopped at five pre-planned locations to discuss each of the main themes as a group. Moderators of each main stop sought to encourage the participants to highlight three positive and three native interactions between digital tech and the environment.
Parc Mon Repos – the biosphere (led by Paul Spiesberger). Issues discussed included the positives of being able to share nature through digital images, use of remote sensed imagery to monitor the biosphere, and the use of digital tech to enhance agricultural production. Negatives included digital pollution of plants and green spaces, potentially adverse effects on human health (including mental health), and increased urban exploitation of rural environments through digital tech.
Poste Filial – YouthDESC (led by Tasfia Rahman). This began with a visit inside the building to discover the ways through which it is now necessary to use virtual/digital systems to post a physical/real card. We also recognized the important links between postal communication in the past and digital communication at present. The Instagram account of @YouthDESC was discussed, alongside the pros and cons of different social media platforms for engaging youth
Pont des Bergues – the hydrosphere (led by Ahmed Imran). It was recognised that unlike the biosphere and lithosphere, the impact of digital tech on the hydrosphere is less immediately visible. However, negatives include the impact of deep sea mining for rare earth minerals, and the heating of water in cooling systems. The use of water warmed by the heat produced by servers was, though, also seen as a benefit.
Ile Rousseau – the atmosphere (led by Zumana Imran). Beneath the feet of the philosopher Rousseau, our thoughts turned to the atmosphere above us, and focused on the positives of the use of satellites for monitoring environmental change and enabling communication in isolated places, whilst also recognizing the harms of treating outer space as we used to treat the oceans (global commons), the impact on dark space, and space junk. It was also recognised that different cultures have differing views about the environment, and we must engage with indigenous communities.
Auditoire de Calvin – the lithosphere (led by Tim Unwin). As dusk came upon us, few people remained to walk up the steps to the Cathedral and Auditoire de Calvin, but we nevertheless discussed the impact of mining for minerals used in digital tech, the impact of waste especially in landfill, and also the potential benefits in land management.
Scenes from the DESC walk in Geneva, 16 March 2023
Reimagining the Interface between Digital Tech and the Physical Environment (Session 204)
This formal workshop session had three main aims:
to share an updated overview of DESC’s emerging model that challenges much existing work being undertaken on digital tech and climate change;
to provide an update on its ongoing activities since WSIS 2022; and
to do this in a lively and interactive way.
Official ITU photograph from WSIS Session 204
The session was structured as follows:
Introduction to DESC, highlighting the need to adopt a holistic approach focusing on the interaction between digital technologies and the totality of the physical environment (including the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere – see diagram below) rather than just climate change. Indeed, a focus primarily on human-induced climate change is likely to lead to seriously adverse impacts on other dimensions of the physical environment.
Summaries of the key points of discussion explored during the DESC walk (WSIS Session 403) the previous day, presented by the five discussion moderators (including the YouthDESC session).
Highlights of two examples from the activities of DESC’s Working Groups emphasizing why these issues matter:
The indigenous DESC Working Group (Poline Bala’s sliodes were presented by Tim Unwin). This highlighted that indigenous peoples are insufficiently represented at events such as WSIS, and that they can contribute significantly to new ways of addressing the interface between digital tech and the physical environment
A video presentation by James Crabbe on the importance of omics for informing policy on deep sea mining.
This was followed by an introduction to the toolkit being developed by DESC for all those who have pledged to the ITU-led Partner2Connect initiative to enable them to consider and address the environmental impact of their proposed interventions.
The final element was a lively discussion around the issues raised, that included new commitments from participants to explore collaboration on implementing the DESC toolkit
DESC in Geneva
The general consensus from both sessions was that they were enjoyable and informative – and that DESC should offer to convene another walk in 2024 when we can delve once again into both the positive and negative impacts of the design and use of digital tech on the environment.
The session, which aligned especially with SDG10 and WSIS Action Lines C3, C4, C5, C7(iii, iv,v), C8 and C10, was structured around our digital interventions from Nepal and South Africa using a series of short-form videos ‘created by migrants for migrants’ as a framing device for the discussion. The contributions highlighted many inequalities faced by migrants and how digital tech can meaningfully address them as well as how digital tech can support personal life choices, offer networking opportunities, and become a peer-to-peer learning tool. The overarching theme was the need for all actors at the interface of digital tech and migration to be mindful of the need to ensure the safe, secure and wise use of digital tech by migrants.
Despite increasing evidence of the challenges to the beneficial use of digital tech by vulnerable migrants, actors such as tech companies, international and local organisations continue to design technologies aimed at migrants without due regard to their unintended consequences. International organisations and fora such as WSIS that are at the forefront of digital inclusion must recognise not just the opportunities offered by digital tech for migrants but also the risks and harms associated with them. This is especially important given the pervasive structural inequalities and limited digital capabilities that characterise many migrant contexts.
WP9 co-lead Prof G Hari Harindranath led the session with Prof Tim Unwin and Dr Maria Rosa Lorini while Bryce Hartley from GSMA (online) and Julien Varlin from ILO Geneva served as discussants. The highly interactive hybrid session was attended by senior government officials and representatives from international organisations, CSOs and tech companies as well as researchers.
We also used the in-person WSIS Forum in beautiful Geneva as an opportunity to discuss pathways to impact for our work with colleagues at IOM and ILO.
Hari Harindranath and Tim Unwin with migrants, migrant organisations and tech organisations in Kathmandu, January 2023
The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D leads Work Package 9 within the MIDEQ Hub (funded by UKRI GCRF) on technology, inequality and migration. This is explicitly an intervention package, designed to draw on research across the Hub to bring migrants, migrant organisations and tech developers together to craft practical interventions that can benefit their lives and reduce inequalities associated with migration. We have been working with NISER, our lead partner in Nepal, since 2019 undertaking research on how migrants already use digital tech (see our working papers), and building on this work Prof “Hari” Harindranath and Dr. Maria Rosa Lorini visited Nepal in September 2020 to initiate our intervention activities. Migrants identified two main areas where they felt that interventions could make a significant difference: appropriate training in the uses of safe, wise and secure digital tech, and creating a platform or portal as a digital one-stop-shop that would bring together the most important sources of information for Nepali migrants and ther families.
Hari returned to Nepal with Tim Unwin in January-February 2023 to convene workshops (on 28 and 29 January, and 3rd February) and meetings to take forward the implementation of these two interventions. Good progress was made in the following areas (further details here):
Designing the content structure for the platform, and setting in motion the work of the content team and the tech team who are going to take forward the digital one-stop-shop with a Beta version planned for May 2023.
Running a pilot workshop in Kathmandu for migrants based on the slide deck developed with migrant organisations over the previous couple of months. This was well received, with helpful comments having been suggested for improvement.
Running another workshop in Pokhara for students and staff from a Migrant Resouce Centre, which recommended that we need to develop a more basic introduction to the wise, safe and secure use of digital tech for those who have negligible prior knowledge of digital tech.
This visit to Nepal also provided the valuable opportunity to have a very productive visit to colleagues in the UNESCO Office in Kathmandu (30 January), to sign a partnership agreement and discuss collaborative research-practice with Gandaki University in Pokhara (1-2 February), to meet with tech companies including Hamro Patro and Ncell (3 February), to explore collaboration with government initiatives through the Foreign Employment Board (31 January), to engage with colleagues at the National Innovation Centre (31 January), and to meet with fellow researchers working in the field of digital tech and migration (see images below).
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who attended our workshops, and who contributed to this work. We are also grateful to the staff at the Hotel Himalaya, Lalitpur and the Landmark Hotel in Pokhara for facilitating our stay and meetings – and would recommend both for anyone visiting Kathmandu and Pokhara respectively.
The MoU provides the basis for extensive collaboration between the two research groups, focusing particularly on:
Research collaboration
Workshop and conference convening
Research visits and exchanges, especially for early career researchers
Collaborative grant applications
Implementation of practices to reduce digital inequalities
Policy recommendations
This closely reflects the University of Canberra’s interests in developing research in the field of ICT4D, building its transnational networks, and increasing its reputation in digital inequality research and practice, while also reinforcing the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D’s commitment to crafting partnerships with cognate bodies, developing new ways to reduce digital inequalities, and developing collaborative research activities. It will also provide opportunities to build closer collaboration between colleagues from other disciplines in both institutions.
ISDISC was a hybrid event held at the Univeristy of Canberra and brought together researchers and practitioners from diverse disciplines across Australia, with many virtual contributions also coming from elsewhere in the world.
The International Symposium on Digital Inequalities and Social Change being opened by the Executive Dean of the Univeristy of Canberra’s Faculty of Science and Technology, Prof. Janine Deakin, with Dr. Ahmed Imran in attendance.Participants at the ISDISC conference held at the University of Canberra, 28th-29th March 2022
Tim Unwin’s keynote address at ISDISC on Marginalisation and empowerment: exploring digital inequalities is available here.
ICT4D Collective 