Category: SDGs

What migrants want: digital tech, inequality and migration’ – MIDEQ WP9 convenes thematic workshop at WSIS 2023, Geneva.

Following the success of our online thematic workshop held during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 2022 meeting, the MIDEQ WP9 (digital tech, inequality and migration) team convened a hybrid thematic workshop at the WSIS Annual Forum 2023 in Geneva on 17th March examining ‘what migrants want’ in relation to the use of digital technologies as opposed to the numerous apps that are supposedly designed for them. Building on our ongoing research (see https://ict4d.org.uk/technology-inequality-and-migration/ and https://www.mideq.org/en/themes/digital-technologies-and-inequality/), we explored how co-design with migrants can help craft digital interventions that can usefully address migrant-defined inequalities.

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.

Prof G. ‘Hari’ Harindranath

20/3/2023

#KindnessMatters: exciting new initiative by UNESCO’s MGIEP

Members of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D are delighted to support this exciting new initiative – #KindnessMatters – by our colleagues at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP). This aims to mobilize the world’s youth to achieve the 17 SDGs through transformative acts of kindness. The campaign attempts to create a positive culture of kindness, in which every young person’s selfless act matters!

As the UNESCO MGIEP says,

“Kindness is not defined by lofty stories, it exists all around us and needs to be celebrated at every moment of life because #KindnessMatters every day. We’re celebrating K3: kindness for self, others and nature, and invite you to share with us a simple act of kindness that you performed today – gave yourself some rest from daily routine, watered the plants, donated some blankets for a cause, or called your family. This exercise will take less than 30 seconds and will make you a part of our global kindness community. So, won’t you help us make the world a kinder place?”

To share an act of kindness, all you have to do is complete a simple form that looks like this:

It won’t take long, and by so doing you can help contribute to their Global Youth Campaign. This is intended to help mobilize United Nations Member States to declare an International Decade on Acts of Kindness.

What is an act of kindness according to the MGIEP?

An Act of Kindness by any person is a generous, intentional gesture or action towards another person, being, or the environment. These acts may range in scale and impact, such as organizing a beach clean-up, working on clean energy projects, campaigning against gender inequality or violent extremism, or mobilizing a community drive to save an endangered species.

Get involved!

If you wish to find out more about how you can get involved, contact youth.mgiep@unesco.org

Do join us in supporting this important initiative, and encourage all the young people you know to share an act of kindness.

Participating in MIDEQ’s Executive Group meeting and training programme, Nairobi, 22-30 September 2019

The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D is leading the work package on the interface between digital technologies and migration within the UKRI-GCRF South-South Migration Hub, now known by the shortened name MIDEQ.  Hari Harindranath and Tim Unwin were therefore delighted to participate actively in the Hub’s Executive Group meeting on 23-24 September in Nairobi, followed by numerous meetings with the corridor leads and other work package teams, as well as participating in and leading some of the training sessions held from 26th September to 1st October.  As well as discussing important issues around our progress so far, communications strategy, governance, operations and migration survey, the evening of 24th September included a digital launch event followed by dinner and story telling, led by Tawona Sitholé, around a campfire.  The week of meetings provided an invaluable opportunity to get to know the many partners and new researchers in the Hub.  We are all now in a much better position to start engaging in field research together once the inception phase is over.  Hari and Tim are especially eager to get involved on the ground working with colleagues in the China-Ghana, Ethiopia-South Africa, Haiti-Brazil, and Nepal-Malaysia corridors.  The pictures below provide just a glimpse of the diversity and energy of the gathering…

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Many thanks are due to all of the colleagues who worked so hard to put the programme together and helped to ensure that it was a success.

The opportunity for Hari and Tim to be in Nairobi also provided a great chance to catch up with old friends in the city and make new contacts of wider interest to the work of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D.  We would like to say especial thanks to them for making the time to meet up and exchange ideas about the uses of digital technologies in Kenya and beyond.  We also spent a magical half-day escaping to the Natiional Park near the airport in Nairobi (see some of our pictures here)!

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The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at ITU’s Telecom World 2019 in Budapest

This year’s Telecom World event convened by the ITU and hosted by the Hungarian Government from 9th-12th September in Budapest was one of the most interesting and useful such events in recent years.  The Forum programme contained many thought provoking presentations and discussions, and the government’s hospitality was generous, featuring an inspiring musical evening and a drone display over the Danube.  There was also a very diverse exhibition, with particularly impressive displays from China about the Digital Silk Road.

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David Banes speaking at ITU Telecom World

The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D was delighted to participate in and contribute to several sessions.  In particular, David Banes was a speaker in an important session on Accessibility matters: dismantling the barriers of disability with technology on 12th September.  This session noted that technology can enable better access to health, education, government services and the job market for all those affected by disabilities, but also asked  what more can be done, in both emerging and developed markets? It explored how existing solutions can be scaled and adapted, and sought to identify whether there is  a business case for digital inclusion solutions?

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Tim Unwin moderating AI and gender session (Source: ITU)

Our Chairholder (Tim Unwin) also moderated two sessions, on Diversity by design: mitigating gender bias in AI and the launch of the ITU-CISCO Digital Transformation Center Initiative, as well as speaking in the Huawei sponsored session on Fixed wireless technology for affordable broadband development.  These provided a good opportunity to highlight the work of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D and also our TEQtogether initiative changing men’s attitudes to women in technology.

Inception meeting of UKRI GCRF South-South Migration Hub in Ghana

The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, represented by Dr. Hari Harindranath and Tim Unwin, is excited to be participating in the inception meeting of the UKRI GCRF South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub, being held at the spacious University of Ghana Campus in Legon.  The multidisciplinary Hub, led by Professor Heaven Crawley from the University of Coventry, is committed to “doing development research” in new and different ways, and this inception meeting is living true to that aim – with the first morning being illuminated by music, art and poetry, as well as lively discussion.

The first day is focusing on how the more than forty partners will work together as well as getting to know those colleagues leading on the various corridors and work packages.  The second day will focus on issues such as research ethics, the baseline survey and our communication strategy, and the entire final day will be devoted to safeguarding issues.

We hope that the pictures below catch something of the diversity, energy and expertise of those participating in this fun-packed gathering.  The dancing starts later…

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The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at EQUALS Research Group meeting in Macau

EQUALS is a global initiative committed to achieving gender equality in the digital age.  5Its founding partners are the ITU, UN Women, UNU Computing and Society (UNU-CS) institute, the International Trade Centre, and the GSMA, and Royal Holloway, University of London, is one of the first group of 25 partners for the initiative.  We were delighted that the Principal of Royal Holloway, Professor Paul Layzell, was able to attend the first Principal’s meeting in New York during the UNGA in September 2017 (image to the right).  There are three Coalitions within EQUALS, for Skills (led by GIZ and UNESCO), Access (led by the GSMA) and Leadership (led by the ITC), and these are supported by a Research Group, led by the UNU-CS.  The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D has been very active across all areas of EQUALS’ work since its original conception during the discussions held at the WSIS Forum in May 2016, and has been particularly involved in contributing to the work of the Skills Coalition.

The first face-to-face physical (rather than virtual) meeting of the Research Group was convened by the UNU-CS in Macau from 5th-6th December (official press release), and it was great that the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D could be represented by both Liz Quaglia and Tim Unwin at this meeting.  This week’s gathering brought together researchers and policymakers from 21 organizations around the world. It established the group’s research agenda, drafted its work plan for 2018, and finalized the content and schedule of its inaugural report due to be published in mid-2018.  In particular, it provided a good opportunity for researchers to help shape the Coalitions’ thinking around gender and equality in the three areas of skills, access and leadership, and also to identify ways through which they could contribute new research to enable the coalitions to be evidence-led in their activities.

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Huge thanks are due to Araba Sey, who convened the meeting with amazing enthusiasm, insight and professionalism, and all of the other staff at UNU-CS who contributed so much to the meeting.  It was a great occasion when some of the world’s leading researchers in gender and ICTs could meet together, not only to discuss EQUALS, but also to explore other areas of related research, and to build the trust and openness necessary to increase gender equality both in the field of ICTs, and also through the ways that ICTs influence every aspect of people’s lives.

SDG Stories: UNESCO Chair contributing on sustainability of ICT systems

e_sdg-goals_icons-individual-rgb-09In 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.

Follow the stories at: http://www.sdgstories.com, or on Twitter using #sdgstories.

The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at Telecom World, 2016, Bangkok

teamThe UNESCO Chair in ICT4D featured prominently at the ITU’s Telecom World 2016 held in Bangkok from 13th-17th November, and was a partner of the ITU’s parallel Kaleidoscope academic conference held on the theme of ICTs for a Sustainable World.  Three PhD alumni took an active part in the event: Salma Abbasi (Chairperson and CEO of the e Worldwide Group) who participated especially in connection with her ongoing work on ICTs for development in Nigeria; Sammia Poveda (UNU Computing and Society), who represented UNU-CS primarily in several gender-related events, especially the EQUALS working meeting and the joint session on the gender dimension in international standardization; and Caitlin Bentley (Research Associate at the Singapore Internet Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University) who represented both her present Centre and the UNESCO Chair at Kaleidoscope.

Other activities where the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D was represented included:

  • The ITU Secretary General’s consultation with academia on 13th November, which considered the possible launch of a new ITU journal, an advisory board of academia to the Secretary General, and a platform to strengthen cooperation between the ITU and academia (the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D’s written contributions)
  • The m-Powering Development Advisory Board meeting held on 13th November

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This was a great opportunity for colleagues in the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D to engage in discussions with those in government, the private sector, civil society and international organisations and to influence policy on ways through which ICTs can contribute to development, especially for some of the world’s poorest and most marginalised.  We are most grateful to colleagues at the ITU for making this possible, and for inviting our participation at ITU Telecom World 2016.

Thanks to the ITU’s official photographer for most of the above images!

Making money from meeting the SDGs? An overarching approach to sustainable development

I am delighted to have been asked to moderate the session on “Making money from meeting the SDGs?” at ITU Telecom World in Bangkok on Monday 14th November (4:45 PM – 6:00 PM, Jupiter 10), although I wonder a little why I have been chosen for this task given my past criticisms of the SDGs!  Perhaps the “?” in the session title will give me a little freedom to explore some of the many challenges and complexities in this theme.  Following in the footsteps of the Millennium Development Goals (2000), the globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) still generally focus on the idea that economic growth will eliminate poverty; indeed, they assert that poverty can truly be ended.  This is a myth, and a dangerous one. For those who define poverty in a relative sense, poverty will always be with us.  It can certainly be reduced, but never ended.   It is therefore good to see the SDGs also focusing on social inclusion, with SDG 10 explicitly addressing inequality.  We need to pay much more attention to ways through which ICTs can thus reduce inequality, rather than primarily focusing on their contribution to economic growth, which has often actually led to increasing inequality.

This session will explore the implications of such tensions specifically for the role of ICT businesses in delivering the SDGs.  Key questions to be examined include:

  • How can the ICT sector contribute to accelerating the achievement of the SDGs by providing ICT-enabled solutions and building feasible business models?
  • Is the SDG agenda relevant for the ICT industry?
  • What roles should the ICT industry, and its corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments in particular, play in working towards the SDGs?
  • Can the SDG framework provide an opportunity to accelerate transformative ICT-enabled solutions around new solutions like big data or IoT?

Underlying these are difficult issues about the ethics of making money from development, and the extent to which the ICT sector is indeed sustainable.  All too often, the private sector, governments and even civil society are now using the idea of “development” to build their ICT interests, rather than actually using ICTs to contribute to development understood as reducing inequalities; we increasingly have “development for ICTs” (D4ICT) rather than “ICTs for development” (ICT4D).  To be sure, businesses have a fundamentally important role in contributing to economic growth, but there is still little agreement, for example, on how best to deliver connectivity to the poorest and most marginalized, so that inequality can be reduced. As my forthcoming book argues, we need to reclaim ICTs truly for development in the interests of the poorest and most marginalized.

We have a great panel with whom to explore these difficult questions.  Following opening remarks by Chaesub Lee (Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU), we will dive straight into addressing the above questions with the following panelists (listed in alphabetical order of first names):

  • Astrid Tuminez (Senior Director, Government Affairs. Microsoft)
  • Lawrence Yanovitch (President of GSMA Foundation)
  • Luis Neves (Chairman Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), and Climate Change and Sustainability Officer, Executive Vice President, at Deutsche Telekom Group)
  • Mai Oldgard (Head of Sustainability, Telenor)
  • Tomas Lamanauskas (Group Director Public Policy, VimpelCom).

Magic happens when people from different backgrounds are brought together to discuss challenging issues.  This session will therefore not have any formal presentations, but will instead seek to engage the panelists in discussion amongst themselves and with the audience.  We will generate new ideas that participants will be able to take away and apply in their everyday practices.  Looking forward to seeing you on the Monday afternoon of Telecom World in Bangkok!