Enabling Partners — International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD)

Partners in Europe and North America

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Agri-ProFocus is an alliance between Dutch agriculture organisations, banks, NGOs and the Dutch government. It helps producers in developing countries to improve their production and trade capacity. IICD is a member of this alliance.

Dutch company Agriterra is a non-governmental organisation founded by a number of agriculture organisations scuch as the Dutch Federation of Agriculture and Horticulture and the Dutch Foundation of Cooperating Women’s Organisations. They assist IICD in agricultural projects.

Dutch organisation Akvo works together with IICD on water and sanitation projects. In return IICD is identifying and introducing relevant projects to the Akvo matchmaking system and provides usability insight and feedback to the development team.

The French-Dutch IT company Altran offered consultancy to various local partners in Zambia and Tanzania. In Zambia they have helped the Zambian National Blood Transfusion Service (ZNBTS) to set up a reliable information system for blood donors.

The Association for Progressive Communications(APC) is a partner of IICD in the BCO alliance. In its first four years the alliance was coordinated successively by IICD and APC. Furthermore IICD and APC are partners in the ItrainOnline initiative that provides a selection of the best and most relevant computer and Internet training resources for development and social change.

Dutch IT company Atos Origin Learning Solutions developed an online learning tool to help local partners use the online Monitoring and Evaluation system. This system is vital for both IICD and local partners as it helps to gather feedback on the success and failures of ICT-enabled activities.

The Building Communication Opportunities (BCO) Alliance is a partnership of eleven development agencies working on information, communications and development. All of BCO Alliance partners believe that information and communications are of crucial importance in poverty reduction - in enabling the poor to have their say and to get better access to knowledge and other resources.

IICD is a partner in this alliance.

IICD and Bellanet are sharing knowledge and experiences by building on their respective strengths: IICD's country partnerships and capacity development, Bellanet's collaboration tools and knowledge management approaches. IICD and Bellanet cooperate in two thematic networks. Bellanet has also supported IICD in its strategic support to the Bridging the Digital Divide initiative and the DGIS ICT Action Planning process. Bellanet also hosts and develops online knowledge-sharing platforms like iConnect and ItrainOnline.

The Belgian Close the Gap Foundation donates refurbished computers to IICD partners and, if needed, provides them with training on technical maintenance too. In autumn 2008, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with IICD to ship computers to a select number of our partner organisations in Africa. The first shipment of 257 computers was sent to the Ugandan Institute for Information and Communication Technology (UICT) in September 2008. In 2009 Close the Gap and IICD reached another agreement to cooperate to prevent e-waste in Uganda. More than 3000 cost-efficient high-quality used computers from the Netherlands and other European countries are sent to schools in Uganda and computers that are too slow or malfunctioning will be dismantled or recycled.

Dutch development organisation Cordaid has been a partner of IICD since 2002. Cordaid and IICD cooperate in Zambia in Ghana in the livelihoods and health sector. One of the projects Cordaid and IICD cooperate in is a project to develop and implement a computer based Blood Donor Tracking System developed for the staff of the Zambian Blood Transfusion Services (ZBTS). His system will reduce the risks of incorrectly identifying donors and blood units.

The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)and IICD’s partnership emphasises on conducting of workshops, conferences and training seminars in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, as well as the joint production and dissemination of publications relating to the use of ICT within agricultural and rural development. IICD and CTA also collaborate in innovative tools and writing practical manuals together.

The Development Gateway Foundation set up the Accessible Information on Development Activities (AIDA) platform. AIDA is the largest online directory of development activities. This inventory offers a quick overview of who is doing what in international development, where they are doing it, and with what funds. IICD is a knowledge partner is this platform.

The Dutch Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS) is IICD’s founder and principal financier. For over ten years DGIS has been cooperating with IICD to make a change in Development by using Information and Communication Technology.

D-groups was set up in 2002 as an online platform that offers tools and services that bring individuals and organisations together in the international development community. The organisations behind D-groups have formed the D-groups Partnership, of which IICD is a member.

With the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) ActNow Alliance and Avanti Communications, IICD and the Dutch research institute TNO are developing a model for affordable satellite solutions that can be of use in a number of different contexts. The model will be tested by rural hospitals in Mali to improve communication with medical specialists in the academic hospital in Bamako, the capital of Mali.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and IICD are cooperating in the ItrainOnline initiative, an online service tackling challenges faced by the developing world in ICT. A wide range of links are provided through the ItrainOnline portal to guide ICT users in various activities - retrieving information, efficient use of email, development of web pages, building online communities, strategic use of the Internet - designed to overcome knowledge and skills gaps and to bring together people and expertise for development and social change.

In recognition of the dilemma between a potentially powerful set of tools - ICTs - and their failure to reach the majority of the poor in in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries - rural women - CTA, IDRC, IICD and Hivos invite proposals to the GenARDIS Small Grants Fund to support innovative activities that contribute to the understanding of gender issues in ICTs and to the gender-sensitive application of ICTs in ACP agricultural and rural development .

IICD is a member of the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP). GKP brings together organisations from the Public Sector, Private Sector and Civil Society organisations with the goal of Knowledge Sharing and building partnerships. Aim of the GKP is to realise the transformative potential of knowledge, communication and information technologies to improve lives, reduce poverty and empower people.

The Dutch Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (Hivos) and IICD mainly work together in Ecuador and Uganda but also in The Netherlands. The programme in Uganda is aimed towards developing and implementing an e-society model in which local non-governmental organisations and local governments are able to cooperate with one another more efficiently. The programme in Ecuador is aimed at enhancing and increasing the use of ICT among the local partners of Hivos and IICD. The programme in The Netherlands is mainly about organising events and lobbying for integrating ICT in Dutch Development Organisations.

Coming soon.

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) was created by the Parliament of Canada in 1970 to help developing countries to use science and technology to find practical, long-term solutions to the social, economic, and environmental problems they face. Together with CTA, IDRC and IICD set up the GenARDIS small grants to support work on gender-related issues in ICTs for ACP agricultural and rural development. IICD and IDRC are also joined in Dgroups, an online development community portal.

The International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) and IICD are partners in ItrainOnline the online knowledge sharing platform that is IICD’s main platform for capacity development.

Dutch IT service provider Inter Access assists e-governance projects in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia to make governmental information accessible to the public.

The Johan Kooij Fellowship Foundation, supported by Dutch telecom company KPN supports the Global Teenager Project, a project connecting over 8,000 pupils from 32 countries in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East enabling classroom discussions in a safe and structured environment on global issues like HIV / AIDS, climate change and freedom. Every year the Johan Kooij Fellowship meeting is held. This annual meeting brings together GTP coordinators from various countries to look back on the achievements of the past year.

Launched in December 2008 by the Netherlands based Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Search4Dev is the online library for digital publications of Dutch organisations in the international development cooperation sector. KIT invited IICD to join this digital repository as one of the pilot organisations.

The Motorola Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Motorola, Inc, helps support the use of ICT to improve efficiency and quality of the education and business development sectors in seven rural and impoverished urban regions in Zambia. Motorola Ltd. in UK plays a crucial role in the coordination of the partnership.

NComputing Inc., worldwide leader in low-cost computing, supports IICD’s partners, such as youth centres, ministries and indigenous organisations in Burkina Faso, Bolivia and Zambia. It also has provided set ups for the IICD office in the Netherlands. The innovative virtual desktops are also low-energy, allowing multiple people to simultaneously share a single computer.

Oneworld.net is a network organisation working for sustainable development through information and communication technologies. One world is a knowledge sharing partner of IICD and promotes the work of IICD by frequently placing articles about IICD on its website.

OneWorld.nl is the Dutch branch of a network organisation working for sustainable development through information and communication technologies. Together with IICD and Hivos, Oneworld organises Fill The Gap, a free annual network event for ICT and telecom companies, NGOs and everyone with an interest in ICT and development cooperation. Furthermore, IICD and Oneworld work together by promoting each other’s work and sharing knowledge.

Dutch IT-company Ordina provided train-the-trainer courses on Open Source Software together with IICD and the East-African Center for Open Source Software in Uganda.

Partos is the umbrella association for Dutch NGOs in the international development cooperation sector. Its objectives include influencing policy, gaining and distributing information and knowledge, and consolidating a broad range of support among the Dutch public arena. IICD is a member of Partos.

PSO, the Dutch association for capacity development of Dutch NGOs and IICD have a long-standing working relationship. This resulted in an official partnership in 2007 whereby PSO works together with IICD to develop capacity in Education projects in Zambia, governance projects in Ecuador, and health and gender projects in Mali. New in the partnership agreement between PSO and IICD is the allocation of funds for the Learn-Work trajectory. This trajectory strengthens IICD’s capacity to better measure and define the capacity that local partners need in different phases of the project.

The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and IICD cooperate in projects in Tanzania, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Mali and Ecuador. A good example of a cooperation of IICD and SDC is in the Fruilema project in Mali. In this project an information and communication system to identify producers, parcels of land, and product quantities and quality is set up for Malian fruit and vegetable producers. The system helps to meet the stringent requirements (Eurepgap certification) for exporting Malian farm products to international markets.

IICD and SNV Netherlands Development Organisation work together on a Market Access Programme in Uganda called Rural Information Systems. The objective is to contribute to the increase of national incomes by empowering organised farmer groups to access relevant markets and marketing information that will enable them to make informed pricing and bulking decisions as well as providing timely information to the various value chain actors to strengthen the different segments of the selected value chains.

The Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (SPIDER) cooperates with IICD in the E-governance programme in Uganda. The programme, DistrictNet, tries to provide transparency at the local government level and to improve the provision of public information through the implementation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

In Burkina Faso, IICD is working closely with telecentre.org and Burkina NTIC, the national ICT for development network, to support the creation of a national telecentre network. Providing farmers with information on how to improve their crops, parents with information on how to prevent diseases, and teachers with access to badly needed educational materials are just some of the practical ways in which Burkinabe telecentres have been helping the rural communities they serve. IICD and Telecentre.org are also partners in the online knowledge sharing platform ItrainOnline.

TNO, The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, and IICD are developing a model for affordable satellite solutions with support of the European Space Agency (ESA) ActNow Alliance and Avanti Communications. The model can be of use in a number of different contexts. It will be tested by rural hospitals in Mali to improve communication with medical specialists in the academic hospital in Bamako, the capital of Mali.

The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) is a partner of IICD in the ItrainOnline initiative, an online service tackling challenges faced by the developing world in ICT. This initiative was created to help Internet and computer users sharpen their individual skills and play a key role in bridging the knowledge gap. A wide range of links are provided through the ItrainOnline portal to guide ICT users in various activities - retrieving information, efficient use of email, development of web pages, building online communities, strategic use of the Internet - designed to overcome knowledge and skills gaps and to bring together people and expertise for development and social change.

Dutch organisation Warchild invests in the peaceful future of children affected by war. Since the end of 2006 IICD is cooperating with War Child to formulate and (partly) implement the pilot project “ICT in governance in war affected districts”. This project covers three districts in Northern Uganda: Gulu, Kitgum and Lira.

Coming soon.

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