Crossing ICT capacity gaps

Poverty - urban or rural - is characterised by the 'lack of empowerment' of poor people to participate in and direct development efforts and a 'lack of voice' by which they can highlight their needs, rights and injustices.

Through 'non-connection' to appropriate information channels, the poor remain unheard and unable to shift the barriers that keep them poor. These barriers are not just about access to information sources (people and technology) nor only about access to relevant and timely information. The poor also often lack the capacities and negotiation skills to engage with formal institutions and to make use of effective media channels. This means access to council offices; to planning meetings, to agricultural research, to legal advice, etc.

Using experiences from Peru, O'Farrell argues that capacity gaps need to be addressed in tandem with the development of infrastructure to provide access to ICTs, and to training in their use and in the production and dissemination of appropriate content for rural communities.

Understanding Existing Information Flows

The assumption underpinning the research is that we need to have a clearer understanding of the existing information and communication systems within rural communities before intervening with new systems. Further, it was expected that projects would benefit from a more inclusive and participatory approach to planning and implementing ICTs related projects with communities. The research concluded that: "the capacity to seek out, call upon and negotiate with support organisations is as much a part of accessing new information as the introduction of technologies."

In Peru, rural information systems were found to be characterized by parochial, familial and social networks, delineated along neighborhood, wealth and gender relations and political and religious affiliations. The internal information flow between people and community based organised (CBOs) tends to be strong within the community but the capacity for these CBOs to communicate and obtain accurate information from external sources of information can generally be described as 'weak'. They suffer from capacity 'gaps' as set out below.

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• Community based organisations have limited knowledge of, and means to call upon, external supporting organisations.
  
  Support organisations, even those based within the local region, were not known to many of the community groups. External support agencies need therefore to engage with communities to raise awareness about the services they offer. For the communities, this also means they are recipients not participants of development assistance, when it comes their way. There are no alternative or corroborative sources of information. In Zimbabwe, although most people were aware of the agricultural extensionist living in the community, few respondents had satisfactory assistance from him, if any at all. The perception was that he favoured the wealthier farmers.
  
  
• Communities lack capacities to negotiate and set the agenda for training programmes and interventions with support organisations
  
  Despite differing literacy levels in both countries with Zimbabwe having much higher literacy levels than Peru, both studies cited the preferred information sources were via 'workshops', field visits or training days. This emphasizes their preference for personal interaction and learning by doing. However, further probing found that training programmes tend to be 'delivered-to' communities without prior consultation. As a result, in Peru for example, three different agricultural organisations (two from the government and one NGO) held training workshops for farmers, often duplicating their subject matter. Yet, despite this, no changes were recorded in farming practice in the recent years. Farmers said this was due to the manner in which the training was delivered, the content was not what they felt they needed and technical language was used. Farmers were reluctant to take risks based on these trainings.
  
  
• Supporting organisations also face capability gaps
  
  In both countries it was found that most supporting organisations were themselves not functioning adequately in respect to their delivery of services and information to the communities they worked with. Staff in the field are often acutely aware of these issues and are keen to enhance their capacities to work with rural communities. Yet, these organisations face constraints in terms of the resources and skills necessary to work more collaboratively with their beneficiaries. A local NGO worker in Peru said he wants to help, but his organisation did not have enough staff to reach all the outlying communities. In addition staff members have not received proper training in communication and they have very little resources for producing communication materials. In Zimbabwe the agricultural extensionist complained of not receiving his salary.

Bridging Capacity Gaps

The sustainable livelihoods approach may provide a possible strategy to address these capacity gaps, while at the same time supporting more topical issues like access to new ICTs and appropriate content.

A livelihoods approach urges us to work holistically with multi-disciplinary teams reflecting the different components of community development. Starting with the communities themselves we can learn from existing community self-help groups. They have usually overcome the issue of trust within their membership and have leaders who can mediate between the group and external organisations. We could strengthen these local organisations including raising awareness about external support organisations, sources of credit etc. More engagement with local support organisations in neutral settings may be required so that communities are more aware of their rights to speak and are given due respect for their existing knowledge. Attention still needs to be given to ensure that women are invited and encouraged to speak and present their views. Holding multi-stakeholder workshops may be one way to kickstart these relationships.

For external agents, support is needed to develop skilled local information providers and producers of appropriate content. Increasingly this includes making use of ICTs. In light of growing interest to invest in new ICT related projects, the same holism is called for so that each link in the communication chain is strengthened.

It is essential that as much attention is paid to the relationships between communities and support organisations as is given to the ICTs themselves.