Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa

Efforts to design voice-based, social media platforms for low-literacy communities in developing countries have not widened access to information in the ways intended. This article links this to who describes the relations that constitute personhood and how these relations are expressed in designing and deploying systems. I make these links oriented by critique in human–computer interaction that design continues a history of colonialism and embeds meanings in media that disrupt existing communication practices. I explore how we translated ‘logics’ about sociality through logics located outside of the rural South African community that we targeted for design and deployment. The system aimed to enable inhabitants to record, store and share voice files using a portable, communally owned display. I describe how we engaged with inhabitants, to understand needs, and represented and abstracted from encounters to articulate requirements, which we translated into statements about technology. Use of the system was not as predicted. My analysis suggests that certain writing cultures, embedded in translations, reify knowledge, disembody voices and neglect the rhythms of life. This biases social media towards individualist logics and limits affordances for forms, genres and other elements of communication that contribute to sociality. Thus, I propose oral practices offer oppositional power in designing digital bubbles to support human togetherness and that we can enrich design by moving the centre—a phrase taken from Ngu˜gı˜ wa Thiong’o (Moving the centre: the struggle for cultural freedoms, James Currey, London, 1993) who insists that liberation from colonialism requires plural sites of creativity. To realize this potential, we need radically different approaches that enable symmetrical translation.CSIR-Meraka, South Africa and partially by EPSRC Grant (EP/H042857/1).http://link.springer.com/journal/1462017-02-27hb201

Video in development : filming for rural change

This book is about using video in rural interventions for social change. It gives a glimpse into the many creative ways in which video can be used in rural development activities. Capitalising on experience in this field, the books aims to encourage development professionals to explore the potential of video in development, making it a more coherent, better understood and properly used development tool - in short, filming for rural change

Rockefeller Foundation 2010 Annual Report

Contains president's letter; 2010 program highlights, including support for Africa's green revolution, sustainable and equitable transportation policy, and healthy communities; grants list; financial report; and lists of trustees and staff

Education Workforce Initiative: Initial Research

The purpose of this initial research is to offer evidenced possibilities in the key areas of education workforce roles, recruitment, training, deployment and leadership, along with suggested areas for further research to inform innovation in the design and strengthening of the public sector education workforce. The examples described were identified through the process outlined in the methodology section of this report, whilst we recognise that separation of examples from their context is problematic – effective innovations are highly sensitive to context and uncritical transfer of initiatives is rarely successful. The research aims to support the Education Workforce Initiative (EWI) in moving forward with engaging education leaders and other key actors in radical thinking around the design and strengthening of the education workforce to meet the demands of the 21st century. EWI policy recommendations will be drawn from a number of country level workforce reform activities and research activity associated with the production of an Education Workforce Report (EWR). This research has informed the key questions, approach and structure of the EWR as outlined in the Education Workforce Report Proposal. Issues pertaining to teaching and learning in primary and secondary education are at the centre of the research reported here; the focus is on moving towards schools as safe places where all children/ young people are able to engage in meaningful activity. The majority of the evidence shared here relates to teachers and school leaders; evidence on learning support staff, district officials and the wider education workforce is scant. Many of the issues examined are also pertinent to the early childhood care and education sector but these are being examined in depth by the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative. Resourcing for the Education Workforce was out of scope of this initial research but the EC recognises, as outlined in the Learning Generation Report, that provision of additional finance is a critical factor in achieving a sustainable, strong and well-motivated education workforce, particularly but not exclusively, in low and middle income countries. The next stage of EWI work will consider the relative costs of current initiatives and modelling of the cost implications of proposed reforms. EWI aims to complement the work on teacher policy design and teacher career frameworks (including salary structures) being undertaken by other bodies and institutions such as Education International, the International Task Force on Teachers for 2030 and the Teachers’ Alliance, most particularly by bringing a focus on school and district leadership, the role of Education Support Professionals (ESPs) and inter-agency working

The TESSA OER Experience: Building sustainable models of production and user implementation

This paper offers a review of the origins, design strategy and implementation plans of the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) research and development programme. The programme is working to develop new models of teacher education, particularly school based training, including the creation of a programme webspace and an extensive bank of Open Educational Resources. This paper identifies key research findings and literature which informed the TESSA approach and activity design. Drawing on participant experiences in different development activities and data generated in development testing activities, I offer a personal account of the programme to date. The paper concludes by suggesting a pattern of resource making and design that could be adopted by other programmes serving parallel development needs

Feminism in Action: Evaluation of AWDF's MDG3 Project

In the year 2011, the African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) received a grant of 32 million from Comic Relief for the period of April 2011 to March 2014. This was preceded by a grant of 31 million in November 2012, making it a total of 33 million. The framework for the delivery of this project has largely been determined by AWDF's 2011-15 Strategic Plan (SPIII) and was to be implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa. An end of project evaluation was conducted for AWDF between July and August 2014. The evaluation was specifically focused on the performance of AWDF's Phase II Project which was part of Comic Relief's (CR) Devolved Grant Making Program. The project focused on four areas, namely: Grant Making in each of AWDF's six thematic areas; Capacity and Movement Building; Strengthening AWDF's Communications; and Partnership Development.The purpose of the evaluation was to evaluate the project performance, identify good practices and draw out lessons that can be applied in future interventions. As the Comic Relief grant was meant to support AWDF's Strategic Plan, the evaluation looked at AWDF's main areas of work and assessed the role of the Comic Relief grant within which the AWDF initiatives were conducted. The evaluation also coincided with AWDF's Strategic Plan mid-way point. In 2008, the African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) received a grant of u20ac5 million from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to promote the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3 on women's empowerment. The grant was provided for a three-year period from 2008 to 2011 and was implemented as AWDF's MDG3 Project. As the project was coming to end, between July and September 2011, AWDF commissioned an independent consultant to conduct a summative evaluation. This evaluation sought to achieve four key objectives: (i) Document activities undertaken; (ii) Assess outcomes arising from the activities undertaken; (iii) Assess which strategies were most effective; and (iv) Based on this, make recommendations for future programming. In addition to this, the evaluation sought to assess the extent to which AWDF, as a feminist organization, had lived up to feminist principles in implementation of the project. In 2008, the African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) received a grant of 5 million from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to promote the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3 on women's empowerment. The grant was provided for a three-year period from 2008 to 2011 and was implemented as AWDF's MDG3 Project. As the project was coming to end, between July and September 2011, AWDF commissioned an independent consultant to conduct a summative evaluation

Human-computer interaction for development (HCI4D):the Southern African landscape

Human-Computer interaction for development (HCI4D) research aims to maximise the usability of interfaces for interacting with technologies designed specifically for under-served, under-resourced, and under-represented populations. In this paper we provide a snapshot of the Southern African HCI4D research against the background of the global HCI4D research landscape.We commenced with a systematic literature review of HCI4D (2010-2017) then surveyed Southern African researchers working in the area. The contribution is to highlight the context- specific themes and challenges that emerged from our investigation

Goodbye to Projects? Working paper 1: Annotated bibliography on livelihood approaches and development interventions.

YesThis paper is one in a series of working papers prepared under a research project on Goodbye to Projects? The Institutional Impacts of a Livelihood Approach on Projects and Project Cycle Management. This is a collaborative project between the Bradford Centre for International Centre for Development (BCID) with the Economic and Policy Research Centre (EPRC), Uganda; Khanya ¿ managing rural change, South Africa; and, the Institute for Development Management (IDM), Tanzania. The project is supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) under their Economic and Social Research Programme (ESCOR).Department for International Developmen

Soil Governance: Accessing Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

Soil provides the foundation for agricultural and environmental systems, and are subject to a complex governance regime of property rights and secondary impacts from industry and domestic land use. Complex natural resource management issues require approaches to governance that acknowledge uncertainty and complexity. Theories of next generation environmental governance assume that inclusion of diverse perspectives will improve reform directions and encourage behaviour change. This paper reports on a qualitative survey of an international workshop that brought together cross-disciplinary perspectives to address the challenges of soil governance. Results reveal the challenges of communicating effectively across disciplines. The findings suggest that strategies for improved soils governance must focus on increasing communications with community stakeholders and engaging land managers in designing shared governance regimes. The need for more conscious articulation of the challenges of cross-disciplinary environments is discussed and strategies for increasing research collaboration in soils governance are suggested. The identified need for more systematic approaches to cross-disciplinary learning, including reporting back of cross-disciplinary initiatives to help practitioners learn from past experience, forms part of the rationale for this paper

Blurring the Boundaries Citizen Action Across States and Societies

Taking a "citizen's perspective", looking upwards and outwards, these studies offer a unique insight into how citizens see and experience states and other institutions which affect their lives, as well as how they engage, mobilise and participate to make their voices heard