Elements for Developing a Value-Added Digital Services Model for Rural Entrepreneurs in Namibia: An Exploratory Study

Supporting digitally enabled entrepreneurship in rural areas requires a holistic approach to ensure rural entrepreneurs take advantage of digital services finding innovative solutions that allow businesses to thrive in competitive markets. In the absence of a model for value-added digital services for rural entrepreneurs, it is uncertain what type of digital services should be offered for rural entrepreneurs once the challenges of connectivity, electricity and digital skills have been addressed and whether those digital rural services are responsive to rural communities\u27 needs and aspirations. The purpose of this study was to explore elements to be considered when developing a Valued Added Digital Services Model for Rural Entrepreneurs in Namibia. The study applied a cross-sectional survey using a mixed-method to collect data from 134 respondents comprising 14 rural entrepreneurs and 63 members from four rural communities and 57 ICT sector key informants. The results elucidated that, Digital Infrastructure, Digital Skills, Digital Inclusion, Digital Services and Digital Actors are the five key elements for the model. The study proposed a conceptual model that facilitates the understanding and underscore the effectiveness of an ecosystem approach that is embedded in drivers and pillars of a thriving entrepreneur and proposes interventions to mitigate the barriers for effective adoption of digital services by rural entrepreneurs

Bridging the Digital Divide through Facebook Friendships: A Cross-Cultural Study

Over 80% of Facebook’s 1 billion [2] users are located outside of the US and Canada, but little is understood of how Facebook is used or impacts the lives of users, especially in collectivistic cultures. We address this question by conducting a comparative study of Facebook users from a collectivist culture, Namibia, and an individualistic culture, the United States. Although our study is continuing, we have identified several areas of difference that illustrate why and how culture influences users’ appropriation of this social network. Specifically, in this paper we examine differences in how friendships are made, maintained, and power relations assigned and discuss the importance of these differences in relation to the cultural context

Toward an Afro-Centric indigenous HCI paradigm

Current HCI paradigms are deeply rooted in a western epistemology which attests its partiality and bias of its embedded assumptions, values, definitions, techniques and derived frameworks and models.Thus tensions created between local cultures and HCI principles require us to pursue a more critical research agenda within an indigenous epistemology. In this paper we present an Afro-centric paradigm, as promoted by African scholars, as an alternative perspective to guide interaction design in a situated context in Africa and promote the reframing of HCI. We illustrate a practical realization of this paradigm shift within our own community driven designin Southern Africa.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hihc20hb2016Informatic

A classification of cultural engagements in community technology design: introducing a transcultural approach

Community technology design has been deeply affected by paradigm shifts and dominant discourses of its seminal disciplines, such as Human Computer Interaction, Cultural and Design theories, and Community Development as reflected in Community Narratives. A particular distinction of community technology design endeavours has been their cultural stance, which directs the agendas, interactions, and outcomes of the collaboration. Applying different cultural lenses to community technology design, shifts not only practices but also directs the levels of awareness, thereby unfolding fundamentally distinct cultural engagement approaches. Previous community technology design research indulged in cross-, inter-, and multicultural approaches to community engagement; it was occupied with meticulously deconstructing and reconstructing perspectives, interactions, roles, and agendas. We argue that when deeply immersed in joint design activities in long-term collaborations, we look beyond individual cultures and enter a transcultural mode of engagement. A transcultural community technology design endeavour supports a continuous creation and re-creation of new meanings, originating from individual entities yet being diffused and continuously reflected within the existing design space. We suggest that within community technology design, a context with abundant cultural diversity, a heightened awareness becomes a necessity. We exemplify different instantiations of the cultural engagement approaches within our long-term collaborations and technology design projects with indigenous communities in Malaysian Borneo and Namibia. A transcultural approach to indigenous knowledge preservation and digitisation efforts with indigenous communities opens up a controversial debate about protecting versus integrating local epistemologies. © 2017 Springer-Verlag London Ltd

Reducing “white elephant” ICT4D projects: A Community Researcher Engagement

Participation is a key requirement to ensure that ICT4D and HCI4D projects succeed. Specifically, the relationship between the research and community is necessary for any ICT4D project; without this cooperation, the proverbial white elephant project will result. Existing literature provides much evidence on the need and importance of this participation. However, many researchers lack the skills and knowledge to be able to build, develop and maintain the relationship, as many interactions are based on assumptions. We investigate challenges and frustrations as expressed by a community with whom we have established a long term collaboration. This provides further evidence on the need to guide and educate novice researchers working with the community. We have conducted a workshop to raise the awareness among guest researchers. The workshop comprises a series of presentations, discussions and reflections. We have recorded guest researchers’ responses within the workshop to evaluate further needs for researcher-community interaction preparations. A workshop is yet only one of the gatekeepers’ obligations to protect the community. We equally promote continuous engagement with the community itself in the design of critical incidents based on established cultural protocols as well as preparing the community for the novice researchers to maximize research benefits to the community. We discuss potential roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders, partner community, gatekeepers and guest researchers aiming to sustain a coherent research and development collaboration

An insider perspective on community gains: A subjective account of a Namibian rural communities' perception of a long-term participatory design project

Community-based co-design takes place within a communal value system and opens up a new debate around the principles of participation and its benefits within HCI4D and ICTD projects. This study contributes to a current gap of expression of participants׳ gains, especially from an indigenous and marginalized rural communities׳ perspective. We have collected community viewpoints concurrently over the past five years of our longitudinal research project in rural Namibia. A number of themes have emerged out of the data as extracted by our native researcher, such as the special importance of learning technology, appreciation of the common project goal, the intrinsic pleasure of participation, frustrations about exclusions and other concerns, as well as immediate rewards and expectations of gaining resources. We acknowledge our own bias in the curation of viewpoints, and incompleteness of subjectivities while embedding our discussion within a local contextual interpretation. Through our learning from the communities we argue for a shift in perspective that acknowledges local epistemologies in HCI and participatory design and research. We suggest considering harmony and humanness as the primary values guiding community-based interactions. We discuss several challenges in the collaboration and co-creation of new knowledge at the frontier of multiple cultural, linguist, research and design paradigms. In the absence of generalized guidelines we suggest to pursue local workability while producing trans-contextual credibility