Participatory mapping in e-Thekwini Municipality, South Africa

Greater ICT availability in South Africa suggests a growing possibility for citizens to use mobile phones and Internet to hold government accountable. However, there is a paucity of literature that maps ICT-mediated engagement initiatives within marginalised sub-populations. This case study attempts to explore this gap. The study provides reflective insights into ICT and local governance within the ‘Empowering Street Traders through Urban Disaster Risk Management’ project. The study asks, in terms of local governance, how were the ICT tools used to support traders in the markets of Warwick Junction, eThekwini municipality? This study looks at what lessons can be drawn from the ICT project that embedded digital mapping tools, Ushahidi and Frontline SMS, in order to support the informal workers’ demands for better occupational health practices. This research also hopes to positively contribute future engagement with ICTs amongst market traders around public health issues.DFIDUSAIDSidaOmidyar Networ

Digital mapping in Warwick Junction and the remaking of ‘space’: notes from South Africa

There have been significant shifts in the policy environment of South Africa that are transforming the way citizen engagement takes place in the country. However, high income inequality in South Africa extends to the differentiated experiences of ICT-mediated engagement amongst citizens. ICT response mechanisms are not well defined with respect to sub-populations who may work or live in less formalised and undocumented settings. This Brief looks at the case study of the Phephanathi project. implemented in Warwick market, one of the largest inner city 'informal' open air markets in Durban. Informal traders were encouraged to re-imagine their work-place as safe spaces where they enjoy rights to their occupational health. The project used participatory mapping to help establish mechanisms for traders to work with the municipality, via the NGO Asiye eTafuleni, on their health and safety needs. ICTs are used to send messages related to health to traders and to get feedback from traders through geo-tagging of health and safety hazards in the market. What the case study has demonstrated is that ICTs can be used to legitimise the public resources needed for safe and healthy work spaces for informal traders. Findings however suggest that further ICT training is necessary to improve the online dialogue between traders and local government, enabling the former to demand improved sanitation and health service delivery. Also, high cost of data and telephonic connectivity limits the participation of traders. This brief is part of a series from IT for Change produced from its Voice or Chatter research project, which examines the relationship between ICT-mediated citizen engagement and democratic governance.DFIDUSAIDSidaOmidyar Networ

Information and communication technologies for development: Reshaping poverty in South Africa

Philosophiae Doctor - PhDThe aim of this thesis is to examine the association between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and poverty reduction in South Africa. ICTs have been argued to be a means to improve household livelihoods and thereby to provide people with the capability of changing their existing poverty trajectories. The study conceptually investigates ICTs as a contributor to human development through the theoretical lens the sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF). Since ICTs broaden the asset base of the poor, the study first theorises household access to ICT as a new form of capital, termed as the ‘digital basket’. This new wealth indicator augments the current well-developed list of capitals adopted within the SLF approach. This digital basket concept and the ICT systems that provide its components are described, establishing the theoretical contributions of this thesis

GENARDIS Workshop (March 24-26, 2010), Wedgewood B&B, Melville Johannesburg, South Africa : workshop report

The objective of the Gender for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society (GENARDIS) workshop was for grantees’ to share experience and discuss the way forward for future Genardis activities. The document provides a brief report on eleven presentations with research experiences in the field, and describing the rural contexts and interventions within local communities. Some of the projects trained hundreds of residents in the community within the year

Mobile cell phones and poverty reduction : technology spending patterns and poverty level change among households in Uganda.

Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.This paper exammes the spending behaviour of households with mobile phones in rural agricultural Uganda and whether such strategies such as substitutions have affected the well-being of these community members. According to the findings, rural households are willing to make sacrifices such as travel expenses and store-bought food budget in order to address the expenses of mobile phone services. While gender inequality through exacerbated asset control and mobile phone inexperience drive further digital divide in this village, the proliferation of small businesses development encourages phone ownership for women. Such strategies to afford a mobile phone or mobile phone services are undertaken to help facilitate longterm asset accumulation. For development studies, the analysis recommends a revised form of development thinking in a growing knowledge economy

APC Access to knowledge / IP / Media Piracy Workshop, 7 April 2010, Sunnyside Park Hotel, Johannesburg, South Africa

The workshop invited speakers from several IDRC projects and South African groups to present their work in the Open Access knowledge space, hosting about 40 participants from various sectors including representatives from the South Africa department of trade and industry (dti), public works, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), NGOs, media and other private sector firms. Presentations included Intellectual Property laws and access for the visually impaired, as well as Open Standards. Overall, the workshop succeeded in bringing intellectual property issues of the disadvantaged and for education purposes to the fore to a diverse group of participants

Telecentre functionality in South Africa: re-enabling the community ICT access environment

Despite the availability and capabilities of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in low and middle-income countries, the use of these constantly evolving tools remains limited for the majority of resource-poor citizens. This is especially the case for internet-based tools. In South Africa, an upper middle-income country, the percentage of the population categorised as individual 'internet users' increased from 5.4 percent in 2000 to just 18.0 percent in 2010 (ITU, 2011). In order to overcome these low percentages, government intervention is frequently adopted, especially in rural areas, where it is not profitable for telecommunication operators to build infrastructure as a means to promote the uptake of internet use in poorer communities (USAASA, 2009: 47). In South Africa and elsewhere, government sponsored telecentres are a common non-profit mode of delivery, however there is much evidence of recurring problems (Gomez et al., 2012). Telecentres have many structural components (human, political and technical) which need to support each other in order to create a functional telecentre (Benjamin, 2001a; Heeks, 2002; Proenza, 2002). The failure of one or more of these components, as detailed by Roman & Colle (2002), Hulbert & Snyman (2007), and Parkinson (2005) can render telecentres non-functional. Such failures continue to plague the delivery of Public Access Computing (PAC) services in South Africa and elsewhere; and in the light of the growth of smartphones, it could be argued that telecentres are not a meaningful mode through which internet access can be delivered (Chigona et al., 2011; Gomez et al., 2012). However, ICT4D has lacked a robust theoretical base (Flor, 2012; Urquhart et al., 2008) and the literature has been dominated by a rather 'structuralist' and supply-side approach with less attention to individual agency and the demand-side. By considering how elements of agency and structure combine in relation to ICTs, the Choice Framework (CF) developed by Kleine (2010) is a step forward. This approach facilitates the analyses of people's varied ability to empower themselves and improve their quality of life (QoL). Using this Framework, this article analyses the operational experiences of telecentre provision of computer and internet access, alongside user experiences that reveal how telecentre and other structural issues interact with the characteristics of users and their various sets of resources. Based on this analysis, we suggest that PACs should remain a part of the ICT debate, although we question the business model that has come to dominate their operation.International Bibliography of Social Science

Early childhood development and South Africa: a literature review.

This work is based on the research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant No 71220). The work was also produced with the assistance of the Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development (PSPPD Phase II) a partnership between the Presidency, the Republic of South Africa and the European Union under the project addressing the poverty and inequality challenge, grant for Informal Early Childhood Development Centres a new area based approach for improved and up-scaled ECD services for the urban poor. The contents of this work are the sole responsibility of the authors and can in no way be taken to reflect neither the views of the European Union nor the National Research Foundation.Early Childhood Development (ECD) has become a priority sector within South Africa, particularly in respect to ensuring equity and high quality of care for the youngest members (ages 0 to 5 years old) of the population. South Africa is also burdened with high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment as well as unequal levels of service delivery and public provision of infrastructure. Given the recent development and request for feedback on the provisional ECD policy, there would be a benefit to examine the current state of this draft policy, its respective white papers, and its national and international mandates as well as to understand their relationship to South Africa’s context of poverty. Furthermore, child poverty remains a major concern in the country, particularly in respect to the geographical and living conditions where children live, study and play. This paper wishes to bring to light literature on poverty and, from a multi-dimensional lens, understand how early childhood development provision, whether it be through its programming or the physical centres themselves, are affecting the lives of children, particularly those within households living in urban poverty. ECD are intended to provide children with a safe facility to stay and with some standards of conditions which would allow children to learn and improve their skills. ECD also provides parents with the ability to leave their children in safe places so that they can work or learn. The proximity of ECD centres, their costs, the staffing and their physical conditions influence the choices of parents to leave their children at an ECD centre. The ECD centres within informal settlements are also explored in this paper, given the need for further understanding of such physical infrastructures within a municipality’s planning. Planning for ECD centres within the ‘grey areas’, such as informal settlements or those located in traditional land, can be problematic, especially for ECD managers or principals in gaining access to much needed ECD resources through the appropriate departments. Those parents who have limited and erratic income stream are provided with inadequate choices which may put a mother and/or father in difficult situations of child care. The ECD policy would benefit poor households, particularly those living within informal settlements, through understanding the conditions of the poor and their limitation of choices in ECD centres. In understanding their limitation, government could help provide a more meaningful policy which caters to their needs

Exploring the informal business sector in Clairwood, Durban, South Africa,

This work is based on research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation (DST/NRF) of South Africa.This paper aims to investigate alternative measures of value amongst marginalised citizens in South Africa. More specifically, the objective of this study is to understand the value of informal business within the under privileged area of Clairwood, Durban. The rationale is to explore the under-reported economic activities and advantages of micro enterprises operated by low income households. These livelihood and small enterprise activities are at risk by changing infrastructural developments which threaten displacement to this community, which is based within an industrial complex. This study highlights the contribution that informal traders make to the city and re-imagines sustainable development in the urban low-income context. This locally driven micro economy provides sufficient resources to raise many out of poverty. Clairwood is one of these unique scenarios: a mix of formal, yet declining manufacturing industries, surrounded by complementary micro informal businesses, as well as formal to informal dwelling settlements. These characteristics somehow work symbiotically and in harmony to support each other, benefiting residents’ financial and work needs. Findings show that Clairwood residents are not necessarily unsupportive of economic activities in their community, but that they are concerned about the encroaching and non-participatory nature of national infrastructure and specifically port sector imperatives which further debilitate their efforts to preserve their heritage and economic livelihoods. Worryingly, residents feel continuously framed as uncooperative and unable to participate. Such perceptions miss the true value of the economic and participatory contributions of the local community of Clairwood. This study offers an alternative that hears the voice of this diverse community and allows them to express their values, further contributing to an alternative vision of low carbon, sustainable development