Who could have said it better than Ziad Moussa himself?

In the final podcast for the Acacia Research and Learning Forum 2009 we catch up with more of the projects represented at the forum before hearing the individual stories of a few delegates. This episode is rounded off with an interview with Heloise Emdon, the programme manager of Acacia, who shares her thoughts on the forum.

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The Implications for Networked Societies session signaled a pause in the Acacia Research and Learning Forum event. Instead of speaking about outcomes, or sharing stories on projects, or gathering information on policy or regulation or innovation, this session provided a moment to reflect upon the implications of working towards a networked society.

An illuminating statement by one of the speakers, Aaron Martin, contextualized the importance of the discussions at this session by reminding participants how as ICT4D practitioners, promoting the use of technology tools, such as mobile phones, does have over-arching implications for the users of those tools, so understanding these implications is key.

The process used to facilitate the discussion during this session was the fishbowl method. Chairs were arranged in concentric circles with 7 chairs in the middle. The four speakers and one moderator sat in this space, leaving 2 chairs open for the audience to “jump into” the bowl to add their views and statements.

Local contexts
Jorn Braa, is associate professor at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo with 15 years of experience in Health Information Systems research and development in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He challenged Richard Jefferson’s statement from the previous session that open source software is ‘context free’. Jorn explained his experience in innovating new open source software for the health sector. This was highly context-specific work, with the model being replicated in Africa, and even in Asia and South America. In order to sustain this context-specific approach, an action network was developed consisting of developers, researchers and market and training programmes that were implemented in Africa and Asia.

The human element
Speakers Ineke Buskens and Abdoullah Cisse were passionate about the idea of remembering the human element of ICT4D. Ineke is the project lead of GRACE, a research initiative that probes how women in Africa and the Middle East interact with ICTs. Ineke reflected on the benefits of becoming a connected society, but also spoke about the need to question old-fashioned paradigms, for example, thinking of knowledge as a product. She explained, “A knowledge society that is not questioned, ends up being as anxious and sexist as ‘regular’ society.”

She also cautioned not to ‘objectify’ ICTs, she said “It is the human intent behind ICTs that is key.” Abdoullah spoke about the need to create a ‘human society’, to look beyond the virtual element of a networked society, and to remember “we are working with flesh and blood.”

Privacy
A networked society necessitates the need for more personal information to be sent across the network, which can create privacy issues. Aaron Martin studies the political, economic and social implications of surveillance, looking at surveillance as a means for social control.  He mentioned three general cases of concern. The first is the growing amount of CCTV camera monitoring – in the U.K there is one camera for every 14 people, which are only used to solve one in 1000 crimes. Martin spoke about the gradual increase of scope for being registered on a DNA database in the U.K. and how biometric identity systems could improve service delivery, also require that 50 pieces of information be registered including eye scans amongst others. 


An African example is the new system of sim card registration, which will be used in South Africa to help fight crime. While there are clear benefits to this system, the right to privacy of the individual is also called into question. According to a participant who jumped into the fish bowl – Kenya is pursuing a similar course in reaction to the violence that erupted there in last year, which was prompted by sms communications. Further research shows that Tanzania and Botswana have already entrenched this system.

Enabling Technology
Jorn spoke about the need to not only implement technology but to enable innovation for true lasting development within a community. He referred to a micro-financing project mentioned in the ‘speed-rounds’ earlier in the day that enabled women to access and share information through their mobile phones. Over time, the women started asking for more functionality, for example, to check the status of their loan through their phones. Jorn said that his was true innovation, as the community itself drove the further development of the system. He also spoke about the incremental nature of innovation – how many steps and layers of collaboration accumulate to truly exciting innovative implementations of ICT4D.

Monetary considerations
Camilo, a self-described “humanist interested in ICT4D” stepped into the fishbowl to raise an interesting point about how technology is most often linked to monetary considerations, for example, introducing an initiative through mobile phone involves a cost for every sms or data bundle sent. He said, “In a sense the community becomes richer and poorer, depending on how one looks at it.”

In conclusion, Jorn offered some final words of inspiration, “Technology is both enabling and constraining, our role should be to support the enabling part of it, and work on the counter networks, to give voices to those who have no voices.”

Innovation and the elephant in the room

The Acacia Forum held a fascinating workshop on open innovation yesterday afternoon (Tuesday). I was challenged and made to think, but came away with a sense of frustration. Why? Because yet again - and this has happened quite a few times in the course of our worskhop - the question of how we disseminate and publish our research was simply not on the radar. Research publication is the elephant in the room, or when it is mentioned, seems to be thought of as peer-reviewed journal articles with good citation counts.

But back to open innovation. We were actively challenged by Richard Jefferson, rattling our complacency by arguing that the patent system was one of the most powerful resources available for providing open access to information and resources for innovation development. There is no greater open access system available, he argued, as copyright does not apply to patents and there are millions of patents available for scrutiny in the developed world. (African patents are very few and not searchable where they do exist) Mammo Muchie, on the other hand, lamented the fact that publicly funded research was being turned into private patents. Breakthroughs in innovation are very expensive, he argued, and we  need a different strategy, finding other avenues and less expensive ways of addressing innovation.

He argues that we need to identify how to make governments and research organisations recognize how to make the knowledge used in ways that are relevant to the needs of the people of Africa, who are predominantly rural. He argues that there is a big gap between the universities and rural communities. And thus Africa is not engaged with Africa. We need an African community innovation system, he argued and universities directly related to our communities.

I agree with all of this. So why was I frustrated? First of all, I believe that our universities are - often passionately - involved with community work in cities and rural areas. At my own university - the University of Cape Town - I found a large number of research groupings, across all the disciplines, doing remarkable work delivering very high quality - world standard - research and spending a lot of skill and energy making sure that this both served and listened to the communities concerned. They publish a number of policy papers, research briefings, technical papers, educational and training materials and popularizations. But these do not reach as widely as they should because the university, in line with government policy, gives priority and bases promotion and recognition on the production of journal articles in indexed journals, mostly published overseas. And so we export our best research to commercial journal companies in powerful knowledge economies that do not need our support.

If one goes back to the innovation debate, the loss is that there is in fact a high volume of research information available and innovations that can be shared, but these papers are hidden in departmental websites or sitting in office drawers across Africa. We could have a very valuable resource of appropriate and relevant thinking, Africa-focused, if we invested energy in ensuring that research goes on line, with open access licences, so that it can be shared.

First, though, a deeply entrenched culture - the parroted mantras of indexes and citation counts - needs to be challenged and reviewed and ways found of valuing African research in line with our own values and not those of a commercialized system in the global North.

Image source:  Flickr,  by Tony the Misfitcc licensed under Creative Commons 2.0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonythemisfit/2906922962/

What do introspection, speed-sharing, innovation and fishbowls have in common?  They were all methodologies that participants came to grips with on Day 2 of the Acacia Research Learning Forum.  By the end of the day a rather tired-yet-content looking group of participants peeled off to their various pursuits; be this further networking or attending project meet-ups.  

Day 2 has been demanding of its participants with sessions requiring interactivity, brainstorming, discussion and debate.

The day kicked off with a session entitled Reflecting on Research Outcomes, wherein Heloise Emdon introduced the purpose of the research intervention and its importance to both Acacia and the IDRC as a whole.  Ricardo Wilson-Grau, the research evaluator who has lead the process with the IDRC, continued the session discussing the complexities involved in evaluating Acacia projects, and how subsequent analysis of the projects should be undertaken.  The day’s first interactive exercise was included in this session, with participants being required to work in groups and answer a series of questions about their project’s outcomes, after which they were invited to provide feedback on the challenges they encountered during the exercise.  Read more here.

The next session, Contribution of ICT4D Research Projects to Africa’s Development, proved to be incredibly and, for many, one of the day’s highlights.  The session began with a speed-sharing session followed by a theme-centred brainstorm and key message creation.  About 15 Acacia project “stations” were set up around the room with different projects hosting each station.  The host project’s spokesperson was given 4 to 7 minutes to tell the story of their project to a group of participants, after which time the group of participants would move on to the next station, to be replaced by another group.  Thus the host project’s spokesperson was given three to four opportunities to tell their story, refining it to a succinct yet big-picture description.  As Heloise Emdon later said, this session provided a number of participants with an ‘AHA moment when they were able to suddenly clearly bring the the essence of their projects into focus. 

Following the speed-sharing session, participants were required to move into groups according to the thematic areas of their projects.  These themes included gender, the digital commons, localization, education, governance, health, social and economic development, infrastructure policy & indicators, small-scale agriculture and new learning environments and practices.  Within these groups participants were asked to create a single, key message about their project; an elevator-type description of their project that could be told to potential donors, partners and other stakeholders.  The message could take the form of a 140-character tweet, a song, poem, play or newspaper heading.  This proved both a challenging and creative exercise, and participants rose to the occasion admirably.  Watch the key messages presentations here.

The session after lunch also proved to be one of the highlights of the day and provoked great debate and response from participants.  This was the session entitled Innovation in the field of ICT4D and was presented as a combination debate and talk show.  IDRC’s Laurent Elder hosted the session with speakers Richard Jefferson and Mammo Muchie.  Both speakers, experts in the field of innovation both globally and in the developing world, answered questions around what constitutes open innovation; how the patent systems can be used as essential tools for local innovation; what innovation means for Africa, how Africans can lead in innovation and what the challenges or barriers are to both nurturing and opening up innovation on the continent.  Read more about the session here.

The final session, Implications of Networked Societies, took the form of a “fishbowl” session, which entailed a group of experts sitting in a circle, surrounded by a wider circle of participants/ viewers.  The experts started a discussion, following which participants were encouraged to move into the inner circle and continue the discussion themselves.   This session had a fireside-chat feel, and the tone was lowkey and relaxed.  Although participants did not literally venture into the circle, the discussion was valuable and raised key issues that are often overlooked and could sometimes unintentionally exacerbate a negative effect.  Speakers, or perhaps in this instance, Conversationalists led by Heloise Emdon included Aaron Martin, Ineke Buskens, Jorn Braa and Abdoullah Cissé.  Read more about the session in our follow-up blog post later this morning.

In this podcast episode we catch up with representatives from some of the projects presented during the 'Contribution of ICT4D Research Projects to Africa’s Development' session of the forum before speaking to Jorn Braa who served as a panelist on the 'Implications of Networked Societies' fishbowl discussion. We end off with interviews with delegates that were prepared by French bloggers that are embedded at the forum in 2009.

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During today’s Contribution of ICT4D Research Projects to Africa’s Development session, participants of the ARLF experienced ‘speed-rounds’ where they got to learn about Acacia projects working within the gender, digital commons, localization, education, governance, health and social economic development spheres.  Some of these stories will be featured in the podcast for Day 2 – so look out for this forthcoming upload!

Next, ARLF participants undertook a communication exercise, aided by IDRC’s Communication Specialist, Susan Murray. The idea was to create short messages for their projects that could be broadcast beyond the ICT4D community to demonstrate how their work has made a difference in Africa's development. TACP captured the messages and report-back in 9 short clips which you can view on the Acacia Research and Learning Forum Youtube channel here.

Here’s a peek of a few of the video clips:

The session, opened by Heloise Emdon of the IDRC, discussed an internal evaluation that is being undertaken by the IDRC in order to assist with deeper learnings about their projects.  The process adopted was not one of an outsider who audits the work and provides results, but rather of a researcher who works with the organisation in order to better understand its approach.  It is less an audit and more an interactive process that helps the organisation better understand their approach, their practices and to be accountable to their funders.

For Acacia, this was an evaluation of their networks.  Perhaps it is important to take one step back to interrogate why Acacia has adopted the strategy of developing networks.  Networks support peer learning; they aid development; provide mentoring; and learning opportunities in order to develop the field of research.  Heloise Emdon states that “The IDRC’s mandate is to develop research capacity in the South, and the outcome from funding research networks is that Africa is becoming a smaller continent, where we are able to relate to one another on important issues at a peer level rather than a governmental level.”  Within networks, peers are able to acknowledge their differential knowledge and share this.  In turn, the networks themselves have contributed to Acacia’s objectives which are to build research capacity, to create policy dialogue, to stimulate social and technological innovation, and support gender research.

Acacia Network challenges

Developing networks has brought its own challenges, for example, where there has been no peer-review culture in Africa.   Another challenge has been the tensions found between developed networks which have been funded for a number of years and those which have only spent three years developing capacity.  A further challenge was that between the need to build capacity and to develop policy. 

Ricardo Wilson-Grau, a social evaluator who has worked on a number of projects around social change, has been leading the process with the IDRC with the purpose of considering how the identification of outcomes could help research projects learn about the results they are achieving beyond their outputs.

The story of fish soup

Ricardo contextualised his discussion by outlining the conventional logic when developing and implementing an objective.  He used the analogy of parents preparing a fish-soup supper for their child.

Step one -  the parents wish to cook supper for their child.  In order to do so they require resources such as vegetables, fish and a source of heat. 

Step two -  the activities required such as bringing out the recipe and preparing the ingredients.

Step three - the output is that the child receives nourishing fish soup.

Step four - the outcome is that they child will consider the soup delicious and eat it once a week.

Step five - the impact is that the child will become a healthy adult.

The parents can control the first three steps of the process, namely the objectives, the activities, and the output.  However, they can only support or influence the outcome, namely how the child may consider and then eat the soup. In terms impact, the parents can only worry about it whether the child becomes a healthy adult.

Is Acacia like the fish soup story?

For Acacia, the results are less linear and more complex than the fish-soup analogy:  The outputs, in other words the causes which changed directly from the project such as research reports, websites or workshops are important and can be controlled.  However, the outcomes cannot be controlled.  These are the intended or unintended changes in behaviour, relationships and activities of the people that the research project influences.  The key factor is that one cannot control outcomes  but may only influence these.  For example, if an outcome is policy change, you may influence policy change but never directly control this.  And within Acacia projects, the impact is a long-term fundamental change which is often systemic. 

A conventional logic for achieving results, like the fish-soup analogy, generally follows a four- or five-step process in which inputs lead to impact.  For Acacia, the objectives are about social change and innovation with six main objectives:

·          trying to influence sustained policy dialogue;

·          catalyzing thriving research networks;

·          increasing the research capacity with the ICT4D arena;

·          stimulating social and technical information;

·          contributing to a formal body of knowledge; and

·          incorporating meaning into gender analysis.

Like the fish-soup story, the inputs processes are the same, but things become complex in terms of what activities the inputs lead to.  You may decide that the activity required is different from that which was planned.  This in turn will influence outputs, outcomes and impact.  Outcomes may emerge where you may be uncertain as to where they come from.  The process is messy.  Added to this is the notion that impact is about long-term, profound change to which the project may eventually contribute.

In light of above, conventional logic doesn’t necessarily work given that the relationship between cause and effect is unknown.  It may be almost impossible to know what the change might be.  Oftentimes, the change is continuous; within capacity building for example, yours may not be the first capacity building exercise to which the community has been exposed.   Change is not linear and often unexpected results occur.   Change is beyond your control; it is something you influence.  Change is a two-way process:  the research project itself can change throughout its lifecycle in response to external change, thus creating the necessity to use alternative planning, monitoring and evaluation methodologies.  A question to ask is:  how the research project contributes to change.

The challenge of evaluating project outcomes

The objective of outcomes evaluation is to focus on the changes that, should they be brought about, will lead to long-term impact.   Outcomes can essentially be segmented into:  who, what, when and where.  Outcomes should formulate why the change is significant in light of what you wish to achieve. 

The IDRC and Acacia, having undergone this evaluation process, found that the first round of investigations led to the enumeration of 57 outcomes from 12 research networks.  To encourage participants to better understand the process, they were asked to take part in an exercise that required them to interrogate their own project outcomes.

They needed to consider the following questions:  to what extent and how did funding research in ICT4Ds change Africa?  Collectively, did putting research funding into a project result in favourable outcomes for Africa?  Separate the output – report or technological platform  – from the outcome.   Following this they were asked to form groups with an Acacia project leader to share outcomes; in other words the significance of their project’s contribution.

Specific challenges that participants identified in formulating an outcome were as follows: 

·          Not having control – with outcomes, impact and even activities - begged the question:  where do you draw the line between your activities and your outputs and outcomes?

·          Identifying outcomes could often be a “judgement call” with a need to contextualise the outcome in order to find out what the significance is.

·          Networks themselves are an outcome.  Projects are bound by common work and themes.  Yet the network itself may not be an intended output.

·          There can be difficulty in identifying the outcome insofar as find the correct terminology for describing it. 

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Commons challenges were seen as follows:

·          Distinguishing between what one does; the activities and outputs versus what one hopes to achieve namely the outcomes.

·          There is a lack of information to make the outcome intelligible to other stakeholders.

Synthesising the outcome into a single clear sentence or paragraph is difficult.

Standing by the pool yesterday in the humidity of the Dakar evening along with the Acacia Research and Learning Forum participants, one could hardly believe that ‘day one’ had passed so quickly – so much information had been shared, energy exchanged, words spoken and business cards consumed  - all in under 12 hours. With the ARLF’s highly interactive programme, a break was certainly well deserved at the cocktail event.

The day started off with an overview of the outcomes of the event and an introduction by Heloise Emdon on Acacia’s background and achievements thus far. An ‘ice-breaker’ got participants buzzing as they walked around the room to place themselves in groups according to their continent of origin, the type of organization they work for (civil society, donor, private sector etc), their own personal goals for the event (reflecting on outcomes, networking, having fun etc) and language (English, French or bilingual). This helped to create connections and fired up networking, but also illustrated the similarities (and differences) amongst those in the room. Take a look at the photos from this session.

The Policy and Regulatory Environment chat show, with producer Khaled Fourati and “hoooooooost Steve Song”, was a question-and-answer format that saw the show’s guests providing insights into how the regulation and policy opportunities and constraints have influence infrastructure development and participation in the knowledge economy in South Africa, Rwanda and Senegal. Read more here.

Lowering the Barriers to Participation in the Information Society took the format of a World Café session, where participants sat at tables together to discuss different topics. At the commencement of a new topic, all participants had to move to a new table, keeping the conversation fresh and ideas flowing.  Jeremy de Beer, Kazanka Comfort and Dwayne Bailey reported back on the discussions that they had picked up on during the World Café, contextualizing it within their own experiences and expertise. Dwayne spoke about the role of language as a barrier, which stimulated a fascinating discussion where participants spoke about how the issue of language had impacted on their projects. Read the blog post with more details on this discussion here.

The Great Debate saw two experts, Allison Gillwald and Tusu Tusubira pitted against each other on the topic of the role of the public and private sector in ensuring equitable access to ICTs for the benefit of Africa’s development. This was an entertaining debate, with Allison taking the stance that the public sector has an important part to play in regulating access and ensuring that ICTs are used for social and health initiatives for the public good. Tusu entertainingly represented the private sector, and played this role with much humour, arguing that the private sector stimulates innovation, and allows for more affordable pricing and better customer services. The live blog of the debate can be read here.

Today, we’ll be hearing about the second phase of Acacia’s formative and participatory evaluation, followed by a story-telling round, where participants will tell each other about how their projects have contributed to Africa’s development. The second half of the day will see a session on open innovation for ICT4D, followed by a session on the implications of networked societies that will explore how privacy, identity and empowerment are considerations for distributed collaborative initiatives.

The African Commons Project is live blogging the Innovation in the field of ICT4D session at 14:30 - join  us and tell your friends or colleagues to come too!