Digital innovation is a red-hot topic in development aid these days. However, also outside the realms of development aid, it has been noticed that digital tools do not make things better automatically. It depends very much on how these technologies are used, whether they can play a real positive role for the people who use them or are effected by...
Development programmes often fail because INGOs are not experimental and adaptive enough. This is because INGOs usually face unhelpful constraints from donor policymakers. This is, in turn, because donor policymakers are accountable to donor publics - whose expectations of how "development" happens are shaped by the very INGOs' simple narratives.
The development sector - either GOs as well as NGOs - are obsessed with planning, logframing, monitoring, evaluating. Unfortunately these techniques are made for situations with clear or at least explorable relation between cause and effect. They are not very good suited to complex, maybe even chaotic situations. Understanding the domain you are in...
Look into and built something meaningful with KoBoCollect: Tool for empowerment or big data nightmare?
Development aid is an established part of foreign policy and a routine in western societies to deal with the so-called "developing countries". For decades trillions of dollars from government and private donors have been transferred without lasting effect.
Start to built from the persons and teams driving improvements, and connect into a federated universe ...
Enabling programmes to be truly led by those directly affected/working in their own contexts. This term is now also used for centralized players pushing into the realm of local initiatives in an attempt to immunize themselves against the criticism of the repeatedly failing approaches of central planning and control by involving local communities.
Let's break our thinking from its traditional structures a little. Which are the hurdles that supposedly prevent something new from emerging?
