Page 124 - Education in a Digital World

International Development 111

is a powerful tool that when implemented appropriately can catalyse and
accelerate education reform and development.

Powerful rhetoric of this sort has been used over the past twenty years or so
to justify a large number of initiatives that seek to utilise the potential of digital
technologies to enhance education provision in developing countries and regions.
In practice, the scale and scope of these efforts vary considerably. On one hand are
hugely ambitious large-scale programmes that aim to use digital technology
to offer mass forms of basic distance education – such as the ‘mega-schools’ and
‘mega-universities’ outlined in Chapter 1 (see Daniel 2010). Similarly, there has
been a recent growth of region-wide ‘m-learning’ solutions based on the rise of
mobile telephony and satellite-based internet connectivity. On a far more localised
and low-tech basis, however, are small-scale projects seeking to provide ‘solar
powered schools’ and motorbike-mounted ‘mobile internet access’ points to local
communities.
The field of ‘educational ICT4D’ therefore covers a diverse range of activities –
from the placement of a few computers in a single community building to the
provision of continent-wide virtual education programmes. Yet despite variations in
size and scale, all of these educational ICT4D efforts raise similar sets of issues.
Perhaps most significantly, any attempt to use digital technologies in educational
development involves a diversity of stakeholders – from non-governmental organi-
sations and charities to national government and private sector organisations. All of
these stakeholders are responsible for directing substantial resources towards vast
numbers of technology-based education programmes and initiatives. In order to
understand better this diversity of technology-based educational development
activity, we should now go on to consider further the specific nature of some of
these actors and the programmes and initiatives that they are responsible for.

Educational Technology as Part of Government Aid

For the past thirty years, educational technology has been a prominent part of the
international aid work carried out by the governments of developed nations – both
in their own right and through intergovernmental organisations. Of course, educa-
tion has been a key focus for governmental aid efforts since the end of Second
World War. Even in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s, the
UK government’s ‘Department for International Development’ (DFID) was com-
mitted to spending at least £1 billion annually on education aid in sub-Saharan
Africa and Asia. Similarly, nearly one-fifth of Australia’s ‘Official Development
Assistance’ budget at this time was devoted to education – with around AUS$750
million directed towards increasing the quality of primary, vocational and technical
education in the Pacific region. Education was also established as one of the core
elements of the African Union’s ‘New Partnership for Africa’s Development’
(NEPAD) economic development programme. Perhaps most substantially, the