Page 128 - Education in a Digital World

International Development 115

Cisco is certainly not the only IT-industry actor that is pursuing such activities and
interventions. Indeed, most similarly sized companies display a comparable invol-
vement in educational technology use in low-income countries. As the case of
Cisco suggests, these commercial activities certainly match – if not exceed – the
remit of many national ministries of education. While some of these efforts are
based around profit-led motivations of developing future markets for technology
products, there is also a clear extension of the role of these corporations’ remits to
assume an expert educational role as well as an expert technology role. This blur-
ring of interests can also be seen in the efforts of IT corporations to fund social
welfare-orientated projects. For example, as well as being involved in the donation
of refurbished computers to non-profit organisations in developing countries, Dell
has offered US$8 million direct funding through its ‘Youth Connect’ programme to
charities, voluntary groups and community organisations working on educational
projects with deprived populations of children and young people in India, South
Africa, China, Morocco, Mexico, Brazil. As such, the role of technology firms in
philanthropic work in low-income contexts is clearly a multifaceted area – motivated
as much by the longer-term benefits of building stable national participants in the
global ‘knowledge economy’, as they are by the shorter-term benefits of increased
sales in ‘emerging markets’.

Educational Technology as Part of Non-governmental and
Non-profit Projects

Of course, despite the high-profile activities of multinational corporations, national
governments and intergovernmental organisations, much educational ICT4D work is
actually initiated and delivered through groups of smaller non-governmental organisa-
tions (NGOs) alongside other ‘not-for-profit’ and charitable organisations. As such, the
highly-branded multinational efforts discussed so far should not overshadow the
significance of these less well-funded interests in the promotion and provision of
educational technology in developing countries. Indeed, the diversity of these ‘other’
actors involved in educational ICT4D is considerable – ranging from international
agencies to local non-profit organisations, and also encompassing international and
national NGOs, faith-based organisations, communities and civil society organisations.
These groups, therefore, constitute a prominent feature of education provision and
practice in developing nations – taking responsibility for channelling the funding
that comes into countries from international aid organisations, as well as financing
their own initiatives and projects. In Egypt alone, it was estimated that over 1,300 dif-
ferent non-profit organisations were involved in the country’s education provision –
making up nearly 10 per cent of all NGOs working in the country at the end of the
2000s (Amen 2008). As such, these organisations seek to complement the efforts of
national governments, while on occasion also offering alternatives to state provision.
These groups are now involved heavily in educational technology projects and
programmes. These have tended to take a number of different forms over the past