Page 133 - Education in a Digital World

120 International Development

‘reached’ beyond their specific contexts or ‘survived’ beyond the terms of their
funding. As such technology-based educational development efforts can be accused
of resulting in “an excess of cost over economic benefit” (Heeks 2010, p.635).
As Tim Unwin (2009d, p.3) continues, “despite all the rhetoric of success, very few
ICT4D activities, especially in Africa, have yet proved to be sustainable”.
Although challenged rarely in academic or policy circles, educational ICT4D
therefore needs to be understood in problematic rather than celebratory terms.
Indeed, digital technology is clearly not a ‘silver bullet’ solution to issues of poverty,
deprivation and disadvantage that beset many low-income countries. At best,
it could be concluded that digital technology more often than not contributes to
the maintenance of an inequitable status quo, rather than markedly disrupting pat-
terns of inequality. Why, then, is this the case given the considerable transformative
promises made on the part of digital technology and educational development?
Perhaps more significantly, why is this relative ‘failure’ so rarely acknowledged and
acted upon?

Accounting for the Relative ‘Failure’ of Digital Technology and
Educational Development
One obvious tension in this area concerns the appropriateness and relevance
of ‘high-tech’ digital initiatives in otherwise ‘low-tech’ and largely non-digital
contexts. Even in basic terms of the appropriateness of the digital device being used,
it could be argued that these initiatives are often at odds with the contexts they
are situated within. For instance, with only 15 per cent of rural households in
sub-Saharan Africa having access to electricity, basic operational issues of power are
often of paramount importance. Another major challenge is the provision of
low-cost and robust technological devices that are capable of working in under-
resourced communities where fundamental necessities such as shelter, water and
food are still sparse. Indeed, as Jenny Leach (2008, p.787) observed, it could
be argued that “basic needs such as water and food should be the priorities for rural
communities, not ICT”. All these technical disparities highlight the ‘opportunity-
cost’ of directing finite efforts and resources towards the provision of digital tech-
nologies at the expense of concentrating on more basic interventions. From this
perspective, the fairly straightforward argument can be advanced that high-tech
digital ‘leapfrogging’ agendas are perhaps an inappropriate and ultimately unhelpful
approach to furthering the fortunes of low-income communities. As Michalinos
Zembylas (2009, p.19) concludes, “focusing on the effects of ICT on development,
considering its limited impact in addressing poverty and inequality in some parts of
the world, distracts attention from efforts pressing basic needs that alleviate poverty
and injustice”.
Of course, it can be argued that denying people in poorer countries access to the
most advanced digital technologies only serves to compound their relative inequal-
ity in a world where access to digital technology has come to be “a fundamental