Page 135 - Education in a Digital World

122 International Development

If we reconsider the examples highlighted in this chapter, then it would appear that
issues of unequal power relations and imbalanced social structures are a recurrent feature
of educational ICT4D. This is especially the case with regard to the underlying ‘official
agendas’ that are being pursued through such projects. As Tim Unwin (2009a, p.33)
reminds us, any form of development work conveys a “profoundly moral agenda”
of “what should be done and how we should do it”. Thus, while not discounting the
good intentions of many individuals working in the field, we should not overlook the
moral agendas of the organisations and institutions that lie at the heart of the projects
and interventions outlined in this chapter. As well as having the necessary economic
power to develop and finance such schemes, these organisations also have the power to
influence the nature of how the technology is used and the nature of what it is being
used for. Here, then, a wide range of agendas, values and goals are being pursued by
a large number of actors and interests. Indeed, one of the striking features of this chapter
has been the complex of ‘stakeholders’ who are involved in the field of educational
ICT4D – ranging from private sector organisations to donor agencies, governments of
low-income countries, civil society organisations and other international bodies.
As many of the examples in this chapter suggest, the values and agendas of many
of these groups are focused (whether directly or indirectly) on economic concerns.
One implicit agenda within many educational ICT4D initiatives is the continued
enrolment of countries and individual citizens into the ‘global’ neo-liberal knowl-
edge economy. In particular, many of the initiatives described in this chapter have
been built around an economically focused ‘modernisation development’ approach
where digital technology is seen as a key means of economic “development
spreading from the West to the rest of the world” (Zembylas 2009, p.19). In this
sense, digital technologies such as the internet and mobile telephony are utilised
as effective and efficient ‘carriers’ of cultural ideas to still-developing countries –“tools
through which traditionally impoverished nations can acquire the content, if not the
epistemologies, of Western technologists” (Ananny and Winters 2007, p.108). Here,
then, it is assumed that a range of political and economic competencies – as well as
more general cultural dispositions – can be demonstrated and disseminated through
‘advanced’ Western information and communication technologies.
In some instances, educational technology is used to advance free-market values
and sensibilities. One particular motivation for commercial interests (and the govern-
ments to which these commercial interests are nominally attached) is the extension
of markets for technologies and techniques that have reached a sufficient point of
functional stability and affordability to make them ready for deployment in less-
developed commercial territories and emerging markets. Thus, as in the case of
Cambodian mobile telephony, it is assumed that the market-driven ‘diffusion’ of
these technologies into low-income countries will allow individuals to broaden
their choices and their activities – and thereby become more self-determined and
self-empowered. From the point of view of private, commercial interests, the area
of ICT4D presents what Richard Heeks (2008, p.26) describes as “opportunities for
informatics professionals and offers new markets for ICT vendors”.