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Ugo Vallauri

BA&MA (University of Bologna, 2002)

ICT4D and grassroots rural community development

Supervisor: Professor Tim Unwin
Advisor: Dr Dorothea Kleine
email: u.vallauri@rhul.ac.uk 

The adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is continuously redefining the ways in which people across the world communicate, access information, produce and share knowledge. The potential for an interconnected, global society, and the reduction of the divide between societies and regions with very different access to ICT is behind the current boom of the ICT for Development (ICT4D) sector. While access to technology is a fundamental prerequisite, interventions often focus more on technological issues than on local needs or appropriate, practical solutions addressing the underlying social, environmental and gender issues facing target users. Rather than concentrating on the technological aspects of implementation, or on direct correlations between access and economic growth, my main interest in ICT4D lies at the intersection of communication, community and development.

My research plans to explore the role of ICT in redefining rural communities in extremely different social and geographical contexts: I intend to compare the contribution of ICT to the development of rural traditionally agricultural communities in Kenya to that of ICT-enabled empoverished rural areas of Italy. Despite the obvious geographical and developmental differences, I am interested in exploring the parallel efforts of communities working towards enviromentally-viable, inclusive and holistic development, harnessing ICT for the creation of new capabilities, opportunities and for the requalification of rural spatialities.

Which development? In the context of a “developed” country as Italy, I look at the contested role of ICT in what Serge Latouche defines the 'degrowth society', which is to say in the promotion of a society aware of its ecological limits, focused on human development and social inclusion and participation, and less obsessed with economical growth and consumption. While the same paradigm could at first appear outrageous when applied to a country like Kenya, striving to sustain its GDP growth, it helps in challenging the technological euphoria behind many ICT4D implementations, and in identifying the social factors behind the exploitation of the crosscutting potential of ICT.

This research is part of the activities of the ICT4D Collective.