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David Hollow

BSc (London), MSc (London)

‘Exploring alternative approaches to the Monitoring and Evaluation of Information Communication Technology for Education (ICT4E) initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa’

Funding: Economic and Social Research Council CASE Award
Non-Academic Partner: Cisco Systems
Supervisors: Professor Tim Unwin and Dr Michelle Selinger
Advisor: Dr Alex Loftus

Email: d.m.hollow@rhul.ac.uk

There are more than 20 million children in Africa who do not attend school. The learning of those who are able to attend is often inhibited by large class sizes, poor quality teaching and a lack of resources. In the light of this, providing children with access to good quality education has been established as a global and regional development priority, as reflected in the Millennium Development Goals and the Education For All initiative. Many initiatives are working to utilise the potential of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in enhancing education provision in Africa, with numerous stakeholders, including NGOs, government and private sector organisations, investing considerable resources in ICT for education programmes across the region.

My research aim is to provide a more effective framework for the monitoring and evaluation of these initiatives, to assess their impact in fulfilling their objective of contributing to the provision of good quality education. I have collated information from related studies, synthesising it in order to form a foundation of  resources pertaining to the monitoring and evaluation of ICT for education in Africa. Building on this, I am now investigating ways in which monitoring and evaluation can be conducted in environments where comprehensive baseline studies are not available, considering the potential for participatory, continuous and internal monitoring which focuses on process and consensus decision making regarding the identification of critical indicators. This focus stems from a conviction that there are significant weaknesses inherent in popular conceptions of what monitoring and evaluation should entail – namely the problems of isolating educational impact and the emphasis on external identification of priorities and targets which may or may not be of relevance to stakeholders.

Having completed initial field research studies in Zambia and Ghana, I am working to develop multi-stakeholder partnerships in Malawi, Ethiopia and Kenya in order to explore innovative evaluation methods whilst simultaneously reflecting on the processes that are taking place. My research forms part of the ICT4D collective, a group of 12 PhD candidates within the Geography department at Royal Holloway investigating how different aspects of ICTs can be utilised to be of maximum benefit for poor and marginalised individuals and communities across the world (www.ict4d.org.uk).