Localize-It: Co-designing a Community-Owned Platform

Lorini, Maria Rosa and Densmore, Melissa and Johnson, David and Hadzic, Senka and Mthoko, Hafeni and Manuel, Ganieff and Waries, Marius and van Zyl, Andre' (2019) Localize-It: Co-designing a Community-Owned Platform, Locally Relevant ICT Research, 1-15, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Abstract

One of the most difficult, yet undocumented, aspects of information and communications technologies and development (ICTD) projects is that of establishing partnerships around which researchers’ interventions will develop, be tested and grow. Constraints on timing and funding usually lead to short-term projects, in which benefits are biased towards researchers rather than the partner community. In order to avoid empty and unethical promises and to increase the potential benefit for the community, we consider the process of developing participatory partnerships in ICTD projects. The objective is to make the project community owned, allowing the participants to develop what they value as important. Using the case of a township-based wireless community content sharing network, we describe the potential and some of the challenges with this approach. The paper highlights building blocks, such as ethical behaviour and trust, to avoid recreating the dichotomy between research and practice, and building a constructive collaboration.

Item Type: Book chapter
Uncontrolled Keywords: ICTD - Partnership - Community wireless - Ownership
Subjects: Applied computing > Law, social and behavioral sciences
Date Deposited: 21 Sep 2019
Last Modified: 10 Oct 2019 15:31
URI: http://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/1336

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