Description:

Description: There are growing efforts and funding spent by governments, technical community, international development organizations, and civil society to provide ICT-based initiatives in education, health, financial inclusion, and agriculture to low-income rural communities in the Global South. Even though some of these initiatives are offered free of charge to low-income rural communities, these communities still face challenges in accessing and benefiting from these services. The existing evidence suggest that rural, low-income populations live within complex systems of disadvantages and, as a result, ICT-based initiatives are likely to grapple with not just with financial barriers but also social and cultural ones. This panel will serve as an opportunity to discuss unique experiences and challenges rural communities face in accessing and using ICT-based initiatives in the areas of education, health, financial inclusion, and agriculture, and some of the strategic local solutions found effective to address them. To achieve its objectives, this panel will bring together project implementers and local practitioners with extensive knowledge and experience on ICT-based initiatives in women empowerment, education, health, financial inclusion, and agriculture in Africa and Asia. The panelists will share their initiatives as well as their solutions to create an enabling ecosystem for promoting relevant and sustainable ICT-based initiatives in rural contexts. The panel discussions are expected to generate insights which will provide practitioners and policy makers with valuable guidance about what might (or might not) be appropriate design for interventions and what policy options are needed to sustain these respectively. Through real-world examples, the panel will also show how poorly designed ICT-based initiatives fail to improve the lives of rural communities as well as best practices to improve the impact and outcomes of ICT-based initiatives, and the pragmatic trade-offs that they entail. Agenda: First, the moderator will provide background information on rural connectivity initiatives, the barriers and opportunities, driven from evidence-base research of 120 case studies around the world. Then each speaker will introduce their ICT-based initiative that aim to serve rural communities, the barriers to meaningful access by rural communities, and local solutions they have developed to address these challenges. Next, the moderator will summarize the lessons learnt and key takeaways from the discussion, and lead the discussion on how policy can facilitate the meaningful access of ICT-based initiatives by rural connectivities to ensure they benefit from these initiatives. Finally, the panel will open up to the floor for questions from the audience and online participants. Speakers: Sarbani Banerjee, GramMarg, community network/women entrepreneurship initiative in India Mary Olushoga, Founder of African Women Power Network, agriculture initiative in Nigeria Raj Poudel, Founder of Amakomaya, mobile health initiative in Nepal Harmik Singh, Zaya Learning Labs, education initiative in India Michael Spencer, Founder of SmartMoney, mobile money initiative in Tanzania and Uganda Onsite moderator: Christopher Yoo, University of Pennsylvania