ICTworks by Inveneo

Recently leaders from the United Nations Foundation (UNF) and Vodafone Foundation gathered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. to discuss their projects and key lessons learned after nine years of working together in partnership.  The discussion focused on the broader implications for other public-private-partnerships (PPPs) hoping to contribute to global development.

Drawing on the “Mobilizing Development” report of the partnerships efforts, UNF CEO Kathy Calvin stressed that the partnership slowed down project implementation, at least initially, but made for greater efficiency and long-term impact.  Discussions about how to orchestrate the partnership lasted two years, and it took another two years to decide on the actual projects that the partnership would complete, she stated.

William Kennedy, a senior official from the United Nations Office for Partnerships in New York, discussed the “cultural divide” between business and development.  “I don’t think you can underestimate the effort it takes to bridge the cultural divide between a big company and a foundation.” 

One example is the business mindset to immediately scale projects as large as possible, as opposed to the development mentality of respecting local culture and adapting solutions for particular communities.  He added that what makes this partnership different from other less successful development PPPs are the relationships between the leaders on each side.  Also, they had consistent evaluations of the development projects, which was important in business culture.  Leaders were willing to address the UNF’s needs and shortcomings, and to make extra efforts to complete the work.

Members of the audience voiced questions about the “shared value” and motivations for each organization to partner with the other.  Vodafone had recently bought other telecommunications companies, becoming a global brand right before its partnership with the UN.  Before partnering with the UN on this philanthropic initiative, Vodafone was able to attach its own brand to the UN’s global appeal. 

Other UNF leaders, however, voiced their concerns with this opinion, stating that Vodafone officials took particular care to separate business and philanthropic motivations, citing their willingness to allow service providers to run mHealth initiatives set up by the program as evidence of their philanthropic motivations in their efforts with the UNF.

As for the future of PPPs hoping to meet global development goals, Calvin expressed her opinion that the age of partnerships between one private company and one public organization is coming to an end.  Instead, she said that what the UNF is learning is that alliances, made up of a variety of government, private, and non-governmental organizations, are the future of philanthropy. 

She pointed to the formation of the mHealth alliance, which stemmed from the original UNF-Vodafone partnership, but currently is able to increase scale and efficiency as an alliance with other organizations contributing to different aspects of the program.

Since the Arab Spring uprisings, human rights activists worldwide have championed the power of technology, mainly the Internet and mobile phones, as tools for democracy and change. Evidence shows that they are right, social media played a role in bringing down dictatorships in the Middle East and North Africa. But other evidence shows that technology actually often reinforces social inequalities in other instances, giving more voice to the powerful, further drowning out the meek cries of the politically weak.

Social media has been successful when all social classes unite to take down the big bad evil
dictators. The Arab Spring is the contemporary poster boy for this movement. The proletariat united, rose up, and took down the bourgeois in Tunisia and Egypt, and is still fighting in Syria, Libya, and other nations. Twitter hashtags and facebook groups were large players in mobilizing protestors, who came from all backgrounds—rich, middle-class, and poor—and simply communicated with their mobile phones to organize mass movements.

It seems logical, then, to assume that social media and technology penetration will lead to more democracy and social justice. The more blackberries in a country, the less the economic disparity. The more rural telecenters, the less political corruption. Or at least so goes the thinking.

Studies show otherwise. To the extent that inequalities between social classes are affected at all by the increase in ICT usage, they often became stronger and disparity increases. In a DFID study in 2005 on telephone use in India (Gujarat), Mozambique, and Tanzania, researchers found the most wealthy and educated people used phones more and with greater frequency, in both urban and rural areas.

Other studies show that not only do more educated and wealthier people have greater access to ICTs, they also value them more, and use their for more development related activities as opposed to entertainment than poorer populations. Furthermore, the rich and smart are far more likely to produce digital content, solidifying the stronghold of the elite in societal knowledge production.

The relationship between ICT penetration and social inequalities, then, is more complex than the Arab Spring would suggest. The difference with the Arab Spring is that the people united to take down one leader, whereas daily life features far more social classes and political opinions, halting social change, or at least considerably slowing it down. While technology helped bring social justice to entire nations, it did not eliminate social classes within the nations.
In order to decrease social inequalities in ICT usage, then, ICT designers and national policymakers should consider stipulations to favor usage of their technology by marginalized social classes.

Whether it be reducing costs to allow poorer classes to buy the product or developing voice recognition technology to engage the illiterate, extra effort will be needed to reduce the social inequality of ICT usage. Preliminary efforts by USAID’s Women in Development initiative show promise; other agencies should mimic their efforts to increase ICT usage among digital minority populations. Without these extra efforts to assist marginalized populations, ICTs will only further embed developing nations with social and economic inequalities, leading to future instability and lower quality of life.