How I Built an Open Source Digital Marketplace for Women in Costa Rica
Honest ICT4D case studies are the ones that admit which technology choices were forced on us by the people we were trying to serve.
I was the technical lead at...
Wow! Open Source Costs NGOs More Than Commercial Software
For 15 years, open source has functioned as something close to scripture in ICT4D.
Principles for Digital Development enshrined it as Principle 6.
Digital Public...
Hidden Climate Crisis Destroying Software Developer Productivity
The development community is obsessing over the wrong climate threat.
While everyone debates if data centers are causing rising temperatures, a groundbreaking study...
Borrow the Ceiling While Building Africa’s Artificial Intelligence Floor
On June 9, an American company shipped its most capable artificial intelligence model. Three days later, a letter from the US Commerce Department forced it offline...
Built by User: $250,000 NGO Software Procurements Are Dead
In May, two researchers at the University of Southern California published a paper describing a tool I have wanted for fifteen years: a conversational AI agent...
WHO Digital Assistant Trap: Human Guides for Bad Digital Designs
When the WHO Science Council released its 2025 report Advancing the Responsible Use of Digital Technologies in Global Health, I saw digital health practitioners...
A Great Open Source Race: China vs India vs the African Continent
Bottom Line Up Front: China now leads the world with 2.2 million active open source software developers, while India’s 2+ million contributors already overtook...
There Is No Such Thing as Free Technology Software Solutions
The dismantling of USAID and the retreat of other bilateral donors is a major blow, and we will continue to see the ripple effects in years to come.
However, this...
Building Resilient Open Source Ecosystems in the Global South
Open source software exists in the development sector to promote equity, transparency, and local ownership particularly in contexts where proprietary alternatives...
How to Break Digital Colonialism in African Software Development
The promise of technology as a vehicle for African economic development often comes wrapped in the values and norms of the Global North. Western-designed software,...
About Us
ICTworks™ is the premier resource for international development professionals committed to utilizing new and emerging technologies to magnify the intent of communities to accelerate their social and economic development.
Subscribe to our Newsletter
Enter your e-mail to get ICTworks 3x a week!:
Become an ICTworks Writer
Our team gladly accepts outside contributors for ICTworks articles. If you would like to publish an article on our website, please see our Guest Post Guidelines
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.