ICT4D Opinion Pieces

With the aim of raising awareness and inspiring discussions on the subject of ICT4D within and beyond the Cambridge community, the Humanitarian Centre is gathering opinion pieces from professionals in the field.  As part of our ICT4D themed year, these articles will provide a forum for anyone interested in the subject to express their views and share their experience.

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Kentaro Toyama: There are no technology shortcuts to good education in International Development

Education is critical to international development. It lays the foundation for better livelihoods, health, income, and governance. Thought not entirely sufficient for the goals of development, no country has achieved widespread development objectives without an educated population.

Thus, it’s extremely tempting for anyone working in ICT and development to seek to apply ICTs to education with the belief that any attempt to support education is worthwhile.

Unfortunately, there are no technology shortcuts to good primary and secondary education. For primary and secondary schools that are underperforming or limited in resources, efforts to improve education should focus almost exclusively on better teachers and stronger administrations. It’s not that ICT can’t support education at all – rather, it’s that successful integration of ICT into educational institutions requires a set of preconditions that are almost never met in low-income or underperforming schools. Information technology, if used at all, should be targeted for certain, specific uses or limited to well-funded schools whose fundamentals are not in question.

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