Introduction

From 16 to 19/05 2016 Maisha Bora was represented by its Programme Coordinator at the 8th annual ICT4D Conference: “From innovation to impact: Using Technology to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (http://www.ict4dconference.org/)” in Nairobi, Kenya. This conference was a good opportunity to have a direct view of various ICT tools and methodologies to implement development projects.

The focus of the conference was on:

• ICT solutions that are having significant impact in development;
• Government ICT strategies, their alignment with the SDGs, progress towards their implementation, and challenges and experiences to date;
• The intersection between government ICT strategies and the goals and strategies of private sector businesses and civil society organizations operating in the same geographies;
• The structure of cross-sector partnerships and business models for ICT solution delivery that have shown promising results.

The expected outputs of the conference were to:

• Examine the types of changes within development sectors that are critical to achieving the SDGs and the ICT strategies that have potential to enable those changes;
• Introduce and demonstrate up-and-coming ICT solutions that are relevant to challenges within development sectors and have already shown promising results;
• Provide training  for those wishing to obtain  hands-on experience with ICT solutions  or to strengthen their skills in developing strategies and plans for solution implementation;
• Discuss partnerships and business models for implementing scalable and sustainable ICT solutions that address development challenges.

Speakers and participants came from NGOs, private ICT companies, UN agencies, Universities, as well as agencies such as, BTC, GIZ and SIDA (750 attendees in total).

Objectives of the participation of Maisha Bora

The first and main objective of the mission was to get information on ICT4D that could be applicable for our programme. It proved to be very successful, with many ideas identified. They have been selected both for direct use in the programme and for the information of the partner organisations in general, given that all have expressed interest to develop their experience and expertise in that area.

The second objective was to develop the network of the programme, which also proved successful with very promising contacts with whom direct relations can be investigated, some interesting in terms of potential contracted service providers, and some sharing interests and / or objectives with Maisha Bora, thus interesting to keep informed and to follow.

The third objective was to provide visibility of Maisha Bora in an international event linked to digitization and SDGs, which was also a success, through on one side the activation and dynamic use of our twitter account (@MaishaBoraTZA), and on the other side active participation in the discussions during the presentations and the social events, with practical sharing of experiences issued from Maisha Bora.

Stay tuned for more

More details will be provided through a case study to be published in the coming weeks. Stay tuned to our updates on open.btcctb (this site) and our twitter account (@MaishaBoraTZA) to be the first informed!

Information: mathias.lardinois@btcctb.org