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