A WEB-BASED REGISTRY OF APPROPRIATE IT

This continues my series of postings on Jeffrey James’ book, Bridging the Digital Divide.


James calls for a registry of information technologies appropriate to the needs of developing countries. I would note that this book was published this year, but was probably written primarily in 2000 and 2001. Thus it may be somewhat outdated by events.

I would note that the ICT for Development page on the Development Gateway now has more than 5000 resources, including many of hardware, software, wireless, etc.

The Development Gateway has a Research Center in India, which plans to establish an ICT for Development site. It will be interesting to see if it meets some more of the need James has identified.

James is quite positive about VITA, as am I, but with the departure of Gary Garriott, the VITASat program is not what it was. But James seems to think it is the only organization dealing in appropriate information and communications technology. infoDev has been in that business since 1996, and is now going more into communication about ICT for Development. The International Institute for Communications in Development is another worthy organization. So too is the UNESCO Observatory of the Information Society a worthy program. The ITU has a useful site on “Technologies Infrastructure and Applications”.