The shape of ICT4D to come

ABSTRACT

This editorial advances the point that a dialectic of oppression and liberation, implicit in a multiplicity of objects of Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) research, qualifies as a distinctive feature of the present and future of the ICT4D field. This point builds on Qureshi’s argument that the notion of ‘digital transformation for development’ plays a twofold role, at the intersection between enhancement of human capital and intensification of oppression over structurally silenced groups. First I illuminate the traits of a dialectic of oppression and liberation, as they are reflected in research debates that the ICT4D field has recently engaged. I then reflect on how the papers in this issue portray this dialectic, at the same time joining long-standing themes of ICT4D research.

KEYWORDS:

• ICT4D
• digital transformation
• human development
• oppression
• liberation

1. Introduction

In her latest editorial for this Journal, Sajda Qureshi illuminates the ambivalence of the overarching notion of digital transformation for development. Defining the term with Heeks et al. (2022) as ‘radical change in development processes and structures enabled by digital systems,’ Qureshi (2023) shows the double-edged nature of the same concept: the change that comes with digital transformation can be key to enhancements of human capital, defined as ‘the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives’ (World Bank, 2020; cited in Qureshi, 2023, p. 2). But under the same social and historical circumstances, digital transformation can turn into a tool for oppression of the very same people that it promises to uplift. A continuous interplay of oppression and resistance is implicit in the processes of digital transformation that Qureshi (2023) refers to.

The same dialectic is illustrated by multiple instantiations of what are widely considered as objects of present-day ICT4D research. Two such instantiations are particularly timely. Among the many objects of digitization in the current times are, in the first place, people’s identities: digital identity has been defined as the conversion of human identities into machine-readable data, a conversion that makes such data amenable to digital legibility and administration (Masiero & Bailur, 2021). Digital identity systems translate into digital terms people’s identification, but also their authentication through determined service portals and authorization to access them (Nyst et al., 2016, pp. 8–9): by doing so, such systems promise to include all those entitled to given services, while at the same time barring access for non-entitled people. Such a promise is functional to the orthodoxy of digital identity for development, which sees digital ID schemes as functional to improving social assistance for the digitally identified (Bhatia et al., 2021; Madon & Schoemaker, 2021; Martin & Taylor, 2021a; Schoemaker et al., 2021).

Ample evidence shows, however, the problematicity implicit in the development promise of digital identity systems. Multiple cracks have opened in the orthodoxy stated above: made conditional to digital authentication, access to basics such as food, healthcare, and social protection have been denied to non-authenticated users, even when genuinely entitled (Khera, 2017; Muralidharan et al., 2020). The same injustice is being inscribed in algorithmic systems designed to discriminate entitled from non-entitled recipients, resulting in exclusion errors which have dire consequences on people’s lives (López, 2021; Sambhav et al., 2024). The interoperability of databases has made asylum seekers searchable across police authorities in the EU, conflating care and policing (Martins et al., 2022; Pelizza, 2020), with the Western Balkans recently resorting to a similar system (Border Violence Monitoring Network, 2024). The opacity of state governments on how user data, stored in digital ID databases, have been used to grant or deny essential services has generated mistrust in recipients, to the point of depicting the state as ‘distant, opaque and seamful’ (Chaudhuri, 2021). All in all, digital ID systems arguably present the same dialectic envisaged by Qureshi (2023): they can be key to human capital, as they are connected to an orthodoxy centered on uplifting the poor and vulnerable. But their connection to exclusion and surveillance has made them participative into oppression, ultimately resulting into the allegation of participating into violation of basic human rights (Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice, 2022).

A similar discourse can be made for digital humanitarianism, which can be defined as the assemblage of processes, means, and technologies through which the practice of humanitarian work is digitized (Akbari & Masiero, 2023). The orthodoxy of digital ID for development can be partially transposed into humanitarianism: people in dire need of assistance, including asylum seekers and refugees, can be given a unique identifier which matches them with their entitlements under humanitarian schemes. But, as noted in Lyon (2007), the same technologies of care can produce logics of control and policing: the Eurodac database of asylum seekers in the EU has been made interoperable with EU member state police forces, enabling the use of the same database for crime investigation (Martins et al., 2022; Pelizza, 2020). The registration of Kenyan nationals in the refugee database by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has denied the same people the ability to receive a national ID card, with all the rights connected to it (Haki na Sheria, 2021; Weitzberg, 2020). Rohingya refugees, whose biometric data were collected in analog form by the UNHCR in Bangladesh, have had the same data shared with the Myanmar government without their meaningful consent (Human Rights Watch, 2021; The Engine Room, 2023). All these cases show the inherent ambivalence of digital humanitarianism: it can enhance human capital through assistance of vulnerable people, but it can also, with its very same tools, result in further oppression.

This editorial offers a conceptual lens in which the dialectic of oppression and liberation, implicit in these examples and articulated by Qureshi (2023), is the distinctive feature of the shape of ICT4D to come. The notion of liberation, theorized in Freire’s (1982) Pedagogy of the Oppressed as functional to freedom from injustice, is integral to the route along which ICT4D research is developing. Freire (1982) conceives liberation as a process of awareness-building of the causes of structural asymmetries, a process that, through the development of critical consciousness, enables the oppressed to exert agency on their own situation (Poveda & Roberts, 2018). Placed into a present-day context of digital development, Freire’s notion of liberation is a theoretical guiding light in mapping the evolution of the ICT4D field.

Our field’s acronym – ICT for Development – speaks about its founding assumptions: as noted in Brown and Grant (2010), for in ICT4D is a declaration of intent to leverage ICTs in the pursuit of development. As I argued elsewhere (Masiero, 2022), today’s research in the field reflects a crisis of core assumptions associated to an idea of ‘development’ as a carrier of prosperity; to unquestioned trust in the potential for ICTs to spur development; and to the meaningfulness of the term ‘developing countries,’ widely used from early writings of the field. In a world where ‘development’ has been associated to colonial thinking (Escobar, 2011) and the term ‘developing countries’ has been exposed as a bearer of the same logics (Qureshi, 2015), doing ICT4D research means facing adverse digital incorporation (Heeks, 2022), which implies looking into the harmful, rather than just the positive, effects of being incorporated into digital systems.

It is in a scenario of adverse digital incorporation that the dialectic of digital oppression and liberation described here becomes alive. Digitally induced oppression, mirrored in the examples of digital ID and humanitarianism made here, clashes against the positive assumptions that characterized the early days of the field. And at the same time, communities worldwide take up the same digital tools to enact dynamics of resistance to such oppressive forces, dynamics of which the notion of data activism (Milan & Van der Velden, 2016) is a powerful illustration. Defined as ‘the range of sociotechnical practices that interrogate the fundamental paradigm shift brought about by datafication’ (Milan & Van der Velden, 2016, p. 57), data activism underscores practices where data are leveraged to combat oppression, at the same time contributing to build mechanisms of solidarity among people (Milan & Treré, 2020).

In this editorial, I first articulate several themes that illuminate the dialectics of digital oppression and liberation, characterizing them as agenda items for the present and future of ICT4D research. I then introduce the eight papers in this issue, illustrating both their continuities with long-standing themes of ICT4D and their connection to the new agenda unfolding for the field.

2. Oppression and liberation in ICT4D research

The last International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Joint Working Conference, held in Hyderabad in December 2023, was co-organized by the IFIP 9.4 Working Group on the Implications of Information and Digital Technologies for Development, which constitutes a long-established space for discussion of ICT4D research. The conference was illustrative of the widened scope that ICT4D research has acquired in recent times. Co-organized with the IFIP 8.2 Working Group on Information Systems and Organisations, the conference featured relatively novel debates along with long-standing ones: these stem, among others, from works on climate change and sustainability (Brooks et al., 2023; Hovorka & Auerbach, 2023); civic technology and responsible data (Khene, 2023; Zhou et al., 2023), data visualization and digital surveillance (Sheombar & Skelton, 2023; Wyers et al., 2023). The conference was a very important occasion to become exposed to recent trends in ICT4D research, and to realize its increasing compenetration with topics of critical data studies (Masiero, 2022).

The growth of the thematic spectrum of ICT4D research was one of the most central take-homes from the Hyderabad gathering, and one that future symposia, including the upcoming IFIP 9.4 Conference to be held in Cape Town in May 2024, may reflect. I found the dialectics of oppression and liberation – as reflected through digital systems – as a strong common denominator of the debates undertaken. Among the themes discussed, several reflect relatively novel, important topics for the future of ICT4D:

Climate justice. A focus on environment and sustainability has featured prominently in the recent days of the field, with Andersson and Hatakka (2023) explicitly framing it as an object of research in the light of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). An apolitical understanding of sustainability, viewing climate emergencies as a sheer ‘societal challenge,’ is however contrasted with a discourse on climate justice, where – as in Fraser (2008) – not only the what, but the who and why of injustice are placed at the center of attention. In introducing the notion of a critical climate justice, Sultana (2022) points the attention both on the structural drives of climate (ir)responsibility, and on the disproportionate burden suffered by systematically marginalized communities as climate emergencies keep unfolding.

With the participation of technology in the same emergencies, ICT4D research is called to engage the topic both in terms of climate technologies, and of technologies that, while not directly oriented to influencing climate, are otherwise connected to climate justice. For instance, notes Weitzberg (2023), it is unusual to see tools of biometric recognition listed as ‘climate technologies.’ And yet, with their ability to recognize individuals based on their biological features, biometrics are associated to how people may access ‘resources, services and freedoms that are likely to become scarcer and more unequally distributed in the face of ecological, environmental and socioeconomic crises’ (Weitzberg, 2023). Neither the political drives of climate injustice, nor the implications of digital technologies in the same phenomenon can be ignored by the present days of ICT4D, where oppression – substantiated in the injustices denounced by Sultana (2022) – is encountered by the liberation tactics initiated, for instance, by climate justice movements (Simpson & Pizarro Choy, 2023).

Digital surveillance. Presented at the IFIP Joint Working Conference 2023, the work of Sheombar and Skelton (2023) invites the reader to follow the ‘breadcrumb trails’ of surveillance technology exports to Africa. Surveillance technology is defined by EuroMed Rights (2023) as encompassing ‘any digital device, software or system that gathers information on an individuals’ activities or communications.’ Sheombar and Skelton (2023) bring forward two central points: first, it is not anymore possible to detach ICT4D research from surveillance studies, and from the fast-growing body of literature where technology is studied in the light of its pervasive, and harmful, surveillance consequences. Works on the implications of data visualization for LGBTQ+ communities (van Zyl & McLean, 2021; Wyers et al., 2023) and on the risks implied by digital border management for surveilled migrants (EuroMed Rights, 2023; Martins et al., 2022) reach to core implications of technology in dynamics that, justified with logics of securitization, result in the direct production of harm on people (Statewatch, 2023).

Second, the study of digitally mediated surveillance cannot, or cannot anymore, take place in isolation from that of how private vendors, commercializing and selling surveillance technology, are implicated in the same dynamics (Roberts et al., 2023). And yet, the work of Sheombar and Skelton (2023) is one of the few to provide detail on the topic: in a related effort Roberts et al. (2021a) map the supply of surveillance technologies in six African countries, with clear insights on the actors implied in such a fast-growing market. At a time when the digital identity solutions market is forecasted by researchers to grow from US$23.3 billion in 2021 to US$49.5 billion by 2026 (Research & Markets, 2021, cited in Martin & Taylor, 2021b), Polito and Alaimo (2023) note the prominence of digital identity products within border management: they note how ‘a handful of foreign private actors have implemented biometric solutions in more than half of African countries,’ envisaging specific patterns of technology commercialization. With its prominence in the making of border management (Statewatch, 2023), the role of the private sector has become crucial to ICT4D research concerning surveillance.

Digital rights. In defining data justice as ‘fairness in the way people are made visible, represented and treated as a result of their production of digital data,’ Taylor (2017) notes that, just as an idea of justice is needed to establish the rule of law, an idea of data justice serves to ‘determine ethical paths’ in a digital world. In a similar logic, a digital world requires the establishment and upholding of digital rights, defined by Roberts et al. (2021b) as human rights in online spaces. Digital rights include ‘the right to privacy, freedom of opinion and speech, freedom of information and communication, gender rights, and the right to freedom from violence’ (Roberts et al., 2021b, p. 11): as noted by the civil society organization Access Now, violations of digital rights are often epitomic of other forms of oppression, occurring across aspects of the public sphere (Access Now, 2023). In its latest yearly report on the matter, Access Now recorded 187 Internet shutdowns in 35 countries, with 48 shutdowns coinciding with human rights abuses in 14 countries in 2022 alone (Access Now, 2023). Internet shutdowns still constitute one of the harshest, blanket forms of digital rights violations, causing, enabling, or covering up collective harm that makes digital rights a priority on the agenda of ICT4D research.

Debates around climate justice, digital surveillance and digital rights are only three among the many topical foci featured in present-day ICT4D research. And at the same time, they find their importance in bringing to light dynamics that affect people’s lived experience of incorporation into digital systems, producing the adverse effects that Heeks (2022) theorizes. To such adverse effects, resistant dynamics are opposed: the activist work of organizations which expose Internet shutdowns and other digital rights violations, as well as the work of civil society movements to restore the rights and entitlements lost by digitally identified people, show instantiations of data activism that channels resistance through digital means. More instances of such resistance are illustrated in this issue’s papers.

3. Papers in this issue

Dynamics of digital oppression and liberation, with the practical implications connected to them, play out differently in the papers in this issue comprises of. Below I illustrate them for each of the papers published in this issue, in combination with their continuities with long-standing themes of ICT4D research.

In ‘Strategic Information Systems implementation at a bank in an emerging economy: implications for strategic enterprise capabilities and societal development,’ Ferede et al. (2023) study how financial institutions in emerging economies use strategic information systems (SIS) to transform IT investments in enterprise capability. Using the IS capability model, they elaborate on how an Ethiopian bank builds strategic benefits in the context of systemically constrained resources. The authors’ in-depth fieldwork with the bank executives details the challenges of SIS implementation, exacerbated by a context of structural resource limitation: at the same time, the bank moves beyond clear and formal SIS, to perform implementation through creative and adaptive solutions. The paper is epitomic of how creative processes can act as a route to liberation, introducing new insights into capability-based ICT4D research.

In ‘Investigating the direct and indirect effects of Information and Communication Technology on economic growth in the emerging economies: role of financial development, foreign direct investment, innovation, and institutional quality,’ Behera et al. (2023) explore the direct and indirect effects of ICT on economic growth, through its interaction with institutional quality, financial development, R&D expenditures and foreign direct investment (FDI) for 13 emerging economies. They find that ICT use has a positive effect on economic growth, and the interaction effects of ICT with financial development and R&D expenditures are favorable to economic growth. The paper joins an established body of literature on ICTs and economic growth, and at the same time innovates on it: ICT, the paper finds, does not act synergistically with institutional quality and FDI. The paper frames financial inclusion as a route to socio-economic development, a point that the fintech literature has both sustained and problematized (Jain & Gabor, 2020; Lagna & Ravishankar, 2022).

In ‘Does Digital Payment Induce Economic Growth in Emerging Economies? The Mediating Role of Institutional Quality, Consumption expenditure, and Bank Credit,’ Patra and Sethi (2023) analyze the direct and interactive effect of digital payments through institutional quality, consumption expenditure, and bank credit on economic growth for 25 countries. They find that a rise in digital payments positively impacts economic growth, a finding whose immediate policy implication may be to find routes to enhancing digital payments in the banking infrastructures of low-resource contexts. Such an implication is to be again seen within the context of recent works on critical data studies: on the one hand, exclusion from digital payments may have dire effects on people’s ability to be visible to the state, accessing their rights and entitlements (Martin & Taylor, 2021a). On the other, incorporation in digital payments is not without risk: as recent research finds, the surveillance effects of mobile money platforms include mandates for identifying customers prior to service provision, with direct risks for privacy and security of customers (Donovan & Park, 2022; Martin, 2019).

In ‘Jamming to map creative scenes and practices,’ Anja Venter (2023) experiments with ‘jamming’ to understand how people participate in creative scenes in Cape Town. Drawing the notion of ‘jamming’ from musical improvization, where instrumentalists play together in a social gathering to generate new material or simply as a communal practice session, she transposes the same technique in qualitative research, to study how poor and working-class creatives connect into the space of creative scenes. The notion of ‘jamming’ arguably contains one viable alternative to the canons of mainstream qualitative research: it underscores the importance of improvization in understanding field dynamics, framing the researcher not merely as a listener, but as an active agent of improvization. The practice of ‘jamming’ arises as a route to liberation, at the same time proposing an important methodological innovation in ICT4D research.

In ‘Reducing market separation through e-commerce: cases of Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) firms in India,’ Angmo et al. (2023) study three BoP firms in India to examine whether the adoption of e-commerce has helped reduce systematic differences between producers and consumers. They find that e-commerce has enabled firms to decrease the spatial, temporal, and informational gaps, and that e-commerce adoption is an effective market-based solution for BoP firms. The findings join an established body of literature on e-commerce at the BoP, at the same time innovating on it: unlike other gaps, they find indeed that the effect on the financial gap is yet to be determined. With online commerce taking novel digitized forms, evolved especially in the light of a novel discourse around digital platforms for development (Bonina et al., 2021), unknown in the dawn of e-commerce literature, the paper substantially contributes to the evolution of the literature on the topic.

In ‘Smart phone usage for women’s empowerment to respond against domestic violence in Bangladesh,’ Touhida Tasnima and Md Syed (2023) research the potential of smartphone usage in relation to women’s empowerment to respond to domestic violence in Bangladesh. Drawing on qualitative data, they find that access to smartphones has benefitted women for their personal and professional developments, also enabling access to information about violence prevention in the country. However, substantial constraints are found in women's belief in patriarchal norms, as well as the lack of help-seeking agencies and, when present, of trust in them. While strongly representing a dialectic of gender oppression and digitally-enabled routes to liberation, the paper joins the existing body of literature on ICTs and gender, providing field insights that strongly contribute to its enrichment.

In ‘Readily available technologies in low-resource communities: a review and synthesis,’ Dang et al. (2023) present a scoping literature review on the role of readily available technologies in low-resource communities. The literature review enables them to propose a framework connecting readily available technologies, actors and contexts to study how practitioners use readily available technologies in pursuing community and economic development. The paper innovates on ICT4D literature by unpacking the notion of readily available technologies: this notion conceptualizes a relevant object in our field, whose adoption and use intersect multiple aspects of development strategies across low-resource contexts. But a further innovation is provided by the framework, which, through its identification of different types of readily available technologies, invites the researchers’ thinking about the potential of such tools for different dimensions of development.

In ‘Economic spillovers from Cloud Computing: evidence from OECD countries,’ Katz and Jung (2023) estimate the impact of cloud computing on economic performance. Drawing on a multi-equation model in which cloud computing is complementary with broadband, they suggest positive effects from cloud adoption on economic outcomes in terms of efficiencies and cost reductions. One key finding relates to how the sector benefitting from the largest economic impact is information and communications, followed by manufacturing, while no impact is detected for the transportation sector. The paper joins the large body of literature on economic spillovers: and again, it innovates on such literature, by estimating cloud economic spillovers on an aggregated basis and drawing implications for development.

All in all, papers in this issue present important innovations on themes that have been of long-standing interest for ICT4D research. Such innovations are theoretical, such as the use of Bartels’ theory of market separation to study BoP markets in Angmo et al. (2023), and methodological, such as the use of ‘jamming’ as a research methodology by Venter (2023). But their thematic component, reminding of the interplay of oppression and resistance envisaged by Qureshi (2023), directly feeds into the shape that ICT4D research may take in the years to come. It is within the dialectics of digital oppression and liberation, and in the way people experience it, that much novel ICT4D research participates.

Acknowledgements

This editorial is dedicated to Sajda Qureshi, whose passionate, committed leadership of over 20 years has made this Journal the cornerstone of ICT4D research that it is today. As the new Editor-In-Chief, I am extremely honored and pleased to follow into her footprints.

Sajda Qureshi, Giulio Coppi, Caroline Khene, Kari Koskinen, and Anand Sheombar are gratefully acknowledged for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this editorial. The research community at the Special Interest Group in Global Development (SIG GlobDev) and the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP 9.4) communities are also gratefully acknowledged, for inspiring and nurturing the debates that this editorial deals with.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).