ICT for rural areas

ICT has been recognized as a powerful tool for a country’s development. The focus of the study is to identify the current level of ICT adoption in the rural areas, the challenges the local agencies faced in delivering public services, and to recommend next course of action to improve the adoption of ICT. Twenty-two villages were involved in the study with total of 922 respondents. Fieldworks were carried out involving questionnaires and interviews. The findings show that ICT adoption in the rural communities is still very minimal and at its early stage.

This project utilized emerging technologies such as mobile broadband videoconferencing along with web-based software and materials (http://www.cyscience.com.au) to enhance the provision of science and mathematics in rural and remote schools in Northern Queensland. The paper tracks the role of technology in the development and implementation of the CY Science project. It will explore how technology enabled a successful classroom project to evolve into a regional program and beyond.

Democratic governance mechanisms are becoming more receptive to the potentials of information communication technologies (ICT) to achieve good governance in its implementation. This application of ICTs for governance is covered under the umbrella term of ‘e-governance’. E-Governance is expected to maximise citizen satisfaction by not just improving responsiveness of public service delivery mechanisms but also by augmenting citizens’ participation in governance mechanisms.

Right to Education is the primary right of every citizen of India. According to the Article 45 of Indian Constitution the basic elementary education must be provided to all the children up to the age of fourteen years. Even after 64 years of independence some States in India are still struggling to achieve Universal enrolment, retention and quality education. Schools in rural areas are promoted to raise the level of education and literacy in rural India. The main aim of running these types of schools in India is to increase the rate of literacy in rural areas.

This paper examines two parallel case studies to promote remote medical consultation in Ghana. These projects, initiated independently by different researchers in different organizations, both deployed ICT solutions in the same medical community in the same year. The Ghana Consultation Network currently has over 125 users running a Web-based application over a delay-tolerant network of servers. OneTouch MedicareLine is currently providing 1700 doctors in Ghana with free mobile phone calls and text messages to other members of the medical community.

The Adi tribal community inhabit the Siang river valley and foothills of the Eastern Himalayas of NorthEast India. Most farmers are smallholders, and practice jhum (slashandburn) cultivation. Together with difficult mountainous terrain, regular natural calamities, irregular monsoon rainfall, etc., this means agriculture is only for subsistence. 40 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and agricultural productivity has been among the lowest in India.

Higher frequency and diffusion of climate fluctuations are likely to produce more severe and frequent droughts and floods, which are the main causes of short-term fluctuations in food production in semiarid and sub-humid areas. Taking this into account, it is crucial to identify information and communication systems that the farmers need in order to cope with the new conditions. This paper aims to provide more information and knowledge on the role of information and communication technologies for community-based adaptation to climate change.

The goal of ‘teacher quality for all’ is proving difficult to achieve in many countries, especially in rural areas, yet teacher quality is a key determinant of students’ participation rates and achievement levels. It also affects the attainment of social justice in terms of equity in educational quality for students. One contributor to teacher quality is professional development though limits on its availability and quality create inequity for many teachers.

Liberia is a country emerging from years of protracted and devastating civil conflict. Left without any fixed-line telephone infrastructure, it relies solely on the mobile phone for telephony. This study investigates the usage of mobile phones in this immediate post-conflict setting. In particular, it adopts the uses and gratifications approach to media research, giving focus to both instrumental and intrinsic motivations for use. 85 mobile phone users were surveyed and experts from two major service providers and the industry regulator were interviewed.

The objective of this study is to provide an overview of the current trend in m-Agri Apps development and to answer the question of how to improve information provisioning to smallholder farmers. It also aims to translate this knowledge into success factors, weaknesses, and opportunities for global cooperation and explore ways to share expertise on entrepreneurship in the domain of agro, food and ICT, and to identify possibilities to catalyse the development of mobile applications in smallholder agriculture.