ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development

by Tim Unwin (Editor)

ICT4D provides an authoritative account of the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in contemporary development practice. It combines theory with practical guidance – including both a conceptual framework for understanding the rapid development of ICT4D. Case studies provide detailed examples of issues and initiatives from a variety of countries and organisations. ICTs are becoming increasingly significant in improving the impacts of development practice. However, ICT4D projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America have not always been as effective as their proponents had hoped. This book explores both the successes and the challenges facing such initiatives, and provides clear recommendations for how they can be developed in more sustainable ways for the benefit of poor people and marginalised communities. ICT4D is essential reading for anyone involved in planning, designing or implementing ICT4D initiatives. N.B. Not endorsed by CIE, but can offer support material for CIE centres.

404 pages, Paperback

First published February 9, 2009

About the author

P.T.H. (Tim) Unwin is UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, Director of the ICT4D Collective and Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. He also serves as Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK, and Academic Advisor and External Examiner for the Institute of Masters of Wine.
From 2001-2004 he led the UK Prime Minister’s Imfundo: Partnership for IT in Education initiative based within the Department for International Development, and from 2007 he was Director and then Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum’s Partnerships for Education initiative with UNESCO. He was previously Head of the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London (1999–2001), and has also served as Honorary Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) (1995-1997).
He has written or edited 15 books, and more than 200 papers and other publications, including "Wine and the Vine" (Routledge, 1991), "The Place of Geography" (Longman, 1992), as well as his edited "Atlas of World Development" (Wiley, 1994) and "A European Geography" (Longman, 1998). His research has taken him to some 25 countries across the world, from Estonia to Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia to Singapore, and he has worked on subjects as diverse as the role of banknotes as expressions of national identity, and the historical-geography of viticulture and the wine trade.
Over the last decade his research has concentrated on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), focusing especially on the use of ICTs to support people with disabilities, and to empower out of school youth. His latest collaborative book, entitled simply ICT4D, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.
In 2011, he received a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, UK-China Fellowship for Excellence, and is a Visting Scholar at Peking University. He has also received a Royal Holloway Individual Teaching Award in 2006, and in 2011 received an Apple for the Teacher Award from the Student Union at Royal Holloway.