At the Web2forDev conference, everyone has been saying that it’s not about the technology – it’s about the people. It’s about what people can do with the technology – and what ‘mash-ups’ of tools and approaches are appropriate and really working.

I came to this conference to find people who are really doing participatory web – not just using the technology, but facilitating real empowerment and positive change. Our plan at IIED is to co-publish with CTA a special issue of the Participatory Learning and Action series on participatory web for development – so I needed to find real examples.

Well, yesterday I was lucky enough to see Ednah Karamagi give her presentation, Enhancing Knowledge Sharing in the Rural Community through Adoption of Web 2.0 tools.  

I felt like I had found a magic bean.  Ednah works for a Ugandan NGO, Busoga Rural Open Source & Development (BROSDI). It’s a not-for-profit organisation that works with government and civil society in improving rural livelihoods. Within BROSDI is a project called Collecting and Exchanging of Local Agriculture Content (CELAC).                       

Both BROSDI and CELAC project make extensive use of Web 2.0 approaches. But it’s a real combination of Web 2.0 and grassroots participation. For example, CELAC is almost entirely populated with locally generated content. As Ednah says, ‘We are sharing information from our great grandfathers that we are losing in our generation.’  

Essentially, it’s a great combination of the online – Blogs, Google Maps, Wikis, online documentation, chatrooms – and the offline – a weekly mobile phone SMS farmers’ information service, village knowledge brokers, monthly farmer forum meetings, village meetings, radio, and hard copy documentation. They are even developing an e-learning tool for primary school children. 

Ednah is candid about the challenges they face. ‘The Internet is expensive, and needs power,’ she says. ‘It’s a problem in a country where access to electricity is intermittent.’ There is also the issue that people need to change their attitudes towards sharing information, rather than ‘hoarding’ it. And sometimes the technology doesn’t work – and is abandoned. ‘We did have a Wiki,’ Ednah says. ‘But the staff rejected it, as it was too complicated. But we plan to have a new Wiki for developing training material so that we can all comment and add to it.’ 

Ednah was a real inspiration. There was a long list of real life examples – not just the different technologies – but how the technology has made a real, positive change to people’s lives. My favourite was Cissy and her turkey farm. Ednah told us, ‘She learnt how to rear turkeys on SMS!’

This morning, I overheard Dr Hansjorg Neun of CTA talking to Ednah Karamagi. He asked Ednah, ‘Why do you think you have been so successful?’

Ednah’s reply was, ‘You have to use as many methods as you can to reach your community.’

Well, BROSDI are doing that in style. Let’s hope they continue to get the support they need to keep this pioneering organisation going from strength to strength.    

Web 2.0 is often claimed to be “the social web”, be “made by/for people”, and “empowering” them. But for whom do Web 2.0 technologies really promising empowerment?

The continuous rise and fall of “development darlings” shows that the latest fashion is always the most attractive one – until reality catches up with it. This blog has already featured a number of vital debates on the limits of Web 2.0 for development. This short comment argues that in theory Web 2.0 indeed carries several exciting promises for the empowerment of people in the South – but that they do not automatically translate into positive empowerment outcomes. Indeed, we can imagine a tempting array of potential social change driven by Web 2.0. Some possible dimensions are:

• Web 2.0 driven social movements: Many web 2.0 technologies (especially blogs) are great potential networking tools; they integrate evidence, opinions, and exchange. These ingredients are fundamental for the formation of social movements. They may lead to the emergence of new collective actors and new types of development narratives that influence public opinion more effectively than ever before. Empowerment dimension: Collective action as power.
• Web 2.0 driven citizen journalism. Web 2.0 media like blogs, wikis and video/image portals (YouTube, Flickr) offer lower technical barriers to publish individual content than conventional websites. These media tend to be less hierarchical and exclusive and thus allow a new freedom of agenda-setting and self-representation beyond the hegemony of the state. They enable broader audiences to engage in development discourses at local, national and global levels. Wider access to the public sphere may even improve accountability of national governments, international donors and private enterprises. Empowerment dimension: Voice as power.
• More equitable knowledge distribution. Online publications such as wikis, blogs and even YouTube offer new ways of accessing information and knowledge beyond conventional, hierarchical, exclusive, costly and sometimes inappropriate media such as printed encyclopaedia and scholarly journals. The yet unprecedented potential for user-customisation, for instance through RSS, may free people from their role as passive consumers without choice. Empowerment dimension: Knowledge as power.

That, at least, is the theory. Unfortunately the automatic equation “Web 2.0 = empowerment and social change” is simplistic – because it misses the need for enabling factors. It is often forgotten to recognise that information and communication systems are embedded in social systems. ICT are likely to be a mirror of social reality. Hence, the success of ICT – and Web 2.0 in particular – depend on a number of socio-political factors: Not only on access to ICT infrastructure, but more fundamentally on the right to education and organisation, on institutionalised freedom of speech and equitable gender roles. Conventional empowerment theories often equate empowerment with “having access” – to decision-making, to social services, to markets. Indeed, improving connectivity is one of the key minimum conditions for the success of Web 2.0 in the South. Internet/telephone connections and a reliable electricity infrastructure will have to grow into rural areas if more people are to have access to ICT.

But will broader internet access be sufficient to transform social orders in the North and South towards more empowerment of the marginalised? Will it be able to change gender roles that often constraint women from participating in public life and voicing their opinions? Will it allow people to form civil society groups and speak up without fear of punishment? Will it equip them with the knowledge of how to address their desired target audiences, and how to be heard in global discourses? Will it force policy-makers in the North and South to acknowledge voices from the virtual grassroots? Progressive empowerment theories like Foucault’s remind us that power is everywhere within social orders – that the way we are governed decides what we think or not think and how we act or not act. Deepening access to ICT will hence not be enough to make the empowerment hopes of Web 2.0 come true. Wikipedia’s empowerment reality, for instance, is disappointing: Instead of finally achieving a “better” representation of African issues on the web (including politics, history, arts, science) now governments and the private sector have the power to control how they are represented on “independent” media – as Virgil Griffith’s recently launched Wikiscanner reveals.

Real empowerment is about transforming social orders, not just about technical change. Web 2.0 indeed has some potential for being an effective driver of social change in the South – but unless we fully acknowledge the complexity of enabling factors it is likely to end up as yet another over-enthusiastically praised “development darling”. Then, Web 2.0 may be a “social web” without people.