It was a busy year last year finalizing two books. This is likely why I hardly touched this blog!
One of the books was an in Focus publication, which is a series IDRC produces that compiles IDRC supported research on a particular topic for a lay audience. In this case, the topic was highlighting how the poor (defined mainly as "the bottom of the pyramid') access and use ICTs (mainly mobiles), based on a decade of (nationally representative) household surveys in over 30 countries in Asia (LIRNEasia), Africa (RIA) and LAC (DIRSI). The full text download is
here
The other publication was much more grueling to put together since it involved over 40 authors, 5 editors and thousands of reports and articles. The original idea was fairly simple: the ICT4D program at IDRC had amassed a treasure trove of grey literature and findings on issues related to ICTs and development. the problem was taht many of these were locked up in documents that weren't easily accessible or in disparate locations. Why not put it all together under main thematic headings (how do ICTs benefit education? health? governance?)? The result is a comprehensive overview of the work IDRC has undertaken in this field - a field that many feel the ICT4D@IDRC program largely shaped -.
the full text is available
here and the multi-media compendium is
here
