The Communication Initiative
Development action with informed and engaged societies
The Communication Initiative

After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. 

Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future. 

On the transfer, co-founder Victoria Martin expressed her pleasure to see this work continue under Wits' leadership, knowing that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction. 

As Wits, we honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades and look forward building from that strong base. This includes co-founders Warren Feek (1953-2024) and Victoria Martin as well as La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA), which continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com with links to The CI Global site. We are also eager to forge new partnerships and entertain new ideas as we consider how best to contribute to social and behaviour change in our rapidly evolving environment.

If you are joining the International Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Summit in Panama, please join Wits and CILA on Monday, 22 June, to share your thoughts and suggestion for the relaunch of the Communication Initiative. We will be in Pacifica 5 from 12-1:25 for the Refuel, Reflect, and Renew Lunch Series: The Communication Initiative: celebrating a driving force for Communication for Social Change and the way forward. We will reflect on the legacy of Warren Feek and family in creating the Communication Initiative, consider the contributions of CI over the years and then turn our attention towards the future in this dynamic session. 

If you are unable to join us in Panama, we still want to hear from you. Please contribute your thoughts by following this link: https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026 or reaching out to ci_surveys@commint.com. 

You can also follow the QR Code:

 https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026

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Top 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D Projects FAIL

2 comments

Author

  • Clint Rogers

This video features interviews of development practitioners from African countries at the Information and Communication Technologies Summit held in Winneba, Ghana, in August 2010. The interviews seek to understand why commonly held beliefs about information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) are actually erroneous and provide 7 reasons while ICT4D often fails in the field.

Top 7 reasons for ICT4D failure:

1. ICT4D ideas/results are not directly connected to improving end user economic conditions;
2. ICT4D ideas/results are not relevant to local context, strengths, needs;
3. ICT4D ideas/results are not consistent with an understanding of infrastructure capability;
4. Budget planners underestimate maintenance costs and related issues;
5. Projects are supported only by short-term grants;
6. Planners are not looking at the whole system;
7. Projects are built on assumptions unconnected to participant input or are organisation-centric rather than planned for local realities.

Examples from the video:
#3 - "Dust, heat, lack of electrical energy for air conditioners are all issues that impact any project bent on bringing computers to rural areas. Gifts are good, but when they are dumped on people, even disposal becomes a problem."

#6 - "Giving plumbers mobile phones does not increase the number of actual plumbing jobs; it may direct the jobs to plumbers with phones, driving other plumbers out of business."

#7 - "It is essential to look at the strengths of the people you are working with rather than assuming that they have nothing to offer - look at the amazing interventions that people do locally just because they need things to work rather than simply import ideas from the Global North."


The video ends with a series of questions based on the 7 failures of ICT4D that development workers and funders could ask themselves before designing their next ICT4D project in order to overcome some the weaknesses and/or reasons behind past failures.

Publication Date
Languages

English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, and Italian.

Source

Email from Dr. Clint Rogers to The Communication Initiative on August 4 2011.

Comments

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Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 08/09/2011 - 06:54 Permalink

The seven arguments describe basic issues that are worth-while to be reminded of.

Quite a few of the arguments in the interview (some, I've skipped... ;) are at best general common sense or not really adequately related to ICT-specific problems.

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Submitted by Jamesmorrison on Mon, 07/15/2013 - 20:46 Permalink

I really admire this training program, it allows each and every citizen in the area to be educated and trained for their future livelihood to provide some neccessities to their family and at the same time makes them learn what's the best alternative work for them. Plumbing is really a great work since I'm also once of the plumbers in our areal.