African Women and American Academics

I find myself wondering if I am the only one dismayed by the “mudwrestling” going on among Dambisa Moyo, Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly… and others. In case you haven’t heard, Dambisa Moyo has written a provocative book on the merits of development assistance. Her book, Dead Aid, challenges some of the accepted [...]

ICT Access and Usage in Africa

ICT Access and Usage in Africa

In a couple of recent posts, I have mentioned the percentage of disposable income spent by Africans on mobile communication.  While I have  posted links to the research, I think it is worth singling out the work of Research ICT Africa.

What is in desperately short supply in Africa is [...]

The Rationality of Mobile Spending

Richard Heeks has written an interesting post entitled Mobiles for Impoverishment in which he says that recent m4d research “suggests mobiles are doing more economic harm than good, and sometimes making poor people poorer”.  He points to quantitative and qualitative research that suggest that economic benefits are not being realised by the users of mobile [...]