Tagged: digital development

  • April 9, 2019

    Technology strengthens resilience

    An Interview with
    Josh Woodard, Regional ICT and Digital Finance Advisor, Asia Pacific, FHI 360

    Digital technology offers promising ways to solve some of the world’s development challenges. At FHI 360, we are applying new and existing technologies to build resilience among the communities where we work.

    What is technology for resilience?

    Let’s look at what we mean by resilience. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) defines it as “ the ability of people, households, communities, countries and systems to mitigate, adapt to and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth.”

    Recently, we’ve been using The Rockefeller Foundation’s definition: “Resilience is the capacity of individuals, communities and systems to survive, adapt and grow in the face of stress and shocks, and even transform when conditions require it.”  

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  • December 13, 2018

    Digital technology planning tool to improve your solution evaluation and partner due diligence

    Written by
    Josh Woodard, Regional ICT and Digital Finance Advisor, Asia Pacific, FHI 360

    Over the past decade, I’ve worked with countless of organizations around the world to help them to think about how they can use digital technology more effectively and appropriately in their work.

    One of the most common challenges that I’ve found is that their approach to deciding on what technologies to use and who to partner with is often more ad hoc and opportunistic than deliberate and strategic.

    I don’t say this to lay blame. Particularly for organizations with limited applied experience using digital technology in their programs — as opposed to for internal IT — it can be difficult to know what questions they should be asking and what types of things they should be planning for.

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  • September 5, 2017

    Innovation in support of improving last-mile connectivity

    Written by
    Troy Etulain, Project Director, Mobile Solutions Technical Assistance and Research (mSTAR) project, FHI 360

    Connectivity transforms lives. Access to a mobile network, including the internet or a mobile phone, opens the door to information, and information enables people to discover their full potential. Without connectivity, people are in the dark, closed off from opportunity. Yet, more than 4 billion people remain unconnected to the internet, and 20 to 40 percent of the poorest billion people are out of reach of even very basic mobile networks. Many of these people live in remote, hard-to-reach locations. And, each person among the poorest billion has only US$2.25 per month to spend on mobile services.

    Reaching isolated, impoverished communities is not easy. It takes a clear understanding of context and demand. New mapping tools, like the mAccess Diagnostic Tool that maps connectivity, are helping governments, private-sector companies, and nongovernmental organizations understand the context of those who are out of reach of mobile networks. These tools are shedding light on the affected areas and are helping us visualize network coverage areas, prices for services, local incomes and the numbers of individuals who are mobile subscribers. In-depth research is emerging to fill out the picture by showing who among the poorest uses phones, for what purposes, and when and where.

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