Meera K. Joseph

Participatory approaches for the development and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTS) for rural farmers

One of the prime ingredients for rural development in developing countries is information access. Although the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution in these countries has gained momentum, most of the farming communities still have no access to value added information. The agricultural researcher and the farming community need to enhance their knowledge by increased dasiafarmer participationpsila in research. This paper makes a strong case for the use of participatory approaches involving farming community for development and adoption of ICT in the agricultural sector. It acknowledges that farmers are knowledgeable and encourages researchers to work with farmers and development workers for agricultural improvements. This paper discusses how digital ICT developed by means of participatory learning and action research can spur development and eradicate poverty by providing services to farmers in rural areas. It also highlights how participatory approaches can empower collective groups of farmers and help to put decision-making in the hands of the farmers. Although no single ICT will be satisfactory for farmers, the use of a wide range of ICTs in agriculture can improve the livelihood of the farmers in rural areas and help in their socio-economic growth. The paper focuses on various participatory approaches such as participatory communication and participatory learning for effective use of ICTs in agricultural domain. It highlights how participatory approaches can assist in dasiaparticipatory information and communication technology developmentpsila for rural farming community.

Convergence opportunities and factors influencing the use of internet and telephony by rural women in South Africa and India towards empowerment

Access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can have dramatic impact on poverty alleviation for rural women and for achieving socio economic development goals. Rural women need to treat ICTs as an empowerment tool and a means to a living. The use of mobile communication devices and internet are changing the way agricultural activities are managed by farmers nowadays. Rural women’s lack of mobility and less hands-on computer experience might hinder women’s welfare and empowerment. This paper analyses how use of the telephony (both cellular and land line), internet and other ICTs can benefit rural women in educational, business and economic sector. Women in rural India and rural South Africa were marginalized partly due to their lack of ability in being vocal when it comes to empowering themselves using ICTs due to cultural norms in India, and apartheid in South Africa. Over the years, unlike other developing countries, the above-mentioned countries have its unique ICT projects meant for empowering rural women. This paper is driven from the authors’ commitment for rural development and rural women empowerment. It highlights different low-cost ICT initiatives and strategies taken by women’s organizations, various companies and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for rural women empowerment. The paper also highlights various factors influencing use of internet and mobile phone adoption by rural women. Various bottlenecks for the community projects, factors de-motivating the use of mobile phones and internet by rural women and possible solutions for these are also mentioned.

Critical theory for women empowerment through ICT studies

Purpose – Information and communication technology (ICT) is a powerful tool and an enabler of economic growth in under‐developed areas. ICTs have played an important role in womens development and provided opportunities for empowerment. ICTs have the potential to exchange information and empower marginalised communities. The purpose of this paper is to cover Habermas‐based critical theory to understand the politics of womens empowerment through the use of ICTs.Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the role of ICTs in developing marginalised women from the coastal areas of southern India. The paper is based on a qualitative study and presents a set of questionnaires developed specifically to assess womens development through the use of ICTs.Findings – This study presents Habermasian based approach to address womens developmental goals.Originality/value – The paper provides meaningful discussion on ICT for Womens Development (ICT4WD) and explores theories related to the feminist inquiry.

Information and Communication Technology policy imperatives for rural women empowerment: focus on South Africa

It has been established that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are key drivers for rural development. However, while many countries such as India and South Africa have made significant investments in rural ICT infrastructure and its developmental spin-offs, rural women are still neglected when it comes to access to ICTs. This neglect is evident in the ICT policy initiatives in South Africa as an example, where the relevant policies lack any significant or direct attention to rural womens development. If ICT policies do not address the gendered digital divide in rural areas gender inequality will be encouraged. This paper gives insights on how information exchange by means of ICTs such as Internet, mobile phones and radio could foster economic growth and empowerment of rural women in South Africa. In addition, the paper discusses the role of relevant stakeholders in ICT policy formulation for more effective and appropriate communication, and innovative ways of using ICTs for women empowerment in rural areas. The authors make recommendations for ICT policy development that would better serve the needs of rural women leading to their empowerment.

Cloud for Engineering Education: Learning networks for effective student engagement

In this paper, we explore applications of Cloud Computing technologies for effective student engagement in a course at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). We explore how the National Diploma Computer Engineering learners make use of Google Groups and sites as part of the final year subject - Design Project 3. This is a subject which involves projects only and they needed technical and practical knowledge from various second year subjects to complete such an extensive project. A single case study was used to identify the affordances and some of the shortcomings of using Cloud technology to engage with the students 24/7. Our findings provide support to planning and implementation of Cloud technologies in the National Diploma subject. This research helps to support Design project students to make use of the Cloud technologies effectively as the students are currently employed at various Engineering firms, some in other provinces as well. The use of the cloud enhanced communication amongst peers and lecturer and assisted with their project and assignment submissions.

Signal behaviour in an indoor environment: Femtocell over macrocell

In this paper, we consider femtocells over macrocell for improved signal, good quality of voice calling, data and Internet use in the indoor environment, where there is poor reception of signals. Mobile networks have become most frequent means of communication in well-developed areas and some other places in the world for communication and business purposes. Therefore, the deployment of femtocells has drawn the attention of mobile industry experts, researcher and other standardization organizations over macrocells. The interesting part of the femtocell is that it improves coverage, enhances the data rate at the indoor environment and more so used for security purpose. We focus on benefits of deployment of femtocells and how femtocells can optimize the total capacity of mobile network where there is poor reception. In this paper, we simulate the signal behavior of femtocell over macrocell in an indoor setting, to illustrate that femtocell improved signal and voice calling in an indoor environment.

COMPRAM Assessment and System Dynamics Modeling and Simulation of Car-Following Model for Degraded Roads

The presence of potholes in roads is a complex societal reality in developing countries that leads to situations such as congestion, chaotic driving, and acceleration of road degradation. More and more money is spent on the maintenance of the same segment of road and on the repair of cars due to potholes. This complex phenomenon “traffic congestion in Kinshasa linked to degraded roads” is analyzed with the COMPRAM methodology. It is shown that more policy intervention is needed via improvement of legislation, road maintenance, and road monitoring. In this paper we elaborate on traffic flow models, system dynamics (SD), and COMPRAM. We briefly discuss the relationship between the “car-following” model and the “microscopic/macroscopic” traffic model. For measuring the pothole effect on road users such as cars, a simulation of a car-following model was done with system dynamics (SD). We considered two scenarios for simulation: a scenario with a single pothole on a one-lane road and a scenario with two potholes separated by a distance of 590 meters on a one-lane road. The results of the simulations demonstrate that in the presence of the pothole at the microscopic level, speed and travel time are negatively affected, impacting road capacity at the macroscopic level.

The sustainability and efficient use of renewable energy sources in rural areas

The energy system in African countries is mostly dependent on coal, gas, and oil, which in turns leads to environmental challenges and an imbalance of energy usage in some area of the countries. Given that, a mostly rural area in Africa suffers from the unsustainable energy system, thus it necessary to integrate renewable energy into the rural area for social and economic development. A sustainable energy system built on a clean energy such as renewable energy based on the availability of the natural resource is the main focus of this paper. Renewable energy is a solution for service delivery and when deployed everyone would be able to access electricity power, particularly in the remote area (which can be a suburb or rural environment) where the absence of national power grids. Renewable energy opens new opportunities for an economic development and sustainable solution to employ for energy efficiency, energy delivery, and energy management by the people and upon that a platform to promote environmental friendliness. In this paper, we explored the reasons for switching to renewable energy, saving energy and the awareness of potential and use of renewable energy in the rural area. IBM’s SPSS is used for the quantitative data analysis. The results showed that sustainability of the National utility grid to the rural area is low, with over 80 percent of participants agreeing to disruption of power supply. The Positivity of the rural peoples’ awareness of renewable also brought about the conclusion and recommendations from this paper.The energy system in African countries is mostly dependent on coal, gas, and oil, which in turns leads to environmental challenges and an imbalance of energy usage in some area of the countries. Given that, a mostly rural area in Africa suffers from the unsustainable energy system, thus it necessary to integrate renewable energy into the rural area for social and economic development. A sustainable energy system built on a clean energy such as renewable energy based on the availability of the natural resource is the main focus of this paper. Renewable energy is a solution for service delivery and when deployed everyone would be able to access electricity power, particularly in the remote area (which can be a suburb or rural environment) where the absence of national power grids. Renewable energy opens new opportunities for an economic development and sustainable solution to employ for energy efficiency, energy delivery, and energy management by the people and upon that a platform to promote environmental ...

Complex societal problem related to the internet access and electricity access in DRC

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)s current situation is characterized by a catastrophical very poor access to both Good Quality Electricity (GQE) and High Speed Internet (HSI) which are natural rights and primary needs. If the limited access to GQE and HSI are established fact we are concerned about how it affects the individuals in particular and the country in general and what parts of DRC are affected by this problem. In this paper we describe this identified societal problem in “natural language” through some stages towards the comprehensive understanding and perception of our core hypothesis: “The access to GQE and HSI for all DR Congolese localities/towns/villages of at least 1,000 families is a complex societal problem”. We give a solution to part the problem. The current part consists of the global understanding of the problem by the stakeholders. It is a first brick that will contribute to solving a global problem. This paper does implement the first step/layer of a much broader methodological framework, having 9 layers, which is called COMPRAM (Complex Problem HAndling Methodology). The first layer of COMPRAM does involve three core steps: (1) personal consideration and observation by the analyst(s) (named M1), (2) information retrieval from literature and other sources (called M2), and (3) discussions with selected relevant experts and stakeholders (called M3).

Utility based function for optimizing femtocells

The need for network coverage in an indoor setting has brought the acceptance of femtocell as a solution. The remarkable of these new technology called femtocell improves coverage, enhances the data rate more than the macro cell. The mobile operators must always ensure an optimal network that results to quality performance of service. Thus quality of service indicates the most significant for the satisfaction of networks user, particularly for the deployment of the femtocell. Here, we focus on the deployment of femtocell through the utility function to optimise each region of deployment of the femtocell in the cellular network. The utility-based function takes into account the transmitting power of each region and the capacity of the system. This reduces interference constraint within the regions and optimises the network. Through the simulation results, we show that utility based function enhances the optimal system within the regions of the cellular network.