INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR POVERTY REDUCTION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN ASIA
Roger Harris Associates
Roger Harris Associates is a consulting, research and social entrepreneurial firm providing services to Asian governments, development agencies, aid donors, education institutions and non-government organisations. We target poverty alleviation by facilitating access to ICTs for underserved Asian communities, ensuring they are able to make good use of the technology according to their own development priorities. Our projects are in; Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. The services of Roger Harris Associates include; policy advice and development, programme design and evaluation, project implementation assistance and evaluation and research. The company also engages directly in activities in the same field of work, partnering where appropriate with communities, civil society bodies, development and government agencies.
Company Mission
To bring the benefits of information and communication technologies to rural communities in Asia by:-
- Influencing governments and aid agencies to sponsor the provision of ICTs to rural communities.
- Researching the new knowledge required to make ICTs fully capable of improving rural life.
- Providing internet access to villages and helping them making good use of it.
- Building educational resources to accelerate the application of ICTs towards solving the problems of rural life.
Projects
eBario
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eBario introduced Radio Bario, Malaysia's first community radio station.
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In 1998, the remote and isolated community of Bario in Sarawak, one of the ethnic minority Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, agreed to participate in a research project to determine the opportunities for social development available from the deployment of computers and the internet, which was in its infancy at the time. As a result of innovative technology adaptations and close engagement with the community, Bario is now a thriving and growing community with a robust social, cultural and economic structure.
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The eBorneo Knowledge Fair
The eBorneo Knowledge Fair (eBKF) has been held regularly since 2007 by The Institute of Social Informatics and Technological Innovations (ISITI), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). It has turned the orthodox conference model on its head by taking academicians, development professionals, policy makers and government officials into the rural communities they are discussing and mixing them with the residents in their natural environment in the remote interior of Borneo.
The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries (EJISDC)
Founding editor of EJISDC, which strives to become the foremost international forum for practitioners, teachers, researchers and policy makers to share their knowledge and experience in the design, development, implementation, management and evaluation of information systems and technologies in developing countries.
The Institute of Social Informatics and Technology Innovation (ISITI) at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
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ISITI's mission is to generate, disseminate and apply knowledge related to the use of ICTs by rural communities towards empowering them to social and economic self-development. It undertakes research and development in the field of Community Informatics. Emerging from the eBario project, ISITI has stimulated development in many underserved and marginalised ethnic minority communities across Borneo, throughout Malaysia, and through its research, to a global audience.
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The ICT4D Research Impact Project
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Does your research have any influence in the real world? This research is based on the chapter The Impact of Research on Development Policy and Practice: This Much We Know which is published in the book Impact of Information Society Research in the Global South. The results of a survey of ICT4D researchers are published in Information Technology for Development as How ICT4D Research Fails the Poor. All publications are freely downloadable.
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Altmetric Score
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International Consulting
Advising governments and aid agencies on the use of Information and Communication Technologies for alleviating poverty in rural Asia, focusing especially on underserved and marginalised indigenous communities living in isolated and remote locations. Projects are listed here.
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