Abstract
As mobile phones are rapidly spreading across Sub-Saharan Africa, scholars and development practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in participatory, information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled initiatives to address the challenges of governance in the region. For such efforts to succeed, ICT interventions need to be custom-tailored to the characteristics of the politically marginalised groups they seek to empower. To advance the generation of the necessary empirical data, we surveyed 1498 respondents in Togo. Findings suggest that sociodemographic factors limiting political participation partially overlap with factors that limit access to ICT and the development of digital skills. Based on these findings, we formulate policy recommendations for the design of ICT-enabled projects that proactively seek to increase the participation of marginalised groups.
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Notes
Since the 1990s, ‘do-no-harm’ has become a guiding principle in international humanitarian aid and development co-operation. According to this principle, donors must ensure that they ‘do no harm’ and consider both the intended and unintended consequences of their interventions.
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Acknowledgments
Data collection for this study was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development / Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ).
We thank the Demographic Research Unit / Unité de Recherche Démographique (URD) of the University of Lomé, Togo, for providing excellent logistic support during data collection under challenging circumstances.
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Dr. Anita Breuer declares that she has no conflict of interest. Dr. Jacob Groshek declares that he has no conflict of interest.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Breuer, A., Groshek, J. Assessing the Potential of ICTs for Participatory Development in Sub-Saharan Africa with Evidence from Urban Togo. Int J Polit Cult Soc 30, 349–368 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-016-9235-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-016-9235-5