Technology a neglected part of development cooperation?

This year (2009-2010) the Dutch initiative ’De Derde Kamer‘ will revolve around “the possibilities of new technologies in the field of development cooperation”. De Derde Kamer is a sort of shadow parliament in the area of development cooperation, consisting of 50 Dutch citizens and 20 people from a developing country. Each year it tackles a particular theme - they study it, make recommendations and start up public campaigns. The opening session of this year was held last Saturday, on October 9th.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that technology was chosen as this year’s theme, since it seems to me that it does not receive that much attention in Dutch development cooperation. The Rathenau Institute, the Dutch office for technology assessment, already came to the same conclusion when they did a study on the topic in 2005. I don’t think much has changed since then. In the UK there is, for example, a large NGO that focuses completely on technology in all areas of application (Practical Action), in the Netherlands only IICD does so, but limited to ICT. I just visited the website of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but could not find any information there on the role of technology in Dutch development policy. Why is this? I can think of a lot of factors that may play a role here, like disappointing experiences with ‘appropriate technology’ in the 1970s, but none is completely satisfactory. Nor do these explanations justify this omission.

So how come technology now features as this year’s theme of De Derde Kamer? Here’s a hunch. The goal of De Derde Kamer is “to involve and inform Dutch public and politicians” about development cooperation. And technology, I think, is a very attractive theme from the point of view of PR and public involvement. Very easy to make concrete and visible (unlike themes like good governance, which is very prominent in Dutch development policy). We can immediately picture some Africans using solar cells to get electricity in their remote village, or a poor Asian farmer making a call to inquire after the crop prizes with his recently acquired mobile phone. But whatever the real reason is, I applaud this initiative and I wish the members of De Derde Kamer best of luck with their efforts to familiarize themselves with this complex topic (a complexity that before mentioned pictures do not show). The initial statements of Derde Kamer members about their ideas for technology and development cooperation can be found here.