ICT FOR DEVELOPMENT

Information and communication technology refers to the general application of information and communication technology within the fields of socio-economic development, international development and human rights. The dominant term used here is ICT4Dev i.e application of technological solutions to the problems of developing words especially poverty reduction .

ICT4Dev may be interpreted as dealing with the disadivantaged populations anywhere in word but is more typically associated with applying information technological approaches through health reduction.

ICT is the central to today’s most modern economies, many international development agencies recognize the importance of ICT e.g Word Bank’s ICT section has about 200 staff members working on ICT issues.

Developing countries lag far behind developed countries in computer use and internet access. E.g averagely ony 1 in 130 people in Africa has a computer ! while in North America and Europe 1 in every 2 people has access to internet and about 90% of students in Africa have never touched a computer.

However local networks can provide access to software and information even without utilizing an internet connection

What should be done? Initiatives and projects on ICT4Dev should be designed and implemented by International Institutions, governments, consultants, non - profit computing and NGO’s in rural areas where technology is the main problem in developing countries.

Challenges; Apart from conducting technological based project still there many obstacles that hinder/hamper the process in rural areas .Projects deploying technology in underdeveloped areas face well known problems specially infrastructure problems.

Also introducing ICTs in these areas is mostly cost hence a need of well funded projects.

Another problem is the selection of software installed on technology instructors trained in one set software e.g UBUNTU can be expected to have difficulty in navigating computers donated with different software e.g window XP.

KEVIN RUGEMALIRA: HEALTH CHALLENGES IN AFRICA

KEVIN RUGEMALIRA: HEALTH CHALLENGES IN AFRICA: Healthcare posses a complex challenges in developing countries interweaving problems of science, health and development. These challenges ...

HEALTH CHALLENGES IN AFRICA

Healthcare posses a complex challenges in developing countries interweaving

problems of science, health and development. These challenges associated with the

health have many healthy problems to people in developing countries especially in

Africa and all these have have lead to poor productivity by the people of these

regions since most of the people die and others fall sick and they do not get the

required treatment.

Most of the health challenges that face the people in Africa include the following:

Prevalence of counterfeit drugs: most of the drugs that come in Africa are made in a

way that is the exact imitation of other valuable drugs with the purpose to deceive

people, this brings about the loss of confidence in all health systems.

Econutrition: Most of the activities are conducted to the extent that they bring about

the environmental damages example of these include the; soil erosion and decrease

in biodiversity, these lead to the lowering of food productivity a lack of food that

results into malnutrition and illness that in turn leads to poor labour productivity

.

Maternal and child undernutrition and Obesity: Maternal and child undernutrtion may

entirely be prevented but still cause about 3.5 child deaths and this is the outcome of

lack of information of which nutrient must be given to the mother and the child and

this leads to the stunting, wasting. Tackling undernutrition is only from pregnancy to

two years of age but soon after this damage on health and brain development by

undernutrition is irreversible.

Also obesity has become a big problem to people in Africa since people lack the

information about nutrition and thus suffer from the so called ‘civilized diseases’ one

of them being obesity.

Global economic crisis; Global recession has reduced the foreign investment in and

demand for export from the developing countries and this leads to unstable comodity

prices, lowers the earnings and reduced access to food forcing people to adopt

cheaper and less balanced diets that leads to higher level of malnutririon.