Development is an evolutionary concept. Why?

The development sector exists to deliver the promise that lives, which are blighted by poverty, illhealth, insecurity and lack of opportunity, can be helped towards sustainable improvement through international co-operation and various types of support. The promise can sometimes seem distant. Work in the development sector is often experienced as information overload, long and diverse lines of communication, bureaucratic and political constraints and tight deadlines. Occasionally, it may be helpful to pause and think. Are we working in ways which strengthen our capacity to reach our goals, or which undermine it?

This article poses this question in the context of the development and use of new technologies, in particular Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and in relation to a fast emerging range of technologies which may come to be known as Web3.0. As with many challenges in the development sector, the issues raised by this question are not new but are posed and posed again as new technologies become available or as other significant changes take place in the world as a whole to which development actors need to respond. In the1960s and1970s aid-supported investment in mechanized agriculture proved to be beyond the maintenance capabilities of many of the societies in which it was implanted (and often ecologically harmful as well). But it is not always just a question of the readiness of the local society for ‘modern’ solutions. Over the same period, the practice of spending huge proportions of the health budgets of developing countries on gleaming modern hospitals in the major cities was comprehensively debunked, not on the grounds of their ability to function but because it was proved that spending money on health rather than illness was a more efficient route to desired outcomes.

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