This article studies technology driven, development focused initiatives [ICT4D projects] at a community level in South Africa. This study forms part of the existing debate on ICT4D project success, and suggests answers towards accelerating ICT4D projects' growth towards maturity and sustainability. Concerns that receive attention include the level of ownership and control taken by members of benefiting local communities in ICT4D projects, the level of social embeddedness of ICT4D projects, and a revision of the concept of sustainability within the ICT4D context. A detailed case study that compares two similar ICT4D projects influencing four local communities, focusing on educational institutions within the communities in South Africa, provides the foundation for this article.Adjustments are made to the Five Stages Maturity Model for ICT projects (Leem et al., 2008) and then used to guide our critical discussion regarding each community's relationship with the ICT4D projects currently running within each society, and how these relationships can be matured and sustained. Findings include a discussion of the importance of direct and diffused increases in freedom resulting from an ICT4D project and the often discounted role of recognition, celebration of achievements within the local community, and media involvement in the maturity, and hence sustainability, of ICT4D projects.

This chapter explores the concept of platforms, which is not clearly defined in the IS literature. Platforms lead to changes in emerging markets, thus disrupting the logic of innovation, yet these platforms seem to be deepening various digital divides. There is an increasing awareness of digital platforms leading to disconnect and isolation in Africa and the creation of a Second Digital Divide. Platform emergence as IS phenomenon is inextricably linked to the design concepts of platform scaling and platform evolution. The design decisions deliberately made to facilitate scaling receives mention first, followed by a dissection of selected aspects of the emergence process that are externally dictated by changes in contexts, ecosystems, actors, or technologies. The positioning of emerging digital platform design within IS contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the impact that digital platforms design decisions may have on vulnerable African citizens with limited media, data, and digital literacy skills.

This article forms part of research-in-progress aimed towards creating a comprehensive graduate development framework that will assist Information Systems (IS) departments in increasing the quality and quantity of their enrolments and graduates.In this article we present the IS Graduate Development Framework (ISGDF). This framework combines measurable, tested variables from four IS education related fields of study into a single framework for measuring the graduate development potential of IS institutions, courses, and development projects. These four fields of study are (i) Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D), (ii) economic labour market theory that relates to IS labour, (iii) a study of IS education variables and course structures, and (iv) a study of IS labour within the Creative Industries. We present the ISGDF based on literature from these fields of study, and show how this framework can be applied by means of a comprehensive case study example. The case study gives a detailed account of how the framework was used to measure, and improve, an IS graduate development project.Findings from the case study include several areas for possible improvement of IS curricula to increase the graduate development potential of IS departments. Although the case study was conducted in a South African context, we suggest that the ISGDF, and case study findings report in this article, can be useful for informing IS departments towards increasing graduate quality and quantity in their own contexts.

No abstract

No abstract