Latest Digital Development Outputs (China, Data, Economy/Platforms, Inclusion, Water, Rights, Sustainability) from CDD, Manchester

Recent outputs – on China Digital; Data-for-Development; Digital Economy / Platforms; Digital Inclusion; Digital Water; Rights; and Sustainability – from Centre for Digital Development researchers, University of Manchester:

CHINA DIGITAL

“China’s digital expansion in the global South” presents recordings of nine presentations at a CDD international workshop that discusses the implications for the global South of China’s emergence as a digital superpower.

“Understanding the evolution of China’s standardization policy system” (open access) by You-hong Yang, Ping Gao & Haimei Zhou, investigates the evolution of China’s technology standardization policy system in the period from 1978 to 2021.  

DATA-FOR-DEVELOPMENT

A DC State of Mind? A Review of the World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives by Hellen Mukiri-Smith, Laura Mann & Shamel Azmeh, reviews the World Development Report (2021) on data governance.

DIGITAL ECONOMY / PLATFORMS

“Examining ecosystems and infrastructure perspectives of platforms: the case of small tourism service providers in Indonesia and Rwanda” (open access version available) by Christopher Foster & Caitlin Bentley, analyses tourism platforms from the perspective of small and marginal service providers. It is useful to move away from ideas of platform leaders organising ecosystems from the top-down, towards more emergent behaviours of service providers in multi-platform environments.

Automation and industrialisation through global value chains: North Africa in the German automotive wiring harness industry by Shamel Azmeh, Huong Nguyen & Marlene Kuhn, examines the implications of automation on the global map of production and the position of developing countries in global value chains. Through the case of the German automotive wiring harness industry, we examine the implications of ongoing automation processes on production in North Africa.

“Digital public goods platforms for development: the challenge of scaling” (open access) by Brian Nicholson, Petter Nielsen, Sundeep Sahay & Johan Saebo.  We articulate the notion of digital global public goods and examine the development of DHIS2, a global health platform inspired by public goods, focusing on the paradoxes that arise in the scaling process. A presentation of the paper to the Pankhurst Institute, University of Manchester is available on YouTube.

DIGITAL INCLUSION

“Digital inequality beyond the digital divide: conceptualizing adverse digital incorporation in the global South” (open access) by Richard Heeks, presents a new model to understand how inclusion in – rather than exclusion from – digital systems leads to inequality.

“Revisiting digital inclusion: a survey of theory, measurement and recent research” (open access) by Matthew Sharp, sets out a framework of core components of digital inclusion, surveys current measures of digital inclusion, and makes suggestions for how future research could be more rigorous and useful.

DIGITAL WATER

“Water ATMs and access to water: digitalisation of off-grid water infrastructure in peri-urban Ghana” (open access) by Godfred Amankwaa, Richard Heeks & Alison L. Browne, finds water ATMs to be incremental infrastructures delivering relatively limited and operational-level value, but also producing new and contested socio-material realities.

RIGHTS AND DIGITAL

“RaFoLa: A Rationale-Annotated Corpus for Detecting Indicators of Forced Labour” (open access) by Erick Mendez Guzman, Viktor Schlegel & Riza Batista-Navarro, describes a dataset of news articles categorised according to forced labour indicators. The articles were annotated with rationales, i.e. human explanations for placing them under specific categories, to support the development of explainable AI systems.

“Hustling day in Silicon Savannah: datafication and digital rights in East Africa” (open access) by Gianluca Iazzolino, Michael Kimani & Maddo, is a cartoon on the winners and losers in Kenya’s booming tech scene. It translates, for a non-academic audience, the authors’ research on how digital technologies are reshaping the informal economy in the global South.

SUSTAINABILITY AND DIGITAL

“Exploring financing for green-tech SMEs in East Africa: current trends and risk appetite” (open access) by Aarti Krishnan, reviews the financing of green-tech SMEs in East Africa including different financing at different enterprise lifecycle stages, in different sectors, and across different countries.

“Applications of Industry 4.0 digital technologies towards a construction circular economy: gap analysis and conceptual framework” by Faris Elghaish, Sandra T. Matarneh, David John Edwards, Farzad Pour Rahimian, Hatem El-Gohary & Obuks Ejohwomu, investigates the interrelationships between emerging digital technologies and the circular economy, concluding with the development of a conceptual digital ecosystem to integrate IoT, blockchain and AI.

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Mapping research on digital water in developing countries: state of the art and future research agenda

There is no doubt that digital water — use of digital technologies in the water sector — is growing, with evidence of widespread adoption and use across countries.  Many water service providers are investing in new technologies not only to improve infrastructure performance and enable existing systems to operate more efficiently, but also to make new service delivery models possible.

However, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the hype and hope of digital technologies to tackle water sector challenges, especially in developing countries. It is in this context that we’re witnessing a growth of interest in the discussion, evidence case studies and research on digital water. How have digital water innovations (DWIs) been implemented and what has been the impact?  And how is the growing implementation of digital water innovations in global South cities researched? Our recent systematic review paper of urban DWI in the global South answers some of these questions for the first time by analysing a total of 43 papers.

The findings

Literature profiling: Findings demonstrate the relative recency and volatility of publication – first paper published in 2006, 67% of papers published in the last five years of the review, and more than one-third in the last two years – reflecting the relative recency of digital technologies being deployed in developing countries.  Also, research is strongly dominated by engineering with limited focus on social science and limited engagement with theorisation (40%) (see Figure 1). At present, the majority of the research focused on Africa (58%).

Figure 1. Disciplinary focus for reviewed papers

Scope of DWI implementation: In terms of type of digital technology implemented, the current literature focused heavily on data processing/visualisation such as geographic information systems and what we called “action support technologies” such as mobile payment systems. There is relatively little research on digital technologies applied at the upstream end of the value chain such as water sources, headworks and treatment. To date, research reflects a provider-centric view of innovation with no instances of user-driven or government-driven innovation or even co-design or participative approaches to implementation involving users or government. Indeed, almost all (93%) of papers discussed water service providers with much less focus on end-users/consumers (25%) as key stakeholders of relevance to the focal digital water innovations and research. Partly related, research has focused mainly on use of digital for on-grid water supply, with only limited studies looking specifically at digital water innovations for off-grid water users.

Scope of DWI impacts: Overall, there has been relatively limited focus on the impact of digital systems.  Just under half of papers reported something about the impact of the digital systems, but more than a third of these were solely speculative and almost all of the remainder reported just pilot or early-stage evidence. Where impact findings were presented, they were skewed towards benefits more than disbenefits: on average each paper talked about four different types of benefit but fewer than two types of disbenefit; and they were skewed towards the impact of one type of DWI:  action support technologies. There was no primary evidence-based research on the impacts of the great majority of digital water innovations including data capture, data processing and decision support technologies.

Digging down, research interest was clustered around benefits for users and water service providers, and benefits such as financial, operational and other service benefits.  This meant that evidence of broader impacts — such as environmental impact, or impact on inequalities — was limited and tended to extrapolate from individual studies. Nor has research yet engaged with the datafication of water; that is, the growing presence, use and impact of data in the water value chain.

What does this tell us about implementing and researching digital water?

In the review, we found a field of research that is still at a formative stage, which thus provides ready opportunity for future research on specific technology, implementation and impact priorities. This calls for rethinking digital water innovations, with future research attention on:

• social science research including socio-political and inter-disciplinary socio-technical perspectives;
• particular digital technologies with proven water-related potential such as data capture technologies (remote sensing, smart meters, SCADA, telemetry); data processing technologies (big data, data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain, virtual and augmented reality); and less-researched action support technologies (water ATMs, digital purification systems);
• “upstream” water value chain technologies and technologies for off-grid and low-income users;
• user- and government-centred or -participative innovation processes, including action research;
• impact, including evidence of longer-term and broader impact;
• interpretive and critical realist research, qualitative and mixed methods research; and
• more explicit use of theory and conceptual frameworks including re-use of conceptualisations by other researchers.

It is our belief that researchers, technology implementers, utilities and policy makers will continue to engage with digital water innovations in the coming years. To contribute to this discussion, I am currently undertaking a research project on digital water innovation impact in urban Ghana, with some early results already emerging. Stay tuned!

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Latest Digital Development Outputs (Data, Economy, Health, Platforms, Water) from CDD, Manchester

Recent outputs – on Data-for-Development; Digital Economy; Digital Health; Digital Platforms; Digital Water – from Centre for Digital Development researchers, University of Manchester:

DATA-FOR-DEVELOPMENT

“Strengthening the Skills Pipeline for Statistical Capacity Development to Meet the Demands of Sustainable Development: Implementing a Data Fellowship Model in Colombia” (open access) by Pete Jones, Jackie Carter, Jaco Renken & Magdalena Arbeláez Tobón, considers the importance of quantitative data skills development implied by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The success of a partnership programme in the UK is used to explore how ‘data fellowships’ can fulfil some of the unmet capacity needs of the SDGs in a developing country context, Colombia.

“Building Information Modelling Diffusion Research in Developing Countries” (open access) by Samuel Adeniyi Adekunle, Obuks Ejohwomu & Clinton Ohis Aigbavboa undertakes a literature review – including current and future research trends – on the adoption of building information modelling in developing countries.

DIGITAL ECONOMY / PLATFORMS

“Conceptualising Digital Platforms in Developing Countries as Socio-Technical Transitions” (open read access) by Juan Erasmo Gomez-Morantes, Richard Heeks & Richard Duncombe demonstrates how the multi-level perspective approach can be used to analyse the lifecycle of digital platforms: the process of innovation, rapidity of scaling, and development impacts relating to resource endowments, institutional formalisation, and shifts in power.

“Digital Platforms and Institutional Voids in Developing Countries” (open access) by Richard Heeks, Juan Erasmo Gomez-Morantes, Brian Nicholson and colleagues from the Fairwork project, analyses how digital platforms change markets through their institutional actions.  Using the example of ride-hailing, it finds platforms have formed a market that is more efficient, effective, complete and formalised.  At the same time, though, they have institutionalised problematic behaviours and significant inequalities.

“Navigating a New Digital Era Means Changing the World Economic Order” (open access) by Shamel Azmeh, discusses the implications of digital shifts for global economic governance.

DIGITAL HEALTH

“Cost-Effectiveness of a Mobile Technology-Enabled Primary Care Intervention for Cardiovascular Disease Risk Management in Rural Indonesia” by Gindo Tampubolon and colleagues demonstrates how to determine the economic impact of m-health.  It calculates the cost-effectiveness of a mobile-based health intervention at c.US$4,300 per disability-adjusted life year averted and US$3,700 per cardiovascular disease event avoided.

“Delivering Eye Health Education to Deprived Communities in India through a Social Media-Based Innovation” by Chandrani Maitra & Jenny Rowley aims to develop understanding of the benefits of, and the challenges associated with the use of social media to disseminate eye health information in deprived communities in India.

“Using a Social Media Based Intervention to Enhance Eye Health Awareness of Members of a Deprived Community in India” (open access) by Chandrani Maitra & Jennifer Rowley reports on a WhatsApp-based intervention to promote eye health communication in deprived settings. This research highlights the potential benefits of WhatsApp in increasing awareness on eye problems, amongst deprived communities where the disease burden remains very high.

DIGITAL WATER

“Digital Innovations and Water Services in Cities of the Global South: A Systematic Literature Review” (open access) by Godfred Amankwaa, Richard Heeks & Alison Browne reviews the literature on digital and water in Southern cities.  It summarises findings to date on implementation and impact and sets out the future research agenda.

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How Widespread are Digital Water Payments in Ghana?

Digital systems are seen as important elements in the governance and management of the water sector. For instance, systems such as digital meters, IoT applications, digital payments, etc can significantly improve aspects of water service delivery and access. But are these new technologies widely adopted as yet, particularly in the global South context?

The open access paper “Diffusion of Electronic Water Payment Innovations in Urban Ghana. Evidence from Tema Metropolis” explores aspects of this question; looking specifically at uptake of electronic water payments (EWP) in Ghana. Drawing on data from water utility customers and the utility’s own database, three main conclusions emerged.

i. EWP adoption is very low (below 3%) though many utility customers were aware of these payment options. 

ii. The growth of EWP uptake in urban Ghana is rapid (annual growth rate of 41% from 2017-2018), but from a low base.

iii. Awareness and potential uptake of these payment options were significantly associated with customers’ age, employment status, income, and means of receiving monthly water bills. EWP awareness was higher among elderly customers perhaps since they constitute a larger portion of people with utility pipeline connections from the study. Also, awareness was higher among utility customers with higher income, those employed and those who receive their water bills through electronic channels i.e. SMS or email. 

Explanations of why adoption rates are low range from behavioural to transaction fees to technological challenges. However, mobile phone ownership and mobile money usage may not be significant predictors or barriers to EWP uptake given universal mobile phone ownership by customers, and widespread use of mobile money.

Some actions to take to improve adoption include:

• Developing specific guidelines and engagements that target unaware sections of the population, particularly low-income customers through advertising of payment solutions etc. 
• Understanding prevailing baseline characteristics of targeted customers before rollout of these innovations. Also, these innovations should be piloted before upscale.

Notwithstanding the barriers that currently exist, it can be seen from this example that digital innovations in the water sector are on the rise. Beyond understanding adoption issues, we will increasingly need better evidence on the impact of such innovations in the global South: not just digital payments but also applications across the water value chain, from water sourcing to end-use. I look forward to examining the experiences and impacts of these innovations in an ongoing project.

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