Sander van Hooft

While ICTs are driving globalization, tourism has been rising to become one of the largest industries worldwide. It can be argued that those deprived of access to ICTs, the world wide web in particular, are also deprived of the opportunity to participate in this global market. Hence, the poor remain poor because of this digital divide. The ICT4D movement (Information and Communication Technologies for Development – I like to say “ICT for socioeconomic Development”) aims to close this digital divide in various ways, such as providing the required tools and knowledge. » Read the rest of this entry «

The decentralized approach on land registration is regarded as the key to Ethiopia’s successful swift and cost-effective land registration. Ethiopia’s success seems to be a rare case though:

“In fact, hardly any of the [sub-Saharan] countries that introduced legal reforms with much fanfare have succeeded in developing, let alone rolling out, a low-cost system for land administration at a scale that is sufficiently large to provide an option for the majority of the poor. This made it difficult for many of the expected benefits from such legislation to materialize, implying that the poor often continue to be excluded from formal systems and vulnerable to land loss. More generally, failure to implement land legislation has raised doubts regarding the technical, institutional, and political feasibility of such reforms.” (Deininger, Ali, Holden, & Zevenbergen, 2008)

In my previous post I mentioned the Land use and Administration Committees (LACs). The LACs are playing a major role in the registration process, so I’ll explain a bit more about that. » Read the rest of this entry «

While working on a project in Ethiopia as part of my study programme, I discovered the large potentials of ICT4D. I will post more about this topic, but before I continue babbling on… what exactly is it? » Read the rest of this entry «

Yes, I did try to start blogging before. But no, unfortunately I was not that much inspired to spend my time writing frequently. However, the last period just turned out to be one of huge inspiration.

While finishing my study Information Science at the Radboud University of Nijmegen (that’s the Netherlands), I am coming across very diverse fields of expertise: ICT, management studies, development studies, anthropology. ICT as an enabler for development (ICT4D) seems to be more and more interesting. » Read the rest of this entry «