Technology and Community Development
missing animal or a sick one with just a glance. However, because it takes months of careful observation of the behaviour of every cow to know every animal well enough to take note when there is an infection or when an animal does not ruminate properly, this task would be ineffective if it were performed by a human shepherd with a large herd.
To remedy this situation, the technology of vocal tags has been developed in Europe. This project employs a tag, which is a belt fitted with sensors and worn around each animal’s neck. These sensors monitor several indicators such as the animal’s rate of rumination, voice clarity, digestion and breathing and send the data collected to a central computer.
Over time the computer knows what is normal for every cow and will notify the shepherd when something goes wrong with a cow.
The advantage of this project is that a farmer can take quick and specific action like giving treatment to the particular animal involved. This removes the need to give general treatments to the whole herd, which is both time and money wasting.
These are some of the ways that technology is being used towards increased development.
CHAPTER 4
WHAT LESSONS HAVE BEEN LEARNT?
No matter how promising an idea or project sounds, there are bound to be problems encountered in the deployment of the project. In achieving the above projects, following are some of the problems one is likely to be faced with:
In the election monitoring program, misinformation has been identified to be one of the problems starring the program in the face. It is true that when all the information is not localized in the hands of government, then a lot more transparency will be achieved, but it is also true that mass misinformation remains an unpleasant possibility.
Another problem could arise when there is a situation where people do not necessarily trust the degree of independence of the so called independent observers. It may lead to a problem where parties could cast a slur on the reputation of the observers so as to use the resulting mistrust to set the stage for a possible rejection of the results.
Overall this is a laudable idea and if a means of verification were added, the figures would mean much more to a lot of people.
Whilst celebrating the successes chalked, it is important to note that a number of other factors needed to progress before a state could move towards a more democratic model of governance. According to African political expert, Sheldon Gellar, these changes include: strengthening independent media, growing and ensuring freedom of civil society, decentralizing power, ceding more control to local governments, empowering women and improving judicial systems to ensure independence and power to punish.
Governance is one area that is set to reap some benefits of this phenomenon when used judiciously, unilateral rule and arbitrary action may be reduced towards a more participatory approach to leadership in Ghana
Technology could help achieve those goals to some extent, as communication was the key to overcoming oppression.
In some of the cases, such as the election monitoring or domestic violence reporting, the internet could be used to provide communities with means to communicate, to organize and obtain good information which is not controlled by the government. However, this is not practical in Africa since only a tiny percentage of Africans have affordable access to internet.
In the healthcare project, basic mismanagement has been identified as one of the reasons why many projects seem to skid to halt after being piloted. Needed funds are not always available to those who need them.
Another problem observed was that the people who will be using the project are not always consulted in the designing and planning of the ideas, so there is a lack of communication between beneficiaries, health professionals, technologists, and managers.
Another problem was the theft of cell phones. Although cell phones are a relatively low-cost technology, they still hold considerable value in poverty-stricken areas, and are commonly stolen. And, such theft is likely to rise as these devices become more and more complex. However this is quite debatable since some analysts argue that losing a cell phone to a thief is less of a financial loss than losing a more costly machine.
In the domestic violence project one stumbling block was the communication gap between the various parties involved in the system. Feedback was largely missing and people could not tell whether their input was useful – or received, and in some cases, police officers who receive messages reporting violence against women may not be prepared to respond.
Another problem was the unfortunate situation where some unscrupulous people made