| APrIGF 2022 Session Proposal Submission Form | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part 1 - Lead Organizer | |||||||||||||||||
| Contact Person | |||||||||||||||||
| Dr. Sarbani Banerjee Belur | |||||||||||||||||
| Organization / Affiliation (Please state "Individual" if appropriate) * | |||||||||||||||||
| Association for Progressive Communications (APC) | |||||||||||||||||
| Designation | |||||||||||||||||
| Asia Regional Coordinator | |||||||||||||||||
| Gender | |||||||||||||||||
| Female | |||||||||||||||||
| Economy of Residence | |||||||||||||||||
| India | |||||||||||||||||
| Primary Stakeholder Group | |||||||||||||||||
| Civil Society | |||||||||||||||||
| Part 2 - Session Proposal | |||||||||||||||||
| Session Title | |||||||||||||||||
| Digital Inclusion: what role does capacity building play? | |||||||||||||||||
| Session Format | |||||||||||||||||
| Roundtable | |||||||||||||||||
| Where do you plan to organize your session? | |||||||||||||||||
| Onsite at the venue (with online moderator for questions and comments from remote participants) | |||||||||||||||||
| Specific Issues for Discussion | |||||||||||||||||
| In 2020, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation adopted Vision 2040, which includes “Innovation and Digitalization” addressing inclusive economic participation through digital economy and technology as a focus area for the next 20 years. However, nearly half of the Asia-Pacific region’s population (about 1.88 billion people) still do not have access to the internet. Despite huge investment in digital inclusion projects, governments, telecommunication companies and international development organisations in the region are confronted with a wide range of challenges associated with the development, implementation, and technical maintenance of digital connectivity esp. in rural and underserved areas. One of the common strategies used to address these challenges is the standardised and uniform capacity building programmes for the underserved communities. Based on our studies in three countries, Indonesia, India and Malaysia we identified that too often the emphasis of the capacity-building programmes is on the “use” of technologies and overlooks at the sustainability and training of the technical local human resource which can sustain the “access” to the internet. Therefore the digital inclusion programmes result in the proverbial “white elephant”. In this session, we will bring three case studies for discussion; BharatNet Optical Fibre Network in India, MySRBN from Malaysia and Palapa Ring from Indonesia. Based on the voices and experiences of community stakeholders, our framework for analysis of the cases will have three components 1): governance or enabling environment, 2): access and availability of financial resources to sustain the programme and 3): local human resources (to ensure technical maintenance beyond the programme’s timeline). |
|||||||||||||||||
| Describe the Relevance of Your Session to APrIGF | |||||||||||||||||
| The proposed session is presenting three case studies, of digital inclusion from the Asia Pacific region, derived from empirical research and inclusive of local underserved community voices and experiences. Therefore, the session will contribute directly to the APrIGF theme: People at the Centre: Envisioning a community-led Internet that is inclusive, sustainable and trusted. According to us, inclusion can be facilitated through trainings and capacity building in an effective manner. We will show through the three case studies how without taking into account capacity building, the programmes have faltered and the main objective of connecting the unconnected is still a dream. |
|||||||||||||||||
| Methodology / Agenda (Please add rows by clicking "+" on the right) | |||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
| Moderators & Speakers Info (Please complete where possible) | |||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
| Please explain the rationale for choosing each of the above contributors to the session. | |||||||||||||||||
| Dr. Sarbani Banerjee Belur, is currently the Asia Regional Coordinator for Association for Progressive Communications (APC) for the Community Networks Connecting the Unconnected project. She is also the Senior Research Scientist hosted by Spoken Tutorial project at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India. She has been working in the domain of rural connectivity for the past 6 years and have been associated with the Gram Marg project in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay. She holds a PhD in Demography from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She has published in international conferences, journals, contributed book chapters and has authored a book in the areas of demography and social issues around rural connectivity. Her current work involves increasing digital outreach to remote and rural areas of India, deployment of new technology alternatives for the middle and last mile internet connectivity, development of a sustainable models supporting Public - Private - Panchayat - Partnership (4-P model), seeding the growth of community networks, gender and access, developing community technologies and impact assessment studies of connectivity in the lives of people. The impact studies that she focuses on are based on gender, social and economic impacts of connectivity. Ezmieralda Melissa is the Deputy Head of the Department of Global Strategic Communications at Swiss German University. Since 2021, she is also a Research Fellow at the Advanced Centre for Sustainable-Economic and Technological Development (ASSET), University of Technology Sarawak. Ezmieralda’s research interests include new media technologies, representation of minorities in the media, and new media and empowerment of minority or underserved groups. Tariq Zaman: Tariq Zaman is an Associate Professor and Head of the Advanced Centre for Sustainable Socio-Economic and Technological Development (ASSET) in University of Technology Sarawak, Sibu Malaysia. His research concentrates on co-designing technologies with children and indigenous communities. Having dual professional backgrounds, as a lawyer and a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, Tariq is concerned with co-designing human rights-based policy interventions to address digital inequalities. |
|||||||||||||||||
| If you need assistance to find a suitable speaker to contribute to your session, or an onsite facilitator for your online-only session, please specify your request with details of what you are looking for. | |||||||||||||||||
| Not required. Thanks | |||||||||||||||||
| Please declare if you have any potential conflict of interest with the Program Committee 2022. | |||||||||||||||||
| No | |||||||||||||||||
| Are you or other session contributors planning to apply for the APrIGF Fellowship Program 2022? | |||||||||||||||||
| Yes | |||||||||||||||||
| Number of Attendees (Please fill in numbers) | |||||||||||||||||
| Consent | |||||||||||||||||
 I agree that my data can be submitted to forms.for.asia and processed by APrIGF organizers for the program selection of APrIGF 2022. |
|||||||||||||||||