This article, by partly adopting a historical perspective, examines the introduction of new media in a Kenyan rural village, Kapkoi, and how it changes the communication ecology in the village. Further it explores how people in Kapkoi use and ascribe meaning to media. The article argues that categories such as gender, age and financial situation influence people’s access to and use of media and demonstrates how media use can simultaneously reinforce and challenge power structures. Moreover, it highlights the clear digital divide between rural areas and urban centres, and yet suggests that the introduction of new media is partly owing to the connection between the urban and the rural and that media and communications technologies sustain and increase the connectedness of the local.
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With the ability to reach many farmers with timely and accessible content, the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for agriculture (ICT4Ag) has the potential to transform farming and food production, worldwide. ICT4Ag supports new methods in the monitoring and management of soils, plants and livestock (precision agriculture), access to online markets, and improved communication between value chain stakeholders, among others. The services provided are vital in connecting farmers with the information they need to improve their agricultural productivity and reduce poverty. Through case studies and examples of ICT4Ag initiatives from across Asia, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa, the first chapter looks at how ICT4Ag actually works to drive economic development across developing economies.
This chapter examines action for gender norm change within the broader institutional context in Uganda, which has relatively strong national legislative frameworks and policies to support gender equality and adolescent girls. Despite this, change on the ground is slow and in some places appears non-existent. To examine action for change in this context, the chapter considers selected communications initiatives that aim to shift discriminatory norms around adolescent girls in rural communities. The analysis is set against the backdrop of the country’s national legal, policy and programme environment for gender empowerment and adolescent girls, highlighting both the enabling aspects of progressive laws and policies along with some of the ambiguities around adolescent sexual and reproductive health rights and the reform of marriage legislation, as well as significant gaps between policy promises at national level and action on the ground.
“Community Protocols in Africa” explores the lessons that Natural Justice has learned while working with communities to implement Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) through the use of a legal empowerment tool: Community Protocols.