Bangladesh

The aim of this paper is to examine the utility of ICT4D project efficacy. Particular consideration is given to the Village Phone Programme in Bangladesh and the Nakaseke Multipurpose Community Telecentre in Uganda. The results show that the Village Phone Programme, which focuses primarily on the economic empowerment of project beneficiaries, and the Nakaseke Telecentre, which prioritizes expanding service provision, both fall short to take into consideration the extreme poor and disadvantaged; a remarkable weakness in conventional ICT4D programming.

The Amader Gram ICT4D project started its activities in 2001. These activities focused on 12 villages and many schools of Rampal upazila in Bagerhat district in the south west of Bangladesh. This project was targeting both women and their children through awareness-raising activities. It aims to eliminate the difference between city and village women through computer training. Armed with this knowledge, women’s opinions are getting higher priority when decisions are taken about their children.

The proposed National ICT Policy 2008 has incorporated all the ingredients of the National ICT Policy 2002 in a structured manner with requisite updates necessitated by developments since 2002. The revised policy has also incorporated new policy directions in line with the ever changing technological advancements in this area. The most remarkable changes that have been made in the revised National ICT Policy are: 1) a methodical framework of the policy document; and 2) inclusion of planned action items in conformity with policies and strategies.

This country paper was prepared for the Third Session of the Governing Council of APCICT. It gives an overview of the initiatives undertaken in the area of ICT Human Capacity Building under the mandates of WSIS and MDGs, and provides specific needs and recommendations for this area in Bangladesh.

Open and distance learning (ODL) is one of the most rapidly growing fields of higher education and training globally, thanks for advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) that contribute to the expansion of online and open delivery in education.

This article attempts to quantitatively measure the various influences on mobile phone adoption at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Thailand. Based on an existing theoretical framework, adoption is modeled by fitting a logit model to a large sixcountry dataset. The study finds evidence for the importance of social influence in mobile adoption in two modes: one that exerts pressure on individuals to adopt, and another that helps to generate benefits via social networks that are tied in with economic and business networks.

Despite improvements in educational indicators, such as enrolment, significant challenges remain with regard to the delivery of quality education in developing countries, particularly in rural and remote regions. In the attempt to find viable solutions to these challenges, much hope has been placed in new information and communication technologies (ICTs), mobile phones being one example.

This report on the use of ICTs in non-formal education provides a perspective on how ICTs are increasingly being used in the community in general to make available information and learning to a larger target group outside of the formal school system. The paper attempts to understand the penetration of ICT in delivery of Non Formal Education (NFE).

This article looks at the ICT sector and its impact on national development in Bangladesh.

This compilation of case studies explores some of the sound practices in the Asia-Pacific region in applications of information, communication and space technology for effective and efficient disaster risk reduction and management.