Co-creating an ICT artefact with women in South Africa

Abstract

The active involvement of rural women in ICT4D initiatives is essential to ensure that they benefit from the initiative in general, and the technology artefact in particular. Usually ICT4D projects are male centered and the relevance of ICTs to the women within their contextual realities are not always considered. The purpose of this paper is indicate how an ICT artefact was co-created with rural women in South Africa in a resource constrained context. Participatory approaches like co-creation are important when implementing ICT4D initiatives aimed at rural women. Through the application of Design Science Research as the methodology an ICT artefact was co-created in a specific context in South Africa with rural women only. It is a longitudinal study that is still evolving. The lessons learnt and process that was followed will be shared. The main finding was that the active participation and feedback of the users of a system are essential when aiming to address their immediate and long term needs. If this is not the case the ICT artefact will not be used and it will yet again become part of the statistics of why Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) projects fail.