A Holistic View of ICTD and Up-scaling of Community Development Projects

The ICTD field over the past decade has been questioned on its value and contribution to development. Many projects today still suffer from ‘pilotitis’, a concept associated with initiatives that are characterized by the full use of resources to test a concept in a community, which is often short-lived and never scaled to other community contexts. Furthermore, if scaled, there is no consideration for re-contextualization nor efforts to learn lessons from previous implementation. These initiatives need to be assessed for their readiness to scale, either within an existing community, or to other contexts. Scalability assessment aims to guide how and why a project should be replicated based on the success of the project. This assessment needs to be based on a comprehensive evaluation of the ICTD project, which can provide an indication of the level of effectiveness of that project throughout its life, and post-implementation. The research study aims to address the question of how the scalability of an ICTD project can be assessed, based on a comprehensive approach to evaluation that takes into consideration the impact and potential sustainability of a project, and imperative factors for up-scaling.