“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members” – Mahatma Gandhi

While digital economies are now universally recognized as the sine qua non for competitiveness and development, left unchecked, digitalization poses an existential threat of compounding the already entrenched inequalities, notably in developing countries like Uganda.

In line with its agenda of promoting digital inclusiveness, the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), developed a multi-level tool known as the Inclusive Digital Economy Scorecard (IDES) to enable a granular quantified assessment of the inequalities, and to identify areas where action is required in order to progress to equality. The scorecard quantifies the multiple elements of inclusiveness, each of which contributes to four principle indices: Policy and Regulation; Infrastructure; Skills; and Innovation (see, for example, Uganda’s 2021 IDES Report).

In the inaugural stakeholders’ workshop held in Uganda as part of the Uganda IDES 2021 assessment exercise, it was noted that some programmes lose sight of the inclusive component along the way. While there are many contributing factors to this, this blog addresses one important issue: the absence of a consultative engagement of the users. Like many others, UNCDF is actively working to address this challenge through guidance and support to government and other players in Uganda, and in other countries where the agency is active.

UNCDF underscores the importance of involving communities in the entire policy process, from inquiry, to formulation and validation, to monitoring during implementation, and to evaluation at the appropriate stages. The noted benefits include “increasing accountability and transparency; ensuring ownership by all stakeholders; and creating a common understanding between policymakers, regulators and stakeholders”.

Applying the tools meaningfully requires a mindset change among policymakers – to a mindset that accepts that process inclusion is a critical element on the road to sustainability. Such a mindset ensures that inclusion is not just a requirement, but a passion among those who lead policy processes. This blog provides brief insights into three key lessons such a mindset needs to take on board, and why.

The first lesson is respect for the communities, however disadvantaged they may be, accepting them as equals who have their aspirations and views about the lives they want to lead. Being poor or poorly educated is often a result of circumstances outside the control of individuals – but this does not take away their inherent talents. Appreciating this will help policymakers, and the communities they work with, to take on board the thoughts and ideas from normally excluded groups in a way that shapes policies and interventions.

The second lesson, on which UNCDF places strong emphasis, is using consultative processes. UNCDF has developed various policy tools that provide guidance about this. Such processes establish the strengths and opportunities as well as aspirations of the communities; the challenges they face and wish to address; and the kinds of interventions that would be useful. The ethos in engaging communities needs to shift from the traditional “What are the Needs?” to “What are the strengths and opportunities and how can these be leveraged to address the challenges?” A meaningful consultative process has three key outcomes, all of which contribute to sustainability:

• Recreation of confidence in the community, an essential step in mindset change
• Building interventions founded on the strengths of the community and the opportunities therein, rather than miring them (the interventions) into the needs and challenges
• Creating ownership: the community identifies its strengths (to which their roles in the intervention will be linked); is party to the formulation of interventions; and can see that the interventions will respond to their (the community’s) rather than hand-down aspirations.

The third lesson is that the community must make a contribution, even if it is in kind. This needs to be established during the consultative process as interventions are being developed. A community that needs connection to the Internet should be able to provide land for the facilities and contribute to capacity building – it should be noted that in Uganda, one of the major barriers to infrastructure rollout is that local governments impose excessive charges for access to land and rights of way, instead of approaching this as a development partnership with the operators. Models for enabling access to entry-level smart phones, ownership of smart phones being a major barrier to meaningful access in Uganda, should include user contribution. Communities are always more protective of assets where they have made an investment than when such assets are a pure donation.

It is more effective in the long run to spend more time on learning before formulating policy and interventions than to invest in solutions that are not sustainable. Beyond making tools available and sharing experiential lessons, UNCDF is committed to working with the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance as well as other ministries and agencies in Uganda to ensure this.

Uganda is particularly suited to a grassroots approach because government has been decentralized to the local level and is now working through the Parish Development Model. Furthermore, there are unique differences across the districts and communities that will always call for customization of policy and strategy even after these have been agreed upon at the national level: such customization is much easier if the starting point is the grassroots.

A final note: We are talking about inclusiveness in digital economies, and some may assume that technology should be the focus. Technology is a tool for development that should be exploited at every opportunity in addressing development challenges, for example, exclusion, but it must be responsive to development needs, not the other way round.

By Guest Author - F F “Tusu” Tusubira

While this blog is initiated on some of the work done by UNCDF, the author has also drawn on personal experience in working with communities over the last forty years with various organizations, and also as a Rotarian.