Development of the rural cyberspace and analytics platform: Monthly highlights for August 2023
3rdWorld Xplorations
As we look forward to resume field-testing and demonstration of the rural cyberspace and analytics platform concept soon, we are excited to share with you some lessons we have gained in the month of August, 2023. In this month, we “discovered” a concept that challenges the conventional view of digital adoption rates and models, and offers a new way of disseminating and measuring the impact of some digital solutions. This prompted a revision of the demo platform, from version 1.1 to version 1.2.
Digital Solutions Adoption Rates Could Be High!
While there is a general consensus that the adoption of digital solutions among rural communities is low, this might be wrong.
The wrong picture is drawn by misalignment or mis-expectations of who can use the digital tools and the evaluation angle after dissemination. For instance, in a rural community of 1000 farmers, probably there could be a single suitable user of most android applications. If this is taken into account and the suitable user adopts the app while 999 don’t, then the adoption rate could actually be 100%. But if the service provider expected all the 1000 or at least 100 farmers to adopt, then the evaluation results would indicate 0.1% or 1% adoption rate respectively.
There Are Very Few “Suitable Users”
This proposition was made after examining user experience designs of different existing digital solutions against the cultural values, social trends and other user (customer) characteristics of the targeted Malawian rural population (See Knowledge Diffusion in the Context of Development in Rural Areas). Roughly, over 90% of the targeted population fall out of suitable user groups of most digital solutions, even after receiving training and necessary resources.
Van Dijk (2020) notes that “because it is wrong to assume that physical access to computers and the Internet automatically entails all benefits associated with their use, the digital divide should not be considered as a divide of physical access only”. Even if resources are made available, most digital solutions are incompatible with the targeted users and their relative advantages are not visible, most likely impeded or shadowed by mis-expectations and mis-trust, derived from cultural values or social trends and preferences of the rural masses. Our local internet and tech centres model was one of the worst. These are some of characteristics that Van Dijk (2006) together described as “motivational barriers” along with the three others, that limit rural adoption of digital solutions.
Digital Solutions Diffuse As Value
However, the good news is that instead of diffusion of innovation (DOI) as per Roger’s theory, there might be a process we may describe as “diffusion of value”. With this process, it is proposed that there could be some considerable indirect benefit or impact of the digital solutions in rural communities where these have been adopted by the very single suitable user.
This pattern was also noted by Selina Kapondera in her study in 2021, on the role of telecenters in Malawi. She found that the very few users of the telecenters shared the acquired knowledge with the non-users. This is basically described as “knowledge diffusion“. She argued that through this process, the users empower the rest of the community, but the traditional evaluation approaches have not been able to recognize and measure the impact.
Even though her study did not specify the innovations that were shared, the process is consistent with what we practically experienced in Zomba district, despite not with the digital solution involved. We noticed that some village members who learnt about Newcastle vaccination, showed no interest to “adopt” it, but they later bought the same vaccination from their fellow village member without knowing much about it, including its name.
“Suitable Users” Catalyze Diffusion of Value By Modifying Digital Solutions UXD
Upon reflecting on the Newcastle vaccination case, we concluded that the majority of the rural community members might probably make use of a solution when its user experience design (UXD) has been modified to suit their preferences and capacity by the very only one early adopter or innovator (based on Roger’s DOI theory) in their village. In this case, they would not access and use it the way the Services Providers expected, and they would not even know the name. Therefore, we could not describe it as knowledge diffusion, but “value diffusion” since what is obtained is the value not the knowledge.
The Effects of Evaluation Approaches
As a result, evaluation approaches that focus on awareness and direct access to or use of the innovation are more likely to miss out its impact on those who used it secondarily in some other way than that expected by the Services Providers.
Diffusion of Value is Paradoxical
The concept of “diffusion of value” is complex and contradictory. Although it is a common phenomenon in life (e.g. public transport, maize mills), and we considered it earlier on during conceptualization of the platform, we have been able to understand it and its role in rural digital transformation more clearly this time.
In conclusion, it shows that some Services Providers and donors might be creating impact without noticing it, when traditionally measuring adoption rates. However, value diffusion is more likely to be absent or to be too slow and narrow with no or less suitable users, and if user experience design of the tool is far not aligned to the rural preferences and capacity. There are high chances that this is common with many available digital tools and several other promoted innovations in different fields such as cooking fuels and organic fertilizers.
From an informal social media discussion, it was noted that many stakeholders seem to be aware of the misaligned user experience design of digital solutions they are promoting, but many seem to be either unaware or uncertain of the driving factors and the possibilities of value diffusion process.
Currently, we are exploring suitable qualitative analysis, innovation diffusion and innovation or knowledge-acquisition evaluation models that can be used to determine (locate) availability of suitable users (early adopters or innovators), as diffusion points of digital solutions and other promoted innovations, to detect any impact and to learn the local diffusion and change models in a community. With this capacity as a research supporting services agency, we hope to help donors, development services providers and entrepreneurs accurately and precisely locate where to go, measure their impact and design upscaling approaches. Therefore, the discovery of “diffusion of value” has been a key step in the effort to build the “navigation” capacity of the COMP@SS. In absence of suitable users, we are still attempting to enhance our local businesses user experience design to subsequently modify those of some digital solutions towards rural communities’ preferences and capacity.
COMP@SS 