EVALUATING ICT PROJECTS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
The question of what can be shown of ICT4D project's success has always been illusive in most cases evaluation requires as much resources as the project itself and is rarely factored in in the budget of many ICT4D interventions. ICT4D framework tools are usually used for conducting Outcome or impact Evaluation. Evaluations can be used to exploring interventions and examining the input, output, activities and the outcome of projects and to evaluate and bring into light the belief that a project has indirectly and directly benefited thousands in the community. The multitude of international, regional, government, and non-government organizations involved in ICT4D projects are the main producers of evaluations of ICT4D initiatives. Books and articles in academic journals have also contributed to knowledge in this field. In Africa use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) to aid in development has been speared by governments, private organizations and religious institutions, among these we have international as well as National Non-Governmental Organizations who have built a belief that ICT and support of ICT interventions do have impact to the country’s development and a third world country in this case. Many NGOs find it difficult to evaluate the impact of the intervention to the community. Most worried are the sponsors of such projects because they want to know the way forward and assess whether their interventions made a change. It has been argued that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can lead to development. With this in mind, developing countries have been rushing to implement ambitious ICT projects in rural areas through the direct-indirect supervision of international institutions. The main focuses of the interventions have been the implementation of ICT projects, rather than understanding their impacts at the recipient level. This lack of understanding has led to many failures of the ICT interventions as reported in the literature (Bakewell & Garbutt ,2005).There is a need to understand impacts of ICT projects in their local context considering the participants’ perspectives at the micro (community) level.
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