Evaluating Donor-Funded ICT Projects : How Significant is Western-Centrism?

Abstract: Donor-funded economic and development assistance for various countries and regions has been steadily increasing in the last half-century. According to the World Bank, the funding amount provided by this organisation has increased more than 40 times from 4.6 billion USD to 166 billion USD in a 58-year span (World Bank, 2018). The notion of development, which came to spotlight after the WWII, has been greatly debated with a lot of academics and theorists linking it to dependency and superiority of one over another.  Since the beginning of the ICT revolution from around 1980s, technologies have become tools and enablers for new opportunities (Forester, 1987). However, with the great benefits, came significant risks, such as data and information misuse, data protection or cybersecurity. Still the ICT related development projects are often portrayed as silver bullets which can resolve matters such as inequality, access to education or poor living conditions. Funding organisations are putting digitalisation at the forefront of their agenda and communicate the change and positive impact they bring. However, the evaluation mechanisms used by those bodies raise the question of suitability as they are very much based on benchmarking against the Western standards of success or failure. This essay is aiming to investigate how significant is Western-centric worldview when it comes to measuring donor funded or co-funded ICT projects, be it in a form of a grant or a loan, as well as what role the terms impact and outcome play when communicating the results. It is also intending to analyse how the ICTs have been changing the notion of development and what conclusions can be drawn.