RIA’s Alison Gillwald has contributed a chapter to a new International Development Research Centre (IDRC) book, Making Open Development Inclusive. Edited by Matthew L. Smith and Ruhiya Kristine Seward, the book covers issues such as open government and data, open science, open education, and open innovation. It focuses on development practices in the Global South. According to IDRC, “contributors assess the crucial questions of who is able to participate and benefit from open practices, and who cannot”.
The chapter written by Gillwald is titled, Openness in Telecommunications Reform and Practice: The Case of Open Access Broadband Networks, Public Wi-Fi, and Zero-Rating.
The chapter seeks to contribute to a better understanding of open access regulation as a policy instrument in the context of developing countries. It argues that that where there are no resources or institutional endowments for the state to provide social and public goods, the only way of doing so (in this case ensuring digital inclusion) may be accomplished by leveraging private resources. At the same time, it also makes the case for recognizing the often-ignored demand-side value of infrastructure, especially in the case of redressing digital inequality and citizens being unable to pay for services essential to their economic and social participation in modern society
To download the book, click here.
