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In June 2024 the international 6 ECTS Master’s course ‘ICT for Development in The Field (ICT4D)’ takes place at VU Amsterdam (digital participation is possible!). The field of ICT4D generally addresses problems of, and solutions for, the “unconnected people in the world”. Currently, this is still a large part of the world’s population, the majority of whom live in poor, remote, often rural, regions of the world, often in so-called developing low/middle-income countries.

Students work in groups to carry out a use case analysis and design assignment focused on a specific selected use case frm one of various geographies (countries/regions). Through this group project they seek to answer a number of key questions:

• (a) What is the state-of-play regarding advanced digital applications for the Social Good relevant to people in low-resource environments of the world? Here, one may think as a reference point of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as combating hunger, ensuring food security, reducing inequalities, etc.
• (b) What are associated foreseeable positive and negative or adverse consequences, risks, and social and environmental impacts related to the application of various digital technologies, and how may these risks be managed and the adverse consequences mitigated?
• (c) In consequence, what are the implications to be drawn for the application of advanced digital innovations specifically in the context of the respective Global South countries or regions, in terms of policies, regulations, education, sustainability and the civil/civic debate?

Course entry requirements
This interdisciplinary course is open for selected Master’s students, having Bachelor’s level knowledge or experience in a relevant digital field (IS, CS, AI, digital humanities, computational social sciences).

Registration
For this course, there are 5 spots available for students from Aurora member-universities. You can apply via sending an email to shortmobility@vu.nl. Writing a short motivation could be a part of the application. The deadline to apply is 12 March 2024.