Failure is the f-word in international development. Unspoken in polite company, yet a reality we all must face.
Failure in International Development
We often work in failed states, in market failure economies, on intractable problems that have stymied others for decades, if not centuries. How arrogant or foolish of us to expect success 100% of the time?
But if you read our project reports, we have “uneven successes”, “lessons learned”, and every other euphemism we can imagine just to keep from saying one simple word: failure.
Project Failure Examples
We are on a mission to make failure acceptable in development discussions. There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.
Let’s navel-gaze at where we have all gone wrong in international development:
Why ICT4D Projects Fail Even With Community Engagement
Successes in development projects are often reported but failures, however minor, are typically omitted from many types of reports. This is not a helpful practice...
Blockchain Use Case Failure: 43 Projects and Zero Impact Found
Blockchain and other distributed ledger technology offers the potential for radical transparency in data collection, management, and use across international development....
Fail Festival DC is Dead. Long Live Failure!
Way back in 2009, we organized a Twitter Chat on Failure with Michael Downey moderating the freewheeling discussion. Born from that conversation was Fail Faire,...
9 Lessons Learned in Rolling Out Dimagi’s Mobile Device Management Pilot
Enumerators, who are people like you and I, like to download Candy Crush, Facebook, YouTube videos, mobile screen savers, to their mobile phones, and use up significant...
The Real Failure in ICT4Edu: Poor Teacher Professional Development
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in a discussion that quickly shifts from a failing ICT for Education initiative, to the assumed root cause:...
9 Lessons Learned From Failed AgriTech Interventions in African Countries
The potential for ICTs in agricultural development is almost endless and numerous applications are being developed and deployed. However, whilst everyone would...
In ICT4D We’re Principled, But Are We Practiced Enough? – Your Weekend Long Reads
Starting with the Principles for Digital Development, we now have principles for many development sectors,and principles for cross-cutting themes, including principles...
Are Your ICT4D Success Metrics Realistic or Fantastic?
At a past employer, my team was talking with our farmer constituents about their adoption of our new rice-growing ICTforAg technology. The team was shocked and...
Surprise! Esoko’s Agricultural Market Prices Are Private Sector Failures
We’ve all heard of Esoko, the ICTforAg company specializing in market prices for farmers. Starting in Ghana in 2007, then expanding across West Africa and...
Why Our Cash Catalog Was A Failure
The Electronic Cash Transfer Learning Action Network (ELAN) works to improve the effectiveness and impact of digital payments in humanitarian response. Within this...
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