“It looks obvious,” says 2017 IDRC Research Award Recipient Victor Oteku, “but the importance of personal connections is very strong in establishing partnerships for technological innovation in Kenya.” Working in IDRC’s Regional Office for Sub-Saharan Africa, Oteku’s research sought to uncover socio-political and economic factors that shape partnerships for technological innovation in Kenya.

Oteku chose the information and communication technology sector for his study because of its high value to innovation and its contributions to growth in other sectors. The Kenyan government is also focusing on scientific and technological innovation in its long-term development plan, he says.

“Partnerships are mutual and synergetic collaborations geared toward a common goal,” says Oteku. The online survey he conducted showed that economic factors had the biggest influence on partnerships. Interviews and focus group discussions, however, “suggested that socio-cultural factors had a stronger influence.” Personal relationships, in particular, can determine success or failure. He concluded that all those involved need to work toward formal but open and flexible partnerships.

While a research awardee, Oteku also helped develop a proposal in support of the multi-funder Science Granting Councils Initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa. These councils are central to funding and catalyzing research and innovation.

Personally, “I nurtured the values of tolerance, cooperation, and hard work just by observing my colleagues do their jobs,” says Oteku. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to have been here.”

For 2017 IDRC Research Award Recipient Sujaya Neupane, carrying out fieldwork in Nepal was literally coming home. Neupane spent time in the remote western villages of Thapagaun and Jhimpa — his childhood home — to find ways of improving science education by using digital learning tools.

The quality of education is vastly different in Nepal’s rural and urban areas, he explains, leading to poor educational outcomes in rural schools. But with the advent of inexpensive technology and free multimedia resources, science teaching materials can be accessed at low cost, he says. His goal was to determine how sustainable digital libraries could be set up in rural schools.

“One can’t hope to educate young people today without computers,” says Neupane. “I used a Raspberry-pi computer board as a server with embedded open-source learning tools, including those provided by Khan Academy and Wikipedia. Tablets were used to access these materials wirelessly from the server,” he explains. The Raspberry Pi is a low-cost credit card-sized single board computer designed specifically to promote education.

A team of teachers-cum-researchers in two secondary schools worked with Neupane to establish a protocol for using the digital learning materials.

Establishing an e-library in Jhimpa has opened up sources of knowledge to students who never had access to a library before, says Neupane. He and the on-site research team are now exploring how to evaluate the impact on students’ learning when the project ends in mid-2018.

Of his IDRC experience, Neupane says “being able to go back and live in my village and conduct research in schools there jointly with the teachers was the most memorable,” says Neupane. “Through this experience I am determined to work to develop an education system in rural Nepal as a volunteer and independent researcher.”

“Did you know that people in some countries sacrifice bread and milk to buy mobile phone credit?” asks 2015 IDRC Research Award recipient Katie Clancy. This is one of the insights she gained while investigating whether hackathons could generate long-term technological solutions to development issues.

“There are really critical issues coming to the forefront of our society,” she says. “Digital technologies offer huge possibilities for improving the lives of people around the world.”

Once people get online, she explains, there is potential for innovation, accountability, for connecting across borders and transferring money in ways that would otherwise be impossible. “But,” she says, “there are very real downsides as well, including surveillance and security issues, and the very real possibility that technology is widening inequality between those who have access and those who don’t.”

“My experience at IDRC helped me delve into these critical issues, to learn from people who are leading these issues around the world,” she says. Along the way, she discovered that hackathons are not reliable models for solving development issues. “My work with IDRC has been life changing,” she says, “which is why I stayed at IDRC, continuing to work on open data issues.”

“For countries to achieve significant levels of economic and human development, there has to be some industrialization,” says 2016 IDRC Research Award recipient Gussai Sheikheldin. “Some institutions within the state help steer the process.”

Public technology intermediaries (PTI), as they are called, have been an important part of Tanzania's national development efforts since the 1970s, he says. But while Tanzania is undergoing significant economic growth, the industrial sector is lagging. How can the country’s PTIs be revamped to spur innovation?

In working to find out, “I really learned a lot in terms of industrial policy and the various paths that countries take toward industrialization,” he says. “The research enhanced my knowledge and understanding of how industrialization takes place, particularly for low-income countries that are pushing to get to the middle-income, semi-industrialized level.”

“The main purpose of the findings is to share them with Tanzanian public technology intermediaries,” says Sheikheldin. “If the research reaches the right people, the people who can actually use it, that will be sufficient for me.”