🚀 go-pugleaf

Dies ist eine mehrteilige Nachricht im MIME-Format.
--------------6EEB1CD7881C46DDD97755B1
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit



--
Romeo Bertolini
Zentrum fuer Entwicklungsforschung (ZEF)
Centre for Development Research
Walter-Flex-Strasse 3
D-53113 Bonn, Germany

Tel. +49-228-73 1870
Fax. +49-228-73 1869
e-mail: r.bertolini@uni-bonn.de
www: http://www.giub.uni-bonn.de/grotz/erstep.htm


--------------6EEB1CD7881C46DDD97755B1
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

Received: from rm-rstar.sfu.ca (142.58.120.21,58971) by IBM.rhrz.uni-bonn.de
   (IBM/VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Mon, 22 Jun 98 17:48:38 MEZ
Received: (from majordom@localhost)
        by rm-rstar.sfu.ca (8.8.7/8.8.7/SFU-4.0H) id GAA19326
        for ced-net-outgoing; Mon, 22 Jun 1998 06:49:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from IBM.rhrz.uni-bonn.de (ibm.rhrz.uni-bonn.de [131.220.236.2])
        by rm-rstar.sfu.ca (8.8.7/8.8.7/SFU-4.0H) with SMTP id GAA19310
        for <CED-NET@sfu.ca>; Mon, 22 Jun 1998 06:49:31 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from uni-bonn.de (131.220.109.12,1176) by IBM.rhrz.uni-bonn.de
   (IBM/VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Mon, 22 Jun 98 15:49:31 MEZ
Message-ID: <358E6048.24B035A0@uni-bonn.de>
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 15:46:48 +0200
From: Romeo Bertolini <r.bertolini@uni-bonn.de>
Reply-To: r.bertolini@uni-bonn.de
Organization: CICERO / ZEF
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.03 [de] (Win95; I)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: List CED-NET <CED-NET@sfu.ca>,
        List DEVMEDIA <DEVMEDIA@LISTSERV.UOGUELPH.CA>
Subject: Centre of Development Research Bonn/ ICT in rural Areas of Sub-Saharan
 Africa
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Sender: owner-ced-net@sfu.ca
Precedence: bulk

Hello out there,

instead of only participating passively by reading your interesting
contributions to the list, I want today introduce myself and the new
Research Center I am working for.

Personal
My name is Romeo Bertolini (MSc. Geography, Bonn University, Germany);
since April I am working for the Center for Development Research (see
below) at Bonn University preparing a PhD project on the potentials ICT
might have on developing countries.

Research Work
More precisely, the research project I am just commencing, analyses the
potential that ICT may have on rural areas in LDCs of sub-Saharan
Africa. Taking both the political and economic framework and
infrastructure as a starting point, the work will focus on the
anticipated effects of the use of technology in small enterprises and
households. This means that aspects of investment theories and the
transaction cost approach as well as 'lessons learned' from ongoing
projects will have to be considered (if they are adequate tools). This
should form a basis to elaborate case studies, with the aim of
developing a best practice approach.

Organisation
The Center for Development Research (ZEF)(Director: Joachim von Braun,
Web-Page not set up yet, but soon available) was founded in 1997 at the
University of Bonn and is intended to further the goal of making Bonn an
international science arena and a center for development policy.
As an internationally oriented research facility, ZEF seeks to produce
and disseminate knowledge that helps in solving political, economic and
ecological development problems. Still growing, the center is currently
mainly involved within the following fields (other topics to be added):
- transformations and economic transition,
- health and nutrition,
- social-security,
- WTO and the Environment
- information and communication.

In these fields (and beyond) not only public institutions involved in
development issues, but also the private sector are intended to benefit
from the work of ZEF. Other partners include multilateral organisations
and non-governmental organisations, both foreign and domestic.


Questions (still quite global ones, I am afraid)
Having gone through a whole bunch of literature and Web-pages, the main
focus of my work will stay empirical (as I think that empirical work on
ICT-Issues is crucial for the better understanding of the processes they
might induce).
Therefore my key questions (especially to the ACACIA people from IDRC)
are the following:
- are there any projects related to my field of research (e.g.
telecenters that are initiated by ACACIA or similar programmes)?
- are they just implemented or ongoing as long as they could be
evaluated (us being potential partners in this field of research,
evaluating for instance the possible impact of a rural community
telecenter on SMEs or households)?
- which methods   according to your opinion   seem to be the most
adequate to measure this impact?
- into which economic theories would you embed a research target like
this, especially taking the shortcomings of the transactions cost
approach into account (may there be an investment theory that could
cover the issues mentioned above?)?

Well, I hope I did not shock you with this bunch of questions. But
having done research on ICT within SMEs in the German manufacturing
sector, I know how hard it is to apply both, a proper theoretical and
methodical framework. Apart of that I am well aware of all the problems
that evolve when we are dealing with ICTs in developing countries (but
should they be left out???).
Thanks very much, looking forward for critique and ideas,

Romeo Bertolini

Zentrum fuer Entwicklungsforschung (ZEF)
Centre for Development Research
Walter-Flex-Strasse 3
D-53113 Bonn, Germany

Tel. +49-228-73 1870
Fax. +49-228-73 1869
e-mail: r.bertolini@uni-bonn.de
www: http://www.giub.uni-bonn.de/grotz/erstep.htm



--------------6EEB1CD7881C46DDD97755B1--