Spider

The Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (Spider) is a resource centre for ICT for development (ICT4D). Spider was established in 2004 and is based at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV) at Stockholm University.

Spider’s thematic focus is aligned with Sweden’s ICT4D priorities, while the crosscutting issues it addresses reflect its vision and mission.

Thematic areas: democracy, education, health.

Crosscutting ICT issues: low-cost and high-quality technology, free and open source software (FOSS), mobile technology for development (M4D).

Crosscutting development issues: youth empowerment, cultural creativity, capacity development.

Its vision is an interconnected world built in the spirit of digital solidarity for future generations.

Its mission is to support the innovative use of ICT for development and poverty reduction through synergistic partnerships, while strengthening the global ICT4D knowledge base through networking, brokering, and open sharing of information.

Spider is a network organisation that serves as an ICT4D broker. It functions like a node in a network of actors from academia, civil society, government, and business. It combines networking and knowledge brokering with support to innovative ICT4D projects and ICT4D research in partner countries.

Spider focuses primarily on the 12 priority countries for Swedish development cooperation: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The geographical scope is narrower for its ICT4D projects in partner countries and broader for the Spider network.

Gender Based Violence Project from Cambodia receives nomination for UN-based Award in Sri Lanka
Gender Based Violence Project from Cambodia receives nomination for UN-based Award in Sri Lanka 12 August 2013

Gender Based Violence project, implemented by the Open Institute, APC member in Cambodia, is nominated by an international jury of ICT experts to enter the next round of the 2013 World Summit Award (WSA) in the “e-Inclusion and Empowerment” category.

Holding governments accountable for gender-based violence in Cambodia
Holding governments accountable for gender-based violence in Cambodia 06 September 2012

This project will empower women’s organisations in Cambodia to use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to monitor government prevention efforts and responses to VAW; to aggregate and analyse data that captures these efforts and to produce evidence that can be used to put pressure on the Cambodian government to deliver on its promises to combat and eliminate violence against women. The project aims to replicate the Africatti project in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the R...

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