IDS Live Institute of Development Studies

Automation and digitisation are set to impact on many areas of work and livelihoods in developing countries and there is an urgent need for robust empirical work to address this issue. Participants at the 2017 Digital Development Summit, convened by IDS, called for research institutions to create cross-cutting partnerships across disciplines, geographies and sectors both to develop research and to play a brokering role in relation to solutions.

This seminar will be a space to discuss key issues and debates and explore the role IDS researchers might play in developing this research agenda.

Most development thought is based upon the assumption that the uplifting of the world’s poor is to be carried out by elite actors (states, corporations, NGO’s) , rather than the poor themselves. This way of thinking, paradoxically, helps justify new ways of oppressing and exploiting the poor.

In this talk Professor Benjamin Selwyn from the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex, launches his book The Struggle for Development. He introduces the concept of labour-led development to illuminate, theoretically and empirically, ways in which the poor can be masters of their own development.

Advances in digital technology and artificial intelligence are transforming the future of work. Self-driving trucks are due to be tested on UK roads in 2018 and are already being piloted in the US where around 3 million people are employed as truck drivers, while in the Philippines 89 per cent of call centre jobs are now at risk from automation. Women are also likely to be disproportionately impacted by automation, and less likely to be shaping decisions in the tech sector where they are under-represented.

Technological advances represent significant opportunities both for the UK and the rest of world. With significant implications for the UK Government and the Global Goal to achieve decent work for all by 2030, this fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference seeks to explore:

The opportunities and challenges that advances in digital technologies present for the work place and workers in the future, both at home and abroad?

How policies across UK government – industrial strategy, education and skills, international development and trade - can help promote prosperity across the UK as well as supporting economic development globally?

Chair: Chi Onwurah MP

Speakers: Becky Faith, Digital and Technology Cluster, Institute of Development Studies;

Jenni Lloyd, Purpose Lab. and Wired Sussex;

Karen Cham, Academic Lead of the Brighton Digital Catapult Centre and Professor of Digital Transformation Design, University of Brighton.

Three years since the launch of China's flagship outbound investment strategy, One Belt One Road (OBOR), many are left uncertain - what is OBOR and what exactly is China trying to achieve?

Based on study of trade-related potential for win-win development between China and Africa countries, Dr. Lauren Johnston will explain economic push factors underlying China's outbound investment agenda, and the attractiveness of selective 'Road' countries in Africa.

Arguing that the timeliness of OBOR investments for particular African economies could help underlie sustained economic development, she adds a call for Australia, the only OECD member of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), to grasp related new challenges and opportunity.

In this seminar, the speakers will share their thinking on Participatory Accountability; how it connects to the surfacing and valuing other types of knowledge; and its potential as a more inclusive and transformative approach to monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals.

Speakers

Chair: Jackie Shaw, IDS Fellow-Participation cluster whose expertise focuses on integrating visual methods into action research processes
Jo Howard, IDS Fellow-Participation cluster working on social inclusion, citizenship building and processes of participation
Joanna Wheeler, storycrafter, researcher, facilitator working for social justice
Erika Lopez Franco, IDS Research Officer-Participation cluster working on building networks of social change through participation and action research

Wednesday 21st June 2017, 10:00 to 11:15, IDS Room 221

The Centre for Rising Powers in Development welcomed Paulo Esteves, the Director of the BRICS Policy Center, and Geovana Zoccal, IDS Visiting Fellow and researcher at the BRICS Policy Center, for a discussion on 'The BRICS Effect: The Impact of South-South Cooperation in the Social Field of International Development Cooperation ' The seminar was chaired by Lidia Cabral, Research Fellow.

You can find more information on the Centre for Rising Powers in Development on the IDS website (www.ids.ac.uk)