Context and the processes of ICT for development

Information and Organization 22 (2012) 23–36

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Context and the processes of ICT for development Niall Hayes a, Chris Westrup b,⁎ a b

Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 17 February 2011 Received in revised form 4 October 2011 Accepted 5 October 2011 Available online 2 November 2011

a b s t r a c t This paper argues for a rethinking of the notion of context in the information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) research domain. We argue that context can be conceived of as a dynamic outcome constructed through processes of development and interpretation rather than as an entity which can be isolated and represented. Instead of focusing on the adequacy of the representation of context—the motivation of contextualism—researchers should consider the processes by which context is represented. Three principles are proposed to assist in this endeavour. Firstly, representation of context is a relational process in which both ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ actors engage. Understanding the context of ICT4D requires multiple accounts drawn from different actors. Secondly, while research needs to describe the concepts used by ‘macro’ actors to represent context, it is crucial to recognize them as outcomes of processes of development and not as self-evident entities. Finally, we suggest that research needs to attend to how these accounts are produced, be they by ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ actors. This can be understood as an emergent activity showing not only unexpected outcomes but also that the concepts describing actors change in development. These principles are applied to the case of M-PESA, now widely known as an innovative mobile banking application from Kenya. One outcome of this approach is that it helps explain why ICT4D projects in general, and M-PESA in particular, are often difficult to replicate successfully. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction It is widely argued that information systems are constitutive elements of processes that link together different entities and locations, leading to compression of space, coordination in time, and globalisation (Castells, 2000; Sahay et al., 2003). Context is often used as a catch all term to refer to such constitutive ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (N. Hayes), [email protected] (C. Westrup) 1471-7727/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2011.10.001

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elements, namely where and when information systems are developed, implemented and used. This paper seeks to develop a theoretical contribution to studies in this area by critically examining the notion of context and how it is handled in the information technology for development and development studies literatures (see Avgerou, 2001, 2010: Avgerou & Madon, 2004; Walsham, 2001). We will suggest that context is a dynamic concept produced out of processes of connection and disconnection and not an entity ‘out there’ waiting to be represented. Highlighting the importance of how context is formulated in the processes of development has important consequences for methodology and conceptualising future studies of information technology for development. While there has been a paucity of accounts of context in relation to information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) literatures, those that have discussed context are interesting, while they exemplify a diversity of perspectives, cumulatively they suggest a growing realisation of the significance of ‘putting studies in context’ often referred to as contextualism (see Avgerou, 2001, 2008, 2010). As one might anticipate, the social sciences have had a much wider and critical discussion of the notion of context in general and contextualism in particular, most notably in cultural and social anthropology. This paper draws on several of these contributions to develop our critical examination of context in ICT4D and development studies literatures (see Dilley 1999, 2002; Green, 2009; Lawson, 2008; Strathern, 1987, 2004). We begin with a summary of existing perspectives in ICT4D on context before setting out the structure of the paper. For information systems research, but more especially in popular and policy discourse, attributing change to technologies as agents themselves remains influential. Various formulations of technological determinism exist, but they coalesce around notions that new technologies, or mediating devices are generative and create new and direct forms of communication; economic activity (Tapscott and Williams, 2006); information retrieval (Jensen, 2006) and perhaps even new forms of international development (Heeks, 2008, June; Thompson, 2007). Much of this literature has a strongly deterministic orientation, in that the arguments they present are a-contextual (Avgerou, 2001: 43) as they pay little regard to the environment in which technology is introduced and used. A different stance suggests that technologies do incorporate a context of use which is to be found in the designers' expectations of the environments in which these technologies will be used (Sahay and Walsham, 1999). Here the literature suggests that when the designers successfully match the technology to the context, then the design reality gap is averted, while when there is a significant mismatch the gap will result in failure (Heeks, 2002). However, most recent research, particularly in ICT4D, could be said to be following a call made by Avgerou (2001) to consider ICTs in the contexts in which they are embedded (Avgerou and Walsham, 2000; Braa et al., 2007; Madon, 2010; Walsham, 1993). Contexts, in this case, may be organisational, national or international. Taking this on requires the researcher to be aware of these contexts, to understand them and to be able to represent them. For Avgerou (2001), drawing on Pettigrew (1987), this implies taking into account different levels of context be they organisational, national or international. This layering of context has been influential and led to the emergence of a school of contextualist studies of information system deployment and use. Such different understandings of context suggest two questions. First, can a complete representation of context be achieved and secondly, is the representation of context bound up with suppositions of those identifying these contexts? The first question takes us to a problem relating to the possibilities of representation more generally. For many, and indeed a position we support, representing context is highly problematic, as whatever is represented is not the thing itself it is something that stands in for it (Bateson, 2000). In seeking adequate representation we are faced with an infinite regress; one representation can be replaced with yet a more detailed one and so on. Huen (2009) refers to attempts at grasping more and more detail of the context, and ever more complex representations, as a process of out-contextualisation, which is a process of context representation that can never be satisfied. While the first question focuses on context representation, the second and more fruitful question draws attention to the processes of context formulation. One influential approach in the literature that has discussed the process of context formulation has been to understand context as the outcome of different discourses. Avgerou (2010) presents ICT4D research as outcomes of four different discourses of development which on the one hand depend on whether change is identified as a gradual or disruptive transformation, and on the other, whether it is seen as proceeding from the transfer and diffusion of innovation or from socially embedded innovation. This framework is important as it moves the understanding of context on from concerns about

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representing context (see Avgerou, 2001) to how context is framed in the processes of ICT4D. In other words, the issues at stake here are not a faithfulness to provide better representations of context, but how the commitments of different discourses result in a framing of context as either sites of macro or micro innovation and whether the innovation can be conceived of as gradual or disruptive. However, this framing too presents difficulties; for example, as mentioned earlier, it presupposes a layering of contexts, recalling Pettigrew, framed as either macro and micro contexts. Avgerou (2010: 11) sets out two key challenges for the research domain; both of which are relevant to issues of context. The first is a call for theory which ‘… is needed to identify what is relevant context for each case of ICT innovation, and how it matters.’ A second theoretical challenge takes up the issue of social and economic contexts of development, as Avgerou puts it,‘ … strengthening of the field's [ICT4D] capacity to associate ICT innovation with socioeconomic development.’ In tandem, Avgerou suggests that these two problems span a difficulty of how to combine micro and macro domains of analysis. This is a problem that is prevalent in the ICT4D literature and we contend that rethinking context may help in this endeavour. In response to such a call what then will we take context to be in our rethinking? The task of this paper is to present an understanding of context as a dynamic concept that arises from the contextualising moves linking the content of ICT4D with the settings in which it takes place. It is, we will suggest, a relational concept that involves creating and cutting connections between different entities and actors; the setting and resetting of boundaries; and it has a performative aspect as the representation of context seeks to produce appropriate setting for ICT4D projects to engage with. We will argue that issues of information systems and their context are not simply one of the adequacy of the representation of context but have to consider the processes by which context is represented. We will suggest that interpreting technology and development projects in this way often shows how provisional and contingent such projects are and how innovative the processes of implementation may become. In order to develop our discussion around the rethinking of context in ICT4D and development studies research, this paper is structured as follows. The next section introduces and considers the arguments as to why context and particularly contextualism are problematic. Further, we discuss alternate ways of understanding context. Drawing on the notion of distal and proximal views it presents three principles helpful for addressing context in ICT4D. We illustrate these principles in section three by applying them to a recent and well-known case of mobile banking, the M-PESA case in Kenya to show how a dynamic understanding of context assists in explaining how M-PESA succeeded. Section four provides a discussion of how we can conceptualise context, and what the implications are for future research. In particular we discuss how rethinking context provides an opening to address the notion of a gap between macro and micro accounts of ICT4D and to adopt a dynamic understanding of contextualising as a process intrinsic to ICT4D. The final section offers some brief conclusions. 2. Contexts of development More recently we have witnessed a turn to contextualism within the ICT4D and development studies literatures, alongside management and other social sciences. This literature has questioned the utility of a-contextual research, and the strengths of laboratory studies (Avgerou, 2001; Hutchins, 1995; Pettigrew, 1987; Walsham, 1993). Despite this increased emphasis on understanding context, scholars in different fields still refer to a ‘problem’ (Dilley, 2002); ‘contradictions’ (Lawson, 2008); or ‘enigma’ (Huen, 2009) of context or contextualism? This section considers the problems relating to understanding context, before discussing possible ways forward and proposing three principles for understanding context. 2.1. Understanding context Some commentators have suggested that a key distinction is whether context is taken as self-evident or whether context itself is taken up for investigation (Dilley, 2002). Contextualism draws attention to a gap between design of ICT and ICT4D projects and the social, economic and cultural situations in which they are expected to be used. As already noted Heeks (2002) referred to this as a design reality gap, while contextualism goes further and seeks to represent this ‘reality’. Taking up Dilley, a problem is our understanding of how this is accomplished both theoretically and conceptually. As discussed earlier, one

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approach is to represent context as an entity that can be understood through the theoretical commitments of the development specialist or the ICT designer for example (Avgerou, 2010). This theoretical positioning can either be methodological by applying a specific model of development such as participatory rural appraisal (Chambers, 1983) or conceptual, for example, by reifying context as ‘social capital’, ‘cultural heritage’ or ‘indigenous knowledge’ (Adam and Urquhart, 2009). Another problem arises in how context is represented. As Avgerou (2010) points out, the categories used to describe contexts are not neutral but are inflected with theoretical and practical concerns. In describing contexts, these descriptions can become naturalised and dominant discourses that represent communities as ‘poor’, ‘digitally excluded’, ‘underdeveloped’ (Escobar, 1995). This then conceals the political relations of development. 1 A different problem arises from taking the opposite tack and seeking to draw out the specificity of the context by allowing informants to present their understandings of context in their own terms. We are faced here with potential relativism as each instance of ICT4D is represented as different and an outcome of working within a particular and unique context. The question then becomes how to avoid incommensurability between different contexts and approaches. In ICT4D, discussion about how ‘to scale up’ specific ICT4D projects from a village to town to state, etc. illustrates concerns on how to move from the relativity of a specific context towards more general understandings of the scope of particular ICT4D technologies and techniques (see Walsham et al., 2007: 323). Thus a central problem pertaining to context as a notion relates to the ways it is bound up with issues of the universal and the particular in research and practice. For example, drawing theoretical implications from specific research studies is about strategies of decontextualising, removing the particularities of a situation, and abstracting models that are considered to have general relevance. If instead, research focuses on specific areas it runs the risk of being seen as being overly contextually bound, providing descriptive accounts of specific technological developments. When such accounts are overly descriptive then they may be viewed as sometimes theoretically weak. Put differently, and less pejoratively, issues of context are about connections and disconnections: what is seen as significant and what is taken as unimportant; and thus about bodies of knowledge and issues of power. A further and related concern with regard to accounts of context in the IS literature broadly, and the ICT4D literature specifically, is an assumption that we can divide context into a part/whole relationship. In ICT4D research this usually represents what Strathern refers to as “the tri-partite division of organisation into the levels of society, institutions and individuals as respectively representing of the macro, the meso and the micro” (Munro, 2005: 250). Consequently, she argues that conceiving of society as parts and wholes, as micro, meso and macro scales is a very artificial process of organising and suggests that we need to focus primarily on relations rather than individuals (Strathern, 1996: 62). 2.2. Investigating context With such problems relates to understanding context established, how then can we investigate the concept of context? Taking the lead from Strathern (1996) and focusing on relations, a starting point is to investigate the concept of context as an issue in its own right and consider what Dilley (1999, 2002) refers to as the ‘social life of context’. One central dimension for investigating context is to attend to the ways in which context is bound up with knowledge claims as to what counts as significant and what is not. A political scientist will understand a situation in a different way than an information systems specialist as their differing technical concepts and vocabularies might suggest. But it is the knowledge practices that are of most interest; how contexts are encountered; represented and engaged to create connection; and seek to order data and phenomena (Huen 2009). This social life of context implies multiple contextualising takes place. For example, ICT4D researchers and development practitioners use concepts to describe a context for those who are to use technologies or practices they wish to impart. Equally, those who are the objects of ICT4D are finding ways to put ICT4D practitioners into a context that makes sense to them. Each takes the other as something to be contextualised and thus provides for potentially multiple contextualising activities where different and overlapping views exist of what is to be put in context. This suggests that all contextualising activities are partial and provisional; capable at some point to be reframed in relation to other phenomena. 1 Such concerns have manifested in part as a longstanding debate in how studies of anthropology and development are written (see Green, 2009 for a recent contribution).

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A second approach to investigate context is to critically examine the ways in which context is inextricably interlinked with issues of power and who gets to speak for whom. For example, participatory engagement as opposed to expert knowledge of development specialists has long been advocated and adopted in development studies (Chambers, 1983). However, to elicit this local knowledge, development specialists adopt a series of specific techniques which seek to collect and classify local knowledge in terms understandable and useful to the development project. As Green (2009) puts it these are performative strategies of community making which treat the local as a context to be objectified through specific representational techniques. In other words, participation depends on expert knowledge practices to make the local setting visible and capable of being connected in specific development strategies. A further approach towards conceptualising context as a contested and political process is to consider the metaphor of intersecting networks in which concepts, materials and people circulate: an approach often associated with actor network theory. Networks can link macro actors—such as the World Bank, UK Department of International Development (DFID), and the UN—and local actors as they adopt and use resources and policies for ICT4D. In this analysis, the assumptions of a layered (part/whole) context are dropped, in favour of a relational and flat or folded ontology of intersecting networks each of which ‘performs’ its own context (Latour, 1999, 2005). This sense of emergent and relational contexts drawing on the knowledge of specific networks gives insights into the contestation and power relations apparent in development where even participatory techniques tend to be framed by development networks rather than local actors. In this approach macro actors turn out to always operate in local settings, even if it is a board room in New York, but what differentiates them from others is their greater ability to use technologies, to draw information and resources together; create reports, allocate resources, etc. that circulate in (and create) extensive networks. To a large extent, the activities of these development networks tend to set out what development (or ICT4D) is and to enable it to be performed. For example, many approaches involving macro actors exemplify a managerialism of development aid set up as networks of development providing resources and requiring in turn, milestones, outcomes measures, and project management (see Cooke & Kothari, 1999; Harriss, 2005). Third, fundamental to our understanding of context is how we might think about the macro/micro conundrum. Such concerns have been central to the recent discussions of scale in the ICT4D literature (Walsham et al., 2007). The issue of scale is obviously important. Returning to Strathern (1991, 1996) she disagrees with any sense of layering of context and argues that a fractal metaphor is more appropriate to understanding context and issues of scaling. As the well known example of a coastline being a fractal object shows, increasing the magnification at any point still gives the same amount of detail which can be endlessly repeated. For Strathern this implies that scaling from micro to macro is about a relative containment of comparison and differentiation. As the fractal metaphor alerts us to, at each scale the amount of detail handled is similar. For example, in a case of digital inclusion, the gaps identified the experiences of two adjacent villages will appear as significant as those between two countries. The same could be said of the similarities drawn in these cases. In other words, the issue of scale is simply an outcome of what can be identified as similar and different at each point. As Strathern (1991 :xxi) puts it ‘[t]he intensity of the perception of similarity and difference plays an equally significant part in … [an] account whatever the scale. It also appears to play an equally significant account in the actors’ orientations.’ (emphasis in the original). Scale is an outcome of what resources are mobilised, but, for macro and micro actors alike, the amounts of detail being handled is similar. If context is fractal, always capable of being represented ‘in more depth’, then the focus again turns to how contexts are produced and how provisional and creative the processes of performing ICT4D are. In short, macro and micro accounts are outcomes of connecting things together. The micro with its local interactions is always framed to some extent by macro accounts while macro accounts are produced in specific situations by drawing things together and summing them up. 2 Macro and micro are in effect relational and outcomes of networks in action and the fractal characteristics of similarity and difference. Strathern raises another issue relevant to conceptualising context; that of partial connection. For her, as the fractal metaphor indicates, all processes of contextualisation are necessarily incomplete attempts to systemise the experiences of users, informants and others. In part this is due to the impossibility of

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This reading of macro and micro effaces certain differences between Latour and Strathern (for example, see Latour, 1999: 19)

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representing everything—the notion of outcontextualisation referred to earlier—but it is more than that for Strathern. She points to a certain incommensurability among knowledge practices. Representing contexts is partly about creating connections between knowledge practices though a process of translation. In contrast to the more familiar part/whole analogy of a layered context, a comprehensive translation between knowledge practices is not possible. A final concern in understanding context remains and relates to the important question, namely how this relational understanding of context as a performative activity can be handled to research ICT4D? Such an approach needs to attentive to the connections (and disconnections) enabling macro and micro accounts of ICT4D (themselves products of networks of connection) and how contexts are formed in the processes of development. We wish to build upon work that is suspicious of a unitary order or a specific factor acting as a logic of development be it capitalism, globalisation, a Washington Consensus or modernity (see Lewis and Mosse, 2006) and to show how different knowledge practices interact. The procedures of development are themselves often best studied through ethnographic approaches. Evidence of a multiplicity of agency and the presence of contingent practices questions a logic of development on the one hand and unitary representations of context on the other (Madon et al., 2004). One approach that resonates with such an understanding of context is Cooper and Law's (1995) ideas concerning distal and proximal accounts. This approach is significant in our analysis and discussion. A distal representation sets up entities such as organisations as discrete with clear cut boundaries and tends to focus on stability. In a distal representation of an organisation, description might centre on the structure of the organisation, the products, the customer base, market share and so on. In other words, a distal representation shows the results of organising without considering how organising takes place. In development a distal account takes the categories of development (or, for that matter, of ‘macro’ actors) and describes context in these terms. This is analogous to describing context as an unproblematic entity in which development is embedded. For Cooper and Law distal accounts of context are the results of the process of organisation which, importantly, do not explain how they are produced in practice. In contrast, a proximal understanding focuses on processes that (re)produce ordering (and disordering) which create representations of context. In terms of organisation, Cooper and Law use it to describe the processes by which organising is practiced; what takes place and how that happens. It is analogous to identifying a ‘social life of context’ (Dilley, 2002) and how partial connections are generated. Having similarities to forms of ethnography, proximal representations seek to give insights into how organising is established whose consequences are such organisations. Both understandings are necessary and complementary to each other. Context is a provisional consequence of a process of ordering between what is focused on as content and what is demarcated as context. Distal and proximal oppositions, such as macro and micro contexts, need to be conceived of as being complementary to each other. Rather than relying on either distal or proximal accounts, it is fruitful to use both by focusing on how distal categories are applied, reinterpreted or produced in proximal accounts and how distal categories are used and engaged in design, policy, and development. Interpreting technology and development projects in this way can show how provisional and contingent such projects are and how innovative the processes of implementation may become. It is these conceptualisations that we will draw upon to develop our discussion of the case example below both to illustrate their applicability and show that their usefulness in providing new interpretations of the well known case of M-PESA in Kenya generally discussed as an exemplar of a highly successful mbanking application.

2.3. Three principles for addressing context This approach of drawing on multiple sources, with both proximal and distal accounts, moves the focus of analysis from seeking ‘better’ descriptions of context—a motivation of contextualism—to developing an account which shows how contexts are produced to make ICT4D work. Recalling Avgerou (2001) we can suggest that three principles need to be considered when addressing context in ICT4D. First, context is not a discrete entity to be described or to be embedded in. If it is described as such, it is an outcome of a process of contextualising. Representations of context are created through processes of development and from stocks of knowledge that are describing and framing contexts. The representation of contexts is therefore a relational process in which both ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ actors engage in and become

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outcomes of. To gain understanding, multiple accounts are important which draw on proximal and distal accounts. Second, research needs to describe the concepts used by actors to represent context but to recognise them as outcomes of processes of development rather than self-evident entities. These are, drawing on Cooper and Law, distal accounts. Finally, research needs to attend to how distal accounts are produced. This requires investigation into the processes of development, be they by ‘macro’ or ‘micro’ actors. This is to be understood as an emergent activity and draws on multiple accounts wherever possible and on ethnographic detail on how proximal accounts develop and change in ICT4D. To show the utility of these principles the next section analyses the case of M-PESA. To begin with the case is described in some detail using multiple and mainly distal accounts. The case is analysed to show that these distal accounts alter in radical and innovative ways between 2003 and 2011 which involved changing accounts of the content and context of M-PESA. How these distal accounts were produced is less well known and shows a lack of published research giving proximal accounts of M-PESA's development. This, in turn, makes it easier to present M-PESA as the development of a self-evident m-banking application which detailed analysis questions. We return to our three principles in the discussion section to consider the implications they may have for future research that addresses context. 3. M-PESA 3.1. Introduction The M-PESA case has been widely discussed as an example of m-banking and of trust (AFI, 2010; Camner & Sjöblom, 2009; Jack and Suri, 2009; Mas & Radcliffe, 2010; Morawczynski, 2008; Morawczynski & Miscione, 2010; Ngugi et al., 2010; Omwansa, 2009), but it began quite differently as a research project in telecoms and microfinance, was then launched as a money transfer system in 2007 and has become extremely successful. It ran into regulatory difficulties in late 2008 as it was claimed, with some reason, that it was providing banking services without meeting banking regulations. These problems were resolved and it has gone on to become a platform providing a number of services to Kenyans and is widely cited as a highly innovative service with important effects (see Pyler et al., 2010). However, attempts to replicate the service in other countries such as neighbouring Tanzania and South Africa have been less successful. Using multiple accounts this section begins by giving some detail about M-PESA which then is used to show how the changing framing of context(s) is important in understanding the trajectory of M-PESA. The rapid adoption of mobiles (or cell phones) in Kenya has led to 75% adoption in less than 12 years with nearly 25 million subscribers in 2010 (ITU, 2011). M-PESA is recognised as an innovative mobile banking application which uses mobile phones as a means to bank and transfer money in Kenya (see Camner & Sjöblom, 2009; Morawczynski, 2008). It was introduced by the mobile phone operator Safaricom, a telecom operator part owned by Vodaphone, in March 2007. By 2011, M-PESA had gained 14 million customers in Kenya and had a network of 28,000 agents, who were also airtime resellers, spread throughout the country with over 305 million transactions in that year (Safaricom, 2011). It is claimed with some justification to be ‘the most successful mobile phone-based financial service in the developing world’ (Jack and Suri, 2009: 5) By 2010, M-PESA accounts could be used via ATMs and money transferred to M-PESA from outside the country (M-PESA, 2010). The network of agents began as airtime resellers for mobile phones, but as M-PESA agents they handle cash transactions and customers of M-PESA can deposit or withdraw money from their MPESA accounts. To register for M-PESA a person provides photo identification such as a driver's licence to an agent which they check and register an electronic account linked to the mobile phone number. The account is activated when money is deposited with the agent (Morawczynski, 2008). Mobile phones are used to handle the account and their main functions are to transfer money to other accounts, buy airtime, and check their account balance. M-PESA is becoming cited as an exemplar of bankless banking (Lüftenegger et al., 2010) and attempts to replicate its success have begun in other countries such as neighbouring Tanzania and South Africa (Camner & Sjöblom, 2009). At the outset, it was proposed that M-PESA agents would use Point of Sale (POS) devices and customers would have magnetic striped cards but it was quickly realised that the costs for the airtime resellers would be prohibitive (Hughes and Lonie, 2007, winter/spring: 70). Instead, agents were given a mobile phone

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costing $40 which had a different menu to customers allowing them to contact M-PESA by SMS. Handsets used for M-PESA had to be re-organised to provide both English and Swahili alternative menus and SMS applications. The processing of the M-PESA was run by a UK company Sagentia. At first, Sagentia attempted to run the service using servers in Nairobi, but the processing times were too slow and so the servers were situated in the UK. Currently, all the processing of M-PESA takes place outside Kenya by IBM Global Services. From the start, care was taken not to organise M-PESA as a bank and the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) allowed Safaricom to operate M-PESA outside banking regulations. The details of how the M-PESA money transfer system works since 2007 is shown as Fig. 1. The M-PESA interface is seen as easy to use and runs from an application on the user's mobile phone (Jack et al., 2009). The service is launched from the phone's main menu and it loads quickly because the application resides on the mobile phone rather than on the network. The user is prompted by the menu, one prompt at a time. For a transaction all the processing including entering in a personal identification number (PIN) is done by the mobile phone and when the user has confirmed that the transaction is correct, it is encrypted as a single SMS message to Safaricom's M-PESA server (Mas and Radcliffe, 2010). 3.2. Towards a history of M-PESA: multiple accounts and changing content and context M-PESA began as a research project jointly funded by Vodaphone (£990,000) and U.K. Government's Department for International Development (DFID) e-Financial Deepening Challenge Fund (£970,000) which ran from December 2003 to November 2006 (DFID, 2006, November). Its aim was ‘to improve transactions between individuals and with MFI [microfinance institutions] customers and MFIs.’ (ibid) As Nick Hughes and Susie Lonie put it the early aim was to create a faster way of providing microcredit to people in rural Kenya and a partnership was formed with a microcredit agency, Faulu Kenya, and a commercial bank (Hughes and Lonie, 2007, winter/spring). Nick Hughes, the instigator of the project within Vodaphone, saw M-PESA as a means of reducing poverty and a way to meet this Millennium Development Goal through the provision of microcredit and the engagement of the private sector (ibid: 65). His initial understanding of context was of the rural poor in Kenya lacking access to capital while it was readily available in Nairobi. M-PESA was to be the conduit providing microcredit and processing loans as they became due. DFID, it appears, understood the project as one of number of jointly funded development projects with a commercial partner, to overcome technological barriers and to broaden access to livelihood

Fig. 1. Overview of the M-PESA service (Hughes and Lonie 2007:75).

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opportunities, particularly women (DFID, 2006, November: 1). The context of M-PESA in this early stage was being framed in terms of, what we might term, macro actor categories of the ‘rural poor’, ‘livelihood opportunities’, and a site for microcredit mediated through novel mobile technologies. Though it was expected that some transactions would not directed to loan repayment, the project team were surprised to see how M-PESA was being used. A 2006 report mentions that ‘one customer repeatedly loaded cash into his M-PESA account in Thika and then a few hours later took it out in Nairobi. On being asked why he did this, he said that his preference was to use M-PESA to let him travel to Nairobi without any cash in his pocket.’ (DFID, 2006, November: 2). It was examples such as this that encouraged a rethink of M-PESA as a money transfer system which Safaricom launched in March 2007. Safaricom who ran the mobile network (Vodaphone has a 35% stake in Safaricom) began to see M-PESA as a payment service, a revenue stream, and a means to increase customer retention, while Vodaphone recognised it as a potential competitive international payment system.3 From its outset, Safaricom also described M-PESA as a ‘virtual bank’ (Safaricom, 2007). Its launch was agreed by the CBK (Central Bank of Kenya) and attended by the Minister of Finance of Kenya (AFI, 2010) though it remained outside banking regulations. In retrospect, both Vodaphone and DFID had differing understanding of the context which is at odds with contextualism. DFID, and UK government ministers continue to refer to M-PESA as a successful project, but for them the critical element of context is commercial partnership and ‘game-changing’ technology (Mitchell, 2010) so much so that DFID officials privately concede that DFID ‘widely quote[s], perhaps even overquote[s]’ M-PESA as a successful example of the private sector (Bansal, 2011). Vodaphone moved from seeing M-PESA as largely a charitable activity to one which rethought the poor as customers of their partner Safaricom's mobile phone business. These examples of context framing show changing appreciations of what was relevant and what could be drawn from the research project which reflect different and emerging views of what the project was and shifting conceptualisations of context. With a change of government the lack of regulation was being criticised by existing banks who considered that their regulated services were being undercut by a new entrant M-PESA who, within two years, had five million customers which was more than all the existing banks. They also raised issues about risk management with such a large payment system and the potential for money laundering and fraud. A competing money transfer service to M-PESA called Sokotele was also launched in 2007 by Zain but closed in 2008. In the same year, Zain sought to introduce a new money transfer service called Zap! which was delayed as the CBK did not consider that it met existing regulations. In January 2009 the CBK had to issue a statement in the Daily Nation newspaper justifying their position (AFI, 2010:12). Despite such concerns, in 2008, Safaricom was able to partner with PesaPoint which allowed M-PESA customers to withdraw cash at 110 ATMs in 46 towns in Kenya. It was also able to introduce ‘organisational’ accounts for schools which, for example, allowed school fees to be paid directly through M-PESA. By 2009 M-PESA began to be profitable with new services being developed for M-PESA such as M-KESHO which links MPESA accounts with a bank account provided by Equity bank (Safaricom, 2010). M-PESA retains a dominant share of Kenyan money transactions with 14 million users and 28,000 agents in April 2011 and is a major contributor to Safaricom's continued profitability as voice revenues drop for telecoms operators (Mobile Financial.com, 2011). The context and content of M-PESA shifts as M-PESA becomes more defined as an m-banking service. For Safaricom, key contextual issues are regulation and linkage with other financial institutions (Joseph, 2011). It is clear that M-PESA was able to grow rapidly for reasons that include well designed and resourced technology platform capable of scaling up rapidly coupled with strong CEO support (see Morawczynski, 2009)—issues well recognised in the IS literature. An analysis focusing on the dynamic framing of context points to constructive engagement with the CBK, the regulatory authority which has consistently allowed M-PESA to expand its platform towards m-banking without a complex regulatory environment (Omwansa, 2009). Other operators such as Zain have not always been so successful though, by 2011, M-PESA does face strong competitive products such as Orange Money. So far this discussion has focused largely on distal

3 From a systems development perspective the involvement of Sagentia, a technology consultancy company from the UK, was very important. They designed the software, the business processes and provided operational and technical support after the launch. Their ‘flexible design’ is credited as important in allowing M-PESA to change into a money transfer system and to grow so rapidly (See Morawczynski 2009).

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accounts of M-PESA and our aim has, in part, been to craft an account based on multiple sources that show differing and changing understandings of M-PESA and its context. Proximal accounts are less apparent, but where they are present, they too show important issues. For example, an FSD survey of the usage of M-PESA which was used to inform the regulatory authorities but never published shows that the majority of users in 2008 were in employment and had bank accounts (Jack et al., 2009). M-PESA's rapid rise was not so much in the ‘unbanked poor’ but the banked that were using it as an additional, and competing, service to the existing banks. Perhaps this point makes it clearer why banks were so concerned about M-PESA's lack of regulation even if their concern had limited results. Other accounts too show more detail of how M-PESA has been used (for example Morawczynski, forthcoming; Morawczynski and Miscione, 2010), but these accounts largely focus on a context of usage. In other words, we suggest a bifurcation of accounts framing context as either macro-actor/socio-economic or social embeddedness/micro actors stem as more from research strategies than from how ICT4D networks of inclusion and exclusion work in practice. One outcome of taking context as a dynamic process of engagement and framing is that it provides suggestions as to why M-PESA has not been very successful in South Africa or slow to develop in neighboring Tanzania.4 The success of M-PESA (and we could say the failure of Sokotele) is in part due to well known factors such as a pilot project, a flexible and well designed technology, good technical support and strong CEO advocacy, but an analysis needs to add the contextualising moves developed within Kenya. One example is the existence of a large branch of agents who already sold airtime for Safaricom and were able to act as agents for M-PESA; a feature more difficult to replicate elsewhere (see Camner & Sjöblom, 2009). Another is the relationship of Safaricom and its regulatory, or lack of regulatory, environment which enabled M-PESA to establish rapidly and had the consequence of restricting other competitors, either telecoms such as Zain or existing commercial banks, until M-PESA had become dominant in Kenya. These networks are more difficult to replicate in other countries. 4. Discussion ‘… [s]harpen[ing] our own sense of the way we fabricate contexts in the processes of our own analyses might help us to become aware, in turn, of the interpretative practices and contextualising moves used by others situated elsewhere and outside the academy.’ Dilley (2002: 454). This penultimate section will discuss the process by which context is represented. Drawing on our distal and proximal understanding of context, we relate our discussion to the ICT4D literature that has considered context already. Following this we then return to our three principles for addressing context and consider their utility in relation to the MPESA case. Finally we discuss the important issue of scale and context. 4.1. Identifying context Returning to some of the earlier literature that has recommended how we should conceive of and research context, we first discuss Chrisanthi Avgerou's (2010: 11) call to identify ‘relevant context’ in ICT4D and how it matters. The approach taken here has been to problematise notions of context and consider them as outcomes of processes of ICT4D activity and as constructs of interpretation and research approaches. Relevance, in terms of context in this analysis, is the upshot of a performative act. Performativity, it may be remembered, asserts that agency is to be found in multiple places and that categorisation not only ‘represents’ but frames and produces the effects it represents (see Pickering, 1994). Thus, the representation of context is an important element in framing how the situation is to be viewed and what matters. The identification of a relevant context is about persuasion and the exercise of power relations in which certain issues are presented as important while others remain invisible (Foucault, 1977). Such prioritisation privileges a view of context as being ordered (for example in a part/whole relationship). Recognising the importance of critically attending to the importance of contextualising moves such as performative acts is a fundamental starting point when conceiving of context. The M-PESA case highlighted how a strong alignment between public 4 As of September 2011 Vodacom Tanzania reports 2 million users of their M-PESA service (Tanzania Daily News, 2011) for their service launched in 2008 and the number of users is reported to be growing more rapidly. One reason is that Vodacom has established a partnership with the National Bank of Commerce which has given it regulatory approval.

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and private sector organisations, itself a working out of power relations, was central to an apparently stable context. This was evident in the relationship between public and private organisations such as Safaricom and the Central Bank of Kenya nationally. From a distal perspective, this success could be seen as a way to stabilise and channel these relationships between the different groups involved. However we know much less about what this political stability rests upon and how it may come to change. A proximal understanding of context would suggest that considerable work goes into rendering such distal categorisation of context stable. Such a view resonates with what Madon et al. (2004: 292) explain as a “macro-level perspective on the spread of technology tends to disregard the micro-level translations, negotiations and politics that are required to make things work in practice.” Secondly, the case highlights that while orderly accounts of context may come to dominate in the literature, the M-PESA case also highlights how context may also be conceived of as multiple and fluid. For example, in the later stages, Safaricom viewed M-PESA as a payment service and Vodafone as a potentially competitive international payment system. DFID viewed it as a way to assist people in rural Kenya through micro-credit and some at Vodaphone, at least in the early stages, saw M-PESA both as a development environment from mobiles and a Millennium development project providing micro-credit. M-PESA did not determine the practices of those using the system, and thus it came to be used in unanticipated and unexpected ways. It highlights that the technology was thus able to be used in different ways depending on the contextualising moves at the time. What we know less about in relation to M-PESA were local assumptions and practices that emerged and were changed and sustained around this payment system (but see Morawczynski, 2008; Pyler et al., 2010) or how the distal concepts of funders were interpreted and managed in the implementation of M-PESA. 4.2. Implications for addressing context This analysis of distal and proximal relations highlights that research strategies embody and produce contexts which they naturalise as appropriate methodologies. Returning to M-PESA and the three principles we stated earlier, we might ask, what implications can be drawn from analysing this case and how the principles for addressing context may help in this? First, it draws attention to the first principle, the importance of obtaining multiple accounts, each of which embody contextualising moves (Dilley, 2002) and can comprise distal and proximal accounts. These are necessarily partially connected and may indeed be incommensurable with each other rather than be understood as different elements that can form a holistic understanding (the part/whole fallacy) (Strathern, 1996). For example, DFID's views on M-PESA and its context are clearly very different from the response of banks in Kenya (AFI, 2010; Bansal, 2011; Mitchell, 2010). A contextualising move for DFID sees M-PESA as providing development through commercial partnership whereas local banks saw it as unfair competition with existing banking services exploiting the absence of banking regulation. Detailed research, a move towards a proximal view, shows that the banks had a strong argument; the initial uptake of MPESA was from the ‘banked’ as much as the ‘unbanked’ (Jack et al., 2009). The point here is that neither DFID nor the banks is right or wrong. Each of their views on M-PESA contain different contextualisations which are important and require discussion. However, as Strathern alerts us to, these contextualising moves are to some extent incommensurate and no holistic view of context is to be expected. Second, drawing on the second and third principles, attention needs to be focussed on the scaling of accounts of context. Published sources tend to naturalises context in terms of given categories (distal accounts). Proximal accounts, which seek to show how such categories are used in practice, are uncommon outside academic research and when they do appear in the M-PESA literature they are often found in asides (see Bansal, 2011 above) or in the interstices of accounts. Academic research seeks to address these issues, but they too contain contextualising moves which may or may not be recognised. For M-PESA we find that proximal accounts tend to focus on its use and, to a limited extent, on its design, but the issue of scaling alerts us that distal categories are always being reworked. We miss proximal accounts of what takes place within Vodaphone, Sagentia, CBK, or Safaricom to name four prominent actors and how prominent distal accounts are crafted. In this case, it is in these environments that the ascriptions of ‘macro-actors’ are largely performed and interpreted. Attentiveness to scale shows that research strategies need to either recognise such invisibility or seek to investigate what goes on. This is a starting point to link how macro domain accounts arise and change in micro domain settings (Callon and Latour, 1981; Latour,

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1993). Through being attentive to the nuances of macro and micro accounts, researchers need to address both and see their apparent incommensurability arising from research strategies as much as from other causes (Dilley, 2002). 4.3. Performing scale A further area of debate in the ICT4D literature that has been important in framing how we think about scale has been the issue of scale (Walsham et al., 2007). Returning to Strathern's (1991) metaphor of the fractal nature of accounts, M-PESA shows us that scale is not the key issue; it is how scale is performed that counts. Hughes and Lonie's (2007) account is revealing as it shows how macro actors such as Vodaphone comprise the actions of teams and individuals whose ideas on the role of ICT4D were influential in positioning the context of M-PESA in its early stages. A fractal metaphor is suggestive that, at whatever scale, accounts are similar in their ability to create commonality or produce difference. Certain people in Vodaphone or Michael Joseph, ex CEO of Safaricom, use concepts fluidly and reformulate contexts as they go (see Joseph, 2011). Equally, users of M-PESA are engaged in similar activities even if the scale of what they can accomplish may be different (Pyler et al., 2010). In this positioning of context, the story of M-PESA becomes more contingent, more innovative, and more to be seen as engaged in framing (and being framed by) its context. This is a dynamic conception of ICT4D development and implementation that is relational in its understanding of what takes place and is attentive to multiple ways of ‘reading off’ what is happening. Finally, a prediction of this reading of context is that the ‘scaling up’ of ICT4D projects from specific successes to national or international outcomes is difficult as it requires reformulations of how context and thus content are engaged. The technical sophistication and managerial expertise of M-PESA were necessary conditions for success in Kenya but they were not sufficient ones. This is disappointing for ICT4D researchers whose expertise often rests in making clear these features. The M-PESA case shows that its success was also bound up with the contextualising moves of various players which reformulated their roles as well as M-PESA. In hindsight, the avoidance of regulation appears a critical feature and one that remains unclear as to how such fortuitous lack of oversight has largely remained. A different aspect of context was the dominant position of Safaricom in the Kenyan telecoms market and the existence of a sizeable number of airtime sellers, many organised in larger groups, which made it possible to draw on and change their roles to enable M-PESA to develop. Such issues are difficult to replicate elsewhere, but it is not simply a question of replicating certain factors, it is about creating networks that include and organise people and organisations around M-PESA. Contexts are cultivated and developed in the processes of ICT4D rather than ICT4D simply being embedded in context. 5. Conclusions The ‘problems’ of context and contextualism invite conceptual and methodological rethinking ICT4D and IS more generally. It is a way to propose an approach that refuses to take boundaries in practice or theory as givens and offers insights into how the methodological difficulties of weaving macro and micro accounts might be approached. As a number of authors have mentioned, the word context derives from the Latin verb textere ‘to weave’ and the Latin verb contextere meaning to ‘weave together’. It is suggestive that descriptions and contextualising are constructive activities bringing and holding together multiple accounts to form a picture. Equally the metaphor hints that not everything is weaved together and that its outcome presents a context often at the expense of obscuring others. A relational turn shows that it is the processes of context formulation—‘the social life of context’—which often needs investigation as they frame what is relevant and how the content of ICT4D is proposed to operate. To help address this, the paper draws on the notions of distal accounts—using categories that have already been predefined— and proximal accounts—showing how these categories are created and reworked (Cooper and Law, 1995). It proposes three principles that may be considered when researching ICT4D projects, but, as the quotation at the beginning of the last section indicates, they are significant in developing ICT4D projects too. In summary, the first principle proposes that we should be suspicious of unitary formulations of context and look instead for multiple accounts combining both proximal and distal views. A second principle advises that actors' accounts of context should be seen as contextualising moves arising in part from

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processes of ICT4D rather than as self-evident description. Finally, research should address how both macro and micro actors craft their accounts of context. The interesting case of M-PESA was used to show how context was woven and rewoven at different times, and that conceptions of different actors were rethought in this processes. The richness of this constructing of context remains one of partial connections as different groups formulate and identify themselves around specific contextualising strategies. M-PESA, in this account, shows changes in what is taken as context, leading to reformulations of M-PESA's content. This rich interaction between content and context of ICT4D suggests a rethinking of aspects of how ICT4D might be researched. One step is to recognise how distal accounts of ICT4D using well known categories are (re)produced and sustained in ICT4D using proximal views. Research will benefit from weaving together distal and proximal accounts to construct relevant narratives of ICT4D. However, most research tends to focus on proximal accounts, such as ethnography, in the user (or occasionally the designer) environments and ignores how distal accounts are produced by ‘macro’ actors which link ICT4D with socioeconomic development. This too was the situation in accounts of M-PESA from which this paper sought to retrieve some suggestive elements. The bifurcation of accounts into proximal or distal often tends to be taken too literally in ICT4D and rethinking context and how contextualising moves occur in the processes of ICT4D may be a helpful step forward. Acknowledgements We would like to thank reviewers and participants of ICIS 2010 in St. Louis where a version of this paper was presented. References Adam, M., & Urquhart, C. (2009). No man is an island: Social and human capital in IT capacity building in the Maldives. 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