Community networks
Servelots was founded in 1999 by a group of computer scientists who wanted to provide a highly cost-effective but user-friendly software for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with a special focus on organisations working in the social development sectors. Over the years, the opportunity to work with SMEs and the social sector has resulted in a certain awareness of the ground realities, which have furthered research engagement. As an open source group, Servelots strives to push code in...
The Open Culture Foundation (OCF) is a non-partisan, non-profit organisation founded in 2014 by several members of Taiwan’s open source community. Its main goal is to support local communities to advocate the use of open technologies in broader sectors, including open source software, open hardware and open data.
Myanmar ICT for Development Organization (MIDO) works on ICT for peace. It has developed a diversity of digital security initiatives, monitors online hate speech and develops counter speech, and has produced handbooks on an online peace mobilisation system and social media verification guidelines.
guifi.net is a bottom-up, citizen-driven technological, social and economic project with the objective of creating a free, open and neutral telecommunications network. The guifi.net project puts in practice a disruptive economic model based on the commons model and the collaborative economy, in which volunteers, SMEs and public administrations cooperate to build and operate sustainable common-p...
Zenzeleni (which means "Do it yourself" in isiXhosa) is a community-owned wireless internet service provider based in rural South Africa. It offers quality, high-speed internet comparable to the country’s most developed urban centres. Its model aims to significantly cut costs of telecommunications, retain expenditure within communities as a form of social entrepreneurship, and support the dev...
Rhizomatica works as a bridge between the potential users of the technology and the engineers and developers of these efforts to ensure the technology is deployed and appropriate for use in the developing world. Its mission is to increase access to mobile telecommunications to the over two billion people without affordable coverage and the 700 million with none at all. Through efforts in Mexico...
AlterMundi is an NGO based in Argentina that strives to promote the emergence of a new paradigm based on freedom gained through peer collaboration. AlterMundi explores different manifestations of peer-to-peer collaboration from a technological perspective and in particular it has a done a great deal of work in relation to wireless community networks for small towns and rural areas. Projects suc...
Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), a Delhi-based not-for-profit organisation, was registered on December 2002, to find solutions to bridge the digital divide. With no political affiliations, it was founded to uplift the downtrodden and to create economic and commercial viability using information and communications technologies (ICTs) as means to these ends. DEF’s vision is to make digital...
The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multistakeholder platform for people and institutions interested in information and communications technology (ICT) policy and regulation. It was established in 2003 as part of APC's project on Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA). The network seeks to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT-enabled...
Sulá Batsú is a cooperative, founded in 2005, based on solidarity economy. It aims to encourage and strengthen local development by working with organisations, social enterprises, community networks and social movements at the national, regional and global level. Sulá Batsú approaches this goal through different lines of work: digital technologies, art and culture, m...
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