Evaluating ICT for Education in Africa - Royal Holloway, University of ...

whether the demand for incentives was perhaps exacerbated by the presenceof the laptops as high-value objects. She explained to me how the causal issuewas in fact more systemic (16/04/08):„It is not just because it is laptops. Most of the NGOs here areaccustomed to giving out money for training. If they askpeople to come to a specific place and time for a discussionthen people would expect some incentive.‟This issue presented the monitoring and evaluation team with a significantdilemma. When teachers expressed their reluctance to participate withoutfinancial incentive, the quickest solution would have been simply to allocatecash on the anticipated basis of attending focus group discussions in order tohalt the feeling of disenfranchisement surrounding the programme. However,doing this would have been only a quick-fix solution, compromising themethodological integrity of the study and perpetuating an ultimatelyunsustainable system of dependency.Confusion regarding expectations of incentives was exacerbated by theambiguous identity of our research team in Ethiopia. The multi-stakeholderpartnership of the team was not necessarily clear to the teachers and theyoften assumed that the white faces present were indicative of an NGO orsolely donor-driven initiative. As Tilahun explained, although we were notstrictly an NGO, the teachers would not necessarily consider us as affiliatedwith the government. Following initial confusion, the association with theMoE ultimately proved beneficial in this instance in bringing definition to ourposition. Once the teachers stopped categorising the research team as anNGO and understood that they were cooperating with a governmentpartnership then they no longer held the same expectations regardingincentives. This brought clarification to the position of the research team andavoided resentment through unfulfilled expectations of remuneration.However, Tilahun explained that the underlying reason for the clarity was notentirely positive (16/04/08):‟If you know the Ministry of Education has some agenda totalk about and they ask them to come to a meeting at a196