Crowdsourcing Development: From Funding to Reporting

There is a growing body of evidence showing that crowdsourcing and variations thereof can be helpful in achieving socio-economic impact. Though support among development practitioners is widespread, academic attention to the phenomenon within international development is limited. The chapter starts by discussing three main elements of crowdsourcing, that is, the crowd, the initiator, and the process. Two cases are provided to illustrate strengths and constraints in using crowdsourcing for and in development. I identify the main challenges related to costs involved for the individual user, initiator’s lack of mandate to act on the data, and that of closing the feedback loop. Despite the constraints, crowdsourcing do constitute an interesting complement with the likelihood to slowly shift the way development work is carried out.