Opportunistic data services in least developed countries: benefits, challenges and feasibility issues

According to many studies, IT should become a key facilitator in establishing primary education, reducing mortality or supporting commercial initiatives in Least Developed Countries. The main barrier to the development of IT services in these regions is not only the lack of communication facilities, but also the lack of consistent information systems, security procedures, economic and legal support, as well as political commitment. In this paper, we propose the vision of an infrastructure-less data platform well suited for the development of innovative IT services in Least Developed Countries. We propose a participatory approach, called Folk-IS, where each individual implements a small subset of a complete information system thanks to highly secure, portable and low-cost personal devices as well as opportunistic networking, without the need for any form of infrastructure. In this paper, we focus on the exploitation and feasibility analysis of the Folk-IS vision. We also review the technical challenges that are specific to this approach.