lawrence

Lawrence is a programme officer at UNEP's Division of Technology, Industry and Economics. Since 2000, he has worked with non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders to design, implement and evaluate projects aimed at expanding access to energy and IT services in Africa. In recent months, he has began to track the new "people-oriented" Internet technologies and ideas that have appeared on the web--blogs, social networking sites, RSS (really simple syndication), wikis, and the like. His primary interest is to use these technologies in combination with more "traditional" processes of social inquiry to discover what is working to improve living conditions in Africa, and to mobilize collective intelligence for replication of best practices. From this standpoint, he believes that development planning (as a multidisciplinary activity), must co-evolve with the Internet (as a community building tool) if it is to play a more effective role in a new African Development Project. Lawrence has been applying some of the new Internet technologies and ideas in the real world setting of energy and development projects that he is currently managing as UNEP programme officer. He has created this blog to share experiences and lessons learned at the cutting edge of multidisciplinary perspectives.