Investigating Mid-Level IT Affordances as Drivers for Societal Change: Addressing the Education Data Challenge in The Gambia

Abstract: Affordance perspectives have gained traction among information systems (IS) scholars and have seen recent adoption in ICT4D research. This paper introduces “mid-level IT affordances”, which, we argue, emerge from technology use and serve as prerequisites for the actualization of higher-level affordances. To illustrate, we draw on a case study of education management information systems in The Gambia. This introduces a disconnect between policy and practice, whereby investments in technology use affordances fail to translate into IT affordances for monitoring progress towards complex policy goals.