eServices provisioning in a community development context through a JADE MAS platform

A growing proliferation of ICT4D interventions has necessitated the exploration of innovative solutions for the provisioning of eServices in rural, marginalized communities. The challenges currently faced in these interventions include: situating the developed applications within the cultural and ethnographic context of the target communities, integrating greater levels of granularity and flexibility within the applications for increased context sensitivity, handling the intermittence and instability of supporting infrastructural services. These are the challenges that we address in the context of ICT4D intervention undertaken in a rural community in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. We explore the design and implementation of a Multi-Agent System (MAS) for this community as a platform for provisioning of context-sensitive eServices, and highlight some observations with regards to the applicability and adequacy of the solution.