The bitter irony of the World Wide Web phenomenon is that while in theory the global network of networks is open to all, the vast majority of the world`s population remain cut off from its economic benefits.
World leaders assembling this weekend on a luxury cruise liner in Genoa, Italy are set to embrace a new development aid framework that aims to address the yawning gap between rich and poor nations in the electronic realm.
A report issued this week by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the consulting group Accenture, recommends that countries adopt policies that promote greater education, entrepreneurship and transparent government.
"We think we have come up with a blueprint for how to do it," said Mark Malloch-Brown, UNDP`s chief administrator, whose programme is active in 132 countries.
The study includes many examples of effective technology uses in countries from Estonia to SA and Bolivia. The report, entitled "Creating a Development Dynamic," can be found on the Web at http://www.opt-init.org
Affordable technology
This week`s G8 meeting in Genoa builds on a push begun a year ago at a Group of Eight nations meeting in Okinawa, Japan, which featured a call by top industrial nations to promote affordable technology and regulatory policies that respond to developing nations` needs.
The nagging question at the follow-up meeting in Genoa is whether all of the study and planning of the past year can provoke stepped-up funding commitments on a scale that can make any sort of dent in the digital divide.
As last year`s host nation, Japan promised $15 billion in aid over five years to help train IT experts in developing countries. So far, however, no nation has met Japan`s challenge and earmarked major new funding to address the digital gap.
New York has more Internet host computers than all of Africa. Some 90% of Internet host computers are in high-income countries with just 16% of the world`s population.
The typical US consumer spends just 1% to 2% of their average monthly income on Internet access, compared with the 191% of monthly income Internet access would cost the average Bangladeshi.
While one may wonder what digital technology has to offer the world`s hungry, or for that matter, the 2 billion people without access to reliable electricity, advocates of increased technology development deny such trade-offs are an issue.
The capacity of the Internet to link vast networks of individuals across wide boundaries at marginal cost offers a powerful tool to efforts to confront poverty, not a distraction, they say.
Information services
Among the ways the G8 hope to bridge that gap is to make communication services more affordable and foster a regulatory environment supporting growth of information services.
World leaders are ready to adopt a nine-point action plan to narrow the gulf between the plugged-in and the shut-off. These goals are spelled out in a report by Digital Opportunity Task Force (dot force), a group made up of G8 government and private industry representatives that was set up in Okinawa. The study can be found at http://www.dotforce.org/reports/
Discussions on the digital divide will be featured alongside debate over reviving global multilateral trade talks and what to do about issues ranging from infectious diseases to drugs to the environment.
"No one is talking about putting satellites into space or putting fast fibre optics across Africa. What we are talking about is incremental developments," said Zoe Baird, president of the Markle Foundation, a New York-based non-profit advocacy group that pushes for wider access to digital technology.
Technologies more appropriate for developing economies could include solar-rechargable batteries that would allow mobile phones to be used even in areas lacking electricity lines, said Baird, whose group co-authored the UNDP report.
Internet-based learning
The six largest Internet-based distance-learning universities in the world are located in developing countries -- Turkey, Indonesia, China, India, Thailand and Korea, the report notes. While mainly aimed at university-level education of adults, it is spreading to primary and secondary education.
The report also highlights a project sponsored by the Grameen Bank in rural Bangladesh that helps village women to purchase mobile phones. The owners then rent the phones to farmers for a fee and act as local switchboard operators, passing along messages to and from the outside world.
"Every day there is a new way to take advantage of a technology that is fairly simple and straightforward to operate," she said, noting that the Internet itself is fundamentally a low-cost, decentralised system.
But the world leaders have been down this road before, with few results to show for it.
In 1995, a summit of the then G7 world leaders gathered in Brussels for a meeting heralded as "The Information Society".
Policies agreed to in Belgium under the spotlight of world media later suffered from an absence of follow-through. Now industrial nations suffer from a credibility gap for failing to do more to propel the issue forward, development workers say.
This time around, the UN development agency has begun accepting applications for technology aid. The first UN projects are under way in SA and Tanzania, with two more assistance projects set to begin in Bolivia and Romania.
In all, as many as 25 nations could be involved by year-end in the push to create new technology policy blueprints for countries that have lagged behind advanced economies, a UNDP spokesman said at a briefing for journalists on Monday.
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