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TechnologyDaily Mobile
Addressing The Digital Divide On A Global Scale
Somewhere in Ethiopia, there is a man selling goats on the Internet. The idea is simple: contact taxi cab drivers in the United States, sell them a goat, and deliver that goat to their family back in Ethiopia.
While this might not be your typical dot-com startup, it's this same entrepreneurial spirit that the World Bank says it wants to support in a new plan aimed at erasing the global technology divide.
The International Finance Corporation, a World Bank affiliate, and Softbank of Japan, which has stakes in more than 300 Internet companies, announced a plan this week to financially back Internet startup companies in developing countries. Under the deal, the IFC and Softbank will invest $520 million to nurture Internet startups, adding to Softbank's current Internet investments in Latin America and China.
Although the joint venture hasn't picked which countries will get the spoils, Moshen Khalil, IFC's director of Global Information Communication Technologies, said the partnership will look to distribute the wealth evenly around the world and chose a mix of large and small countries. Khalil hopes this plan has a domino effect, with developing nations taking cues on ways to foster e-commerce from the first few countries receiving funds.
Like many proposals aiming to eradicate the digital divide, Khalil touts technology as a great equalizer that can have a broad-range of impacts — from improving education and healthcare to changing politics.
"The potential impact of these new technologies is certainly beyond our own imagination," he said.
Power To The People
This isn't the first time an international organization has looked to technology as a tool for fighting inequality. Just hours before the World Bank's announcement, representatives from 188 nations at the United Nations Development Program meeting in Bangkok lamented that their countries do not enjoy the benefits of the information revolution.
Pointing to a UN report released last summer that highlighted the worldwide gap between information haves and have-nots, Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of a UN program for developing countries, outlined ways to fight the digital divide. For developing nations to build an Internet economies, they need help building infrastructure, increasing educational opportunities and developing more government transparency, Brown said.
The UN has made some headway in that area. The UN International Telecommunications Union recently created WorldTel to assist developing nations in building telecommunications infrastructure. Last August, Cisco Systems and the United Nations Development Program teamed up to offer Netaid, a Web site and star-studded rock benefit concert created to fight poverty. The site aimed to put public computers with Internet access in Third World villages with the goal of helping local artisans find markets abroad. Already, the UN has built centers in Mongolia's Gobi desert where locals can log on.
Access For All
But bringing a computer with Net access to the desert isn't a simple act. Because so many developing countries lack the basic infrastructure needed for Internet access, The World Bank's IFC acknowledged that for its plan to work, increased investment in infrastructure is needed.
Following that logic, the Federal Communications Commission announced last summer that it would provide technical assistance to developing countries that liberalize their telecommunications policies. Although the FCC is not providing financial assistance for the initiative, the agency plans to encourage private investment in telecommunications with the United States acting as a business model for these countries. Chairman William Kennard's plan initially focuses the African nations of Ghana, South Africa and Uganda, with future plans to help Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Nii Narku Quaynor, executive chairman of Network Computer Systems in Ghana, said demand for services and the creation of a self-sustaining local Internet market in Africa would also spark better infrastructure and Internet access in his country.
Times Are Changing
Beyond helping countries get wired and opening their telecommunications regimes to competition, there are also cultural hurdles that make the global information technology gap grow wider. Jim Johnson, director of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, said high rates of illiteracy coupled with fears that e-commerce and the English-language-dominated Internet is just another imperialistic tactic of the West keep some nations behind. If those fears are allayed, Johnson said countries then must re-think their laws about foreign investment, which are highly restrictive in many countries. Because a lot of developing countries are not used to the private sector taking a lead role, they balk at letting the Internet grow at an uncontrolled pace.
"They have to get used to the culture of technology, which is risk-taking," Johnson said.
While the new initiative from the IFC and Softbank aims to make that change a little less risky, Assaad Jabre, IFC vice president for investment opportunities, said for nations to keep up with technology, the must face change.
"They realize they have to adapt or countries will be left behind," he said.
- by Caroline Broder
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