guides

There has always been a gap between those people and communities who can make effective use of information technology and those who cannot. Now, more than ever, unequal adoption of technology excludes many from reaping the fruits of the economy.

What can be done -- locally and internationally -- to overcome the "digital divide" or "cyber-segregation" and to transform modern information tools into instruments which soften boundaries to economic opportunity, and spread economic development impulses instead of localizing them?

On the requests of its residents, a remote village in Laos without electricity or telephone lines has been hooked up to the Internet. For the first time, a bicycle-powered computer relays a signal to the Internet via wireless antennae mounted on treetops, water towers, and roofs.

Community media are driven by social objectives rather than the private, profit motive. They empower people rather than treat them as passive consumers, and they nurture local knowledge rather than replace it with standard solutions. Radio is the most widespread electronic communications device in the world and community radio is a practical and cost-effective means of reaching and connecting the world's poorest communities.

This online course focuses on ICTs for sustainable development and provides students with examples of activities in developing countries involving ICTs for education, health, e-commerce, agriculture, governance and democracy, as well as programmes undertaken by international development agencies.

In Ethiopia, the cost of the telephone line/Internet for 20 hours per month is 8.4 times greater than the country's per capita GDP, making the Internet accessible only to the urban elite. In 2001, less than 1% of the Zambian, Ugandan, and Senegalese populations were online 1. Here we bring a round-up of digital divide work in the African continent.

A new global task force with an ambitious mission to eliminate the Digital Divide is offering high-tech answers to the world's woes. But some worry that the initiative will sideline more urgent efforts to reduce hunger, poverty and the chasm between the haves and have nots of the world.

The Digital Opportunity Initiative report examines the experiences in the deployment of ICT to meet specific development imperatives as well as national ICT strategies in countries ranging from Tanzania, Estonia, India, and Bangladesh to Costa Rica and South Africa.

Technology networks are transforming the traditional map of development and expanding horizons, according to the new Human Development Report, which this year focuses on new technologies and development and for the first time ranks countries according to a Technological Achievement Index.

The results of an e-debate discussing the effects ICTs can have on social cohesion and the empowerment of individuals are now available, with recommendations for NGOs aiming to bridge the digital divide.