In Western countries, information and communication technology (ICT) has become an integral part of daily lives. However, the 100 million computers connected by the Internet throughout the world only represent 2 per cent of the world population. With the immense benefits ICT has demonstrated in the North, such a divide is simply unacceptable. In addition to facilitating access to information, ICT can have a crucial impact in reaching the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000. By providing knowledge, ICT can reduce poverty, give a voice to the less empowered and make a real change in diverse fields, ranging from education to health and culture, for example, by promoting the history and traditions of the most marginalized people. As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan explained at "Telecom 99"-the global telecommunications forum held in 1999 in Geneva, Switzerland-"being cut from basic telecommunications services is a hardship almost as acute as deprivations of jobs, shelter, food, health care and drinkable water".

Granting every citizen access to telecommunications services has become an imperative to universalize the scope of ICT benefits. Scientists in India and Brazil have recently developed two projects aimed to offer the poor access to the Internet Age. In Brazil, academics have created the "Computador Popular", a desktop whose sole purpose is to connect to the Internet. It lacks a floppy disk drive or a hard drive, which are unnecessary to surf the Internet, therefore the computer and the monitor are relatively affordable, at an estimated price of $250.

Members of the Simputer Trusteeship, the brain behind the Simputer.

The Government, which requested the project, has shown a strong commitment to reduce the digital divide that prevents 95 per cent of Brazilians from having Internet access, and plans to set up a loan programme that would enable low-income citizens to borrow funds to buy the machines; loans could be repaid at about $15 monthly. The Government also started screening proposals from manufacturers and will introduce incentives to kick-start production.

In India, the "Simputer" project was initiated and carried out by a charitable trust founded in 1999 after the Global Village-an international seminar on information technology for developing countries-had the previous year stressed the need for a low-cost mass access device that would bring local language information to the masses. The Simputer--an acronym for SIMPle compUTER--which was conceived by academics and businessmen from Bangalore, is a pocket computer that gives illiterate people the possibility to handle a computer and use the Internet. With its touch-sensitive screen, modem and text-to-speech capabilities, this mini-equipment reads information aloud in local languages.

Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man.

Envisioned by its creators as an "evolving platform for social change", the Simputer can further enhance low-cost information technology projects. In southern Africa, for example, it has been used for collecting data for new HIV vaccines; and by giving each participant a way to enter his or her data in the system, it avoided mistakes often made in copying data by hand. This mini-computer presents other advantages for detecting health problems. For example, since it runs on AAA batteries, a doctor equipped with the machine could collect data in the field and then evaluate it in his laboratory in order to spot an epidemic. These are only a few of the amazing tasks the "Computador Popular" and the "Simputer" can do in developing countries.

The distribution of such ICT tools by India and Brazil to other countries could also benefit developing and least developed countries by boosting the network of South-South cooperation. As was urged in February 2000 at the Seoul Forum on South-South Cooperation in Science and Technology, such cooperation is crucial for the development of the poorest countries. By encouraging them to find their own solutions to development problems, it could foster their self-reliance and increase their participation in international economic activity and world trade.

By breaking two of the major barriers to universal access to the Internet, namely cost and illiteracy, the "Computador Popular" and the "Simputer" are extraordinary projects that promise to have a great impact on narrowing the digital divide. However, the success of such enterprises rests on whether the international community will give enough support to encouraging companies to manufacture these computers in sufficiently large volumes to make them truly cost-effective. Triggering the cooperation of the private sector and civil society will precisely be one of the objectives of the World Summit on the Information Society, which, for the first time, will bring together Governments, civil society and the private sector to address the urgent challenge of the digital divide-one that "can-and will-be bridged", as Secretary-General Annan declared in his Millennium Report in 2000.