Expanding boundaries

The farming community in Pastocalle, Ecuador, located 3,000 meters high in the Andes, found itself directly in the path of crop-eating army ants. Local agricultural authorities were called in, but the ants remained unstoppable. The community had previously pooled funds to buy a single computer with Internet access, and a call was sent out. Within days, a community in Peru suggested an organic material that is easily found in the Andes, and spreading in on the fields proved an effective deterrent to the ants.

Information and communications technology (ICT) have changed the face of the world we live in. Defined as computers, software, telecoms, such as mobile and fixed phones, the Internet and satellite technologies, ICT enables people to communicate with family, friends and colleagues around the world instantaneously, gain access to global libraries, information and resources, and enumerable opportunities.

The digital revolution

"The Internet is the fastest growing instrument of communication in the history of civilization, and it may be the most rapidly disseminating tool of any kind ever. The convergence of information technology and the Internet may well become as transformative as the industrial revolution."

Like the invention of the steam engine, ICT has changed the way people work, interact and live. However, unlike past technological revolutions, ICT took only four years to reach an audience of 50 million people. How was this possible? What are the characteristics of ICT that have enabled it to have such a wide impact so quickly?

  • Cost. It is estimated that the real price of computer processing declined by 99.999% in just 30 years, making ICT accessible to people from all economic brackets all over the world.
  • The core product: Knowledge and Information. ICT uses knowledge and information as its core products as opposed to material resources. Unlike the steel used to construct a building, information and knowledge are available for multiple uses and users simultaneously, and become more valuable the more they are used.
  • The "new economy." Idea-based, and giving an edge to innovators, forward thinkers and information-haves as opposed to primarily the capital rich, this new economy opens up high value space for new global players. This, indeed, is how the "emerging" economies emerged in the past, when other sectors were vacated.
  • ICT is truly global. ICT does not distinguish between gender, age, social or economic standing. With access and the requisite skills and knowledge, ICT offers all peoples the same resources and digital opportunities.

    Zulfendi Zulhisam, a 13-year-old living three hours from the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, can learn to build Web sites and surf the Internet at the same time as Mama Dominica Lacombi, 57 years-old, uses ICT to find information on modern techniques for breeding livestock in Cameroon. Mama Dominica Lacombi is illiterate, but because of digital opportunities that has not stopped her from being a successful entrepreneur.

ICT for development: Knowledge as empowerment

When harnessed, ICT constitutes a key tool for human and economic development. By opening up opportunities to boost a nation's economy, improve standards of education and health, and protect the environment, ICT brings us one step closer to eradicating poverty. (For a discussion on poverty read the Poverty Briefing Paper).

Toomas Kokovkin lives on Hiiumaa, a small Estonian island. Although geographically isolated, Toomas is able to earn a living as a digital cartographer working for a Swedish company to digitize a stack of hand-made maps of Uganda!

Toomas is an example of how Internet-based electronic commerce (e-commerce) gives small, medium and large enterprises access to the global economy. Not only does it remove geographic boundaries, but it also alleviates costs such as office space and opens up the global market.

Through distance learning and telemedicine, ICT considerably increases the possible number of educated, trained and healthy people in a nation. In 1995, more than 2.2 million people in developing countries educated themselves through on-line courses. At the same time, initiatives, such as the Health Internetwork, open up communication lines and provide physicians and patients with up-to-the-minute medical information and access to resources.

ICT also enables people to learn about the environment and how to care for and protect the world we live in. And, in countries such as Peru, where the government has placed all the current laws and policies on-line (http://www.minjus.gop.pe), the Internet provides people with the means to ensure their governments are protecting the environment as well as their own human rights.

"Leapfrogging"

"New Technology offers an unprecedented chance for developing countries to "leapfrog" earlier stages of development. Everything must be done to maximize people’s access to new information networks."

Specific to ICT is the unique opportunity for countries to "leapfrog" technologies, and thus leap to higher levels of development. Leapfrogging is when nations and businesses build on already established and effective technologies to both meet their own needs and create new technologies — or new uses for old technologies.

Cellular Pay Phones
Instead of waiting the 10 or so years for fixed telephone lines to be installed, Bangladeshi women in remote villages have leapt directly to mobile phones, using them as a means of communication, and as a means of revenue. Through small grants, entrepreneurial Bangladeshi women can invest in mobile phones they then rent out as the village pay phone. (http://www.grameen.org)

But can ICT hurt development efforts? The Digital Divide

There is a darker side to information and communications technology. While some countries and people have benefited greatly, more than 95% of the world still does not have electronic access. This gap between information-haves and information-have nots, that exists both between countries and between communities within countries, is known as the "digital divide" or "information poverty."

This divide is growing bigger instead of smaller each day. It is responsible for increased income inequality and the marginalization of people and nations who, because of lack of skills or access, are unable to board the "Internet Express."

This divide also makes it increasingly difficult for developing countries to "catch-up" to industrialized countries that have harnessed ICT and are moving even more quickly ahead.

In addition to the yawning digital divide, nations also fear that ICT will hurt development efforts by diverting funds away from basic needs, and compromising national and regional diversity:

  • Diversion of Funds: When devising a development strategy, leaders must choose how and where to allocate funds. Because most developing countries lack funds, a decision to invest in one sector corresponds to the disinvestments in another sector. Hence the fear that investment in ICT will take away from investment education, healthcare, and the environment — all of which are basic needs and rights still denied to people all over the world.
  • Homogenizing Tendencies: Culture and Content: 80% of Web pages are in English, with more Internet hosts in Finland than in all of Latin America and the Caribbean. In light of this increased exposure to the norms and cultures of industrialized countries, the Group of 77 (http://www.g77.org/Docs/Declaration_G77Summit.htm) has expressed concern for the preservation of national and regional diversity of traditions, identities and cultures.