Search F&D

Advanced
Search
About
F&D

Subscribe

Back
Issues

Write Us

Copyright
Information

E-Mail
Notification

Subscribe
or Modify
your subscription

A quarterly magazine of the IMF

September
2001, Volume 38, Number 3

On the
Global Digital Divide
Ashfaq
Ishaq

Why is the global digital divide an important issue, and what
benefits would result from bridging it?

The digital and information revolution presents a historic opportunity for
developing countries to take a quantum leap forward, develop their own
productive and creative capacities, and become integrated into the global
virtual economy. However, Internet density (users as a percentage of
population) is still much higher in industrial countries, as well as in
affluent and educated communities in every country, than elsewhere. The
Internet threatens to magnify the existing socioeconomic disparities,
between those with access and those without, to levels unseen and
untenable. Therefore, urgent actions are needed at the local, national,
and international levels to bridge the global digital divide. This article
outlines both the digital opportunity and the digital divide and argues
that bridging the divide is a precondition for a worldwide creativity
revolution to blossom.

The big divide

In the final pages of Jacques Barzun's opus on the past five hundred
years of Western cultural life (Barzun, 2000), he conjures up the
following vision of the year 2300:

The population was divided into two
groups; they did not like the word classes. The first, less numerous,
was made up of the men and women who possessed the virtually inborn
ability to handle the products of techne and master the methods of
physical science, especially mathematics—it was to them what Latin had
been to medieval clergy. This modern elite had the geometric mind that
singled them out for the life of research and
engineering. . . . Dials, toggles, buzzers, gauges, icons
on screens, light-emitting diodes, symbols and formulas to save time and
thought—these were for this group of people the source of emotional
satisfaction, the means to rule over others, the substance of shoptalk,
the very joy and justification of life. . . . It is from
this class—no, group—that the governors and heads of institutions are
recruited. The parallel with the Middle Ages is plain—clerics in one
case, cybernists in the other. The latter took pride in the fact that in
ancient Greek cybernetes means helmsman, governor. It validated
their position as rulers over the masses, which by then could neither
read nor count. But these less capable citizens were by no means
barbarians, yet any schooling would have been wasted on them; that had
been proved in the late [twentieth century]. Some now argue that the
schooling was at fault, not the pupils; but when the teachers themselves
declared children unteachable, the Deschooling Society movement rapidly
converted everyone to its view.

This is Barzun's description of the digital divide, written as if it
were being viewed from after the year 2300 but actually reflecting New
York's reality in 1995—just before the Internet created the greatest
equity wealth boom in the history of mankind. At present, the digital
divide mirrors the technology gap separating the rich countries from the
poor ones—a gap that opened up during the industrial revolution and has
yet to be fully bridged. The pessimistic view of the digital divide—that
it is widening as information and communications technologies (ICTs)
advance to broadband—is likely to prevail if the public, private, and
civil sectors fail to bridge it before it becomes too expansive and
intractable.

The uncontested fact is that the Internet is still growing at a
phenomenal pace. Estimating the current number of Internet users is
difficult, however, because one person may have multiple Internet accounts
or a single account may have multiple users. According to the table, more
than 400 million users were online in November 2000, with nearly 69
percent of them in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Internet density
has increased to more than 53 percent in the United States and Canada, but
is a mere 1 percent in the Middle East and 0.4 percent in Africa. Overall,
a modest 7 percent of the world's population uses the Internet, which
shows both how widely the Internet has spread and how much remains to be
done before universal access is attained.

Number of Internet users
worldwide

Users
in millions

Users as percent
of total world
users

Users as percent
of population

World
total

407

100.0

6.8

Africa

3

0.7

0.4

Asia/Pacific

105

25.8

3.0

Europe

113

27.8

14.1

Middle East

2

0.5

1.1

Latin
America

17

4.2

3.2

United States and Canada

167

41.0

53.9

Sources: User
estimates are for November 2000 from http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/index.html.
Population estimates are for 2001 and were drawn from http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html.

Universal access

Access requires an Internet device, such as a personal computer (PC),
electricity, telephone service, and an Internet service provider (ISP).
Today, there is virtually no technological constraint preventing access;
even a remote village or a faraway hamlet lacking both telephones and
electricity can be connected to the Internet using a satellite dish and
solar power. The constraint, therefore, is purely financial. At the local
level, the costs of building the necessary infrastructure and procuring
the equipment have to be financed. At the national level, the foreign
exchange cost of importing needed equipment and services must be met. At
the international level, a funding mechanism to promote universal access
has to be established.

To begin with, universal access must be defined, ideally, as a basic
necessity, if not a right. The trend in industrial countries is to
guarantee access anywhere, anytime, through multiple devices. Students,
for example, can connect to the Internet at their schools or homes or at
libraries, community centers, or shopping malls. Further, wireless
technology is making the Internet nearly omnipresent. Poor countries
cannot afford such an array of choices, however. In most villages and
towns, only a single central access point can be established. Examples of
such shared access are community cyber centers in Jamaica, mobile Net
units in Asia, Internet cafes in South America, cyber bars in Eastern
Europe, e-mail kiosks in India, and walk-in Internet posts in Mongolia.

Although in industrial countries the distance between users and
Internet-ready computers is nearly zero, in developing countries it can be
several miles. Shared access and the acceptance of the "last mile" between
an average user and the nearest access point can drastically reduce per
capita access costs. Universal access can be further refined to mean that
one member of every family anywhere has access to the Web for at least a
short period every day or every week. Through this single online member,
the entire family can be occasionally connected to the virtual world,
enabling it to reap some of the benefits of the digital revolution.
Universal access, thus narrowly defined, may be possible by 2005, as has
been advocated by the United Nations.

More optimistically, Internet users have increased by about 100 million
a year in the past couple of years. If this rate continues, the population
online will increase from 400 million in 2000 to 900 million in 2005.
However, bringing each successive 100 million people online will require
greater and greater financial and training resources.

Training and content

With four billion unique, indexable pages already, the Internet offers
incredible and unprecedented communications, learning, and transaction
opportunities for those connected to the Web. Without adequate training,
however, users cannot employ the Internet effectively to advance their own
objectives. Instead, they may find themselves lost on the Web, as a result
of information overload, or get caught in the net of pirates, perverts,
and impostors.

When the Internet's local impact grows, it will become more attractive
to new users, who will be predominantly from the developing world.
Although the Internet started as a U.S.-centric medium, and English
continues to dominate the Web, the publication of local content is gaining
momentum and support. A report of the Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOT
Force) established at the 2000 Group of Eight Summit in Kyushu-Okinawa
(Group of Eight, 2000) states

Innovative partnerships are required
to support local content creation and dissemination, including
indigenous knowledge preservation. A key aspect of this is the creation
of the technical foundations for greater cultural/linguistic diversity
on the Internet, including better integration of different writing
systems with the Net's technical standards. . . . A
related priority is technical and financial support for
content-development tools for nonliterate populations, to enhance not
only their effective use of ICTs but also the cultural diversity of
content available online.

Implementation of these recommendations will enrich the Internet and
enhance its international usefulness.

E-learning and e-development

Several major universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Cambridge, are placing their course materials online,
making them available to all. More significantly, the Internet is bringing
about a revolution in learning and education. New approaches are taking
root and spreading, involving radical changes in attitudes as well as
incorporation of new research on how learning takes place and how to make
education more effective. The Internet is replacing the "sage on the
stage" pattern of instruction with a new model of "guide on the side."
With students at the center of the learning process, schools can become
fundamental agents for change, helping reengineer the whole educational
system and stimulating lifelong learning.

The Internet is a place not only to acquire knowledge but also to
create, document, and store it. Users are coming together to create
knowledge networks and "mutual education communities." E-mentoring on the
Web is possible through listservs, connecting students on one continent
with tutors on another. In sum, the Internet has opened exciting new
opportunities for human capital development, which can and should result
in a more informed, empowered, and creative citizenry—a precondition for
economic development.

A growing recognition of the Internet as a promising path for economic
development of poor countries has led to e-development—the pursuit of new
opportunities available to those with access to the Internet. Here again,
closing the digital divide becomes a primary concern. The hope is that
e-development will not consist merely of the publication of old recipes in
a new medium. Rather, it would usher in new theories and practices of
economic development. As Jack Welch, the Chairman of General Electric, has
famously stated: "The secret of success is changing the way you think."

Meanwhile, the development landscape is rapidly changing: taxpayers in
Brazil can file their tax returns online; farmers in Bhutan access the Web
to learn how to protect their harvest and improve crop yields; radio
talk-show hosts in Sri Lanka surf the Net in response to questions and air
the answers in local languages; nurses in Gambian villages use digital
cameras to download and transfer images of patients' symptoms to nearby
towns for examination by doctors; when Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras in
1998, the Internet helped expedite and broaden the relief efforts; and the
same year Timbuktu, Mali, went online. Every week, a new community in
Africa, Asia, or Latin America gets connected to the Web, publishes its
own website, starts e-commerce, or embraces e-learning. All such projects
need to be supported, promoted, and replicated with national and
international assistance, because the more widespread the digital
opportunity becomes, the greater will be the incentive at local levels to
gain access to the Web.

With universal access and an Internet-literate workforce, the digital
revolution can serve as the engine of economic growth and development. To
this end, it is necessary to create ICT ministries that deal specifically
with complex Internet issues, ranging from privacy to taxation. Internet
ministers would benefit from an IMF- or World Bank-sponsored listserv
through which they can exchange ideas and collaborate. This could be a
first step in creating a virtual community of political, corporate, and
civil society leaders to address the global digital divide.

The next revolution

Starting as a new medium for communication and information, the
Internet has quickly become a place for learning and transactions. The
initial impact of the Net has been on increasing productivity in the
workplace. For example, the use of ICT contributed close to 50 percent of
the total acceleration in U.S. productivity in the second half of the
1990s (United States Internet Council, 2000). Wireless technology will
further increase productivity by allowing individuals to make effective
use of the time they have available between tasks. And there is much more
to come, considering that the digital revolution is still in its infancy.

The full promise of the digital revolution lies in the blossoming of a
creativity revolution worldwide. The Internet can be a dynamic
platform for the use of knowledge through new forms of learning, so that
individuals and organizations can achieve their creative potential.
Already, there is a growing awareness that creativity should be a central
focus of public policy. A recent paper on U.S. cultural policy
(Venturelli, 2001) warns that "a culture persists in time only
to . . . [the] degree it is inventing, creating, and
dynamically evolving in a way that promotes the production of ideas across
all social classes and groups." Indeed, without creative dynamism,
seemingly productive societies fade away, leaving behind their rusted
factories and social detritus. Developing creative capacities is hence the
defining challenge for individuals, organizations, societies, and
governments.

The new growth theorists' introduction of ideas and knowledge as inputs
in the production equation reflects a recognition that the new economy is
a creative economy, characterized by high potential output growth and low
inflationary expectations. A new book titled The Ingenuity Gap
(Homer-Dixon, 2000) discusses the gap between the difficulty of the
problems faced by societies (the demand for ingenuity) and the delivery of
ideas in response to these problems (the supply of ingenuity). A
creativity revolution can ensure that new ideas are generated in time to
avoid diminishing returns on investment and that ingenuity is present to
solve problems along the way.

A creativity divide has existed in the world since long before
there was a digital divide or a technology gap. The digital revolution can
finally close the creativity divide by fostering and supporting human
creativity worldwide. For this to occur, however, the global digital
divide needs to be bridged and the Internet's potential to serve as a
creativity playground for children needs to be harnessed (see Ishaq,
2001). This would ensure that the next generation is more imaginative,
innovative, creative, and artistic.

Conclusion

Because the digital and information revolution is still in its infancy,
it is impossible to predict whether this revolution will ultimately
provide a unique opportunity for the poor to leapfrog into prosperity or
whether the digital divide will deepen with time, relegating a majority of
the world's population to a technological underclass that will be held
back for generations to come. At its best, the digital revolution can
blossom into a creativity revolution. At its worst, it will pit the
cybernists against the unschooled majority in a battle without end.

Suggestions for further reading:
Jacques Barzun, 2000,
From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (New
York: Harper Collins).

Paula De Masi, Marcello Estevão, and Laura Kodres, 2001, "Who Has a New
Economy?" Finance & Development, Vol. 38 (June), pp. 38-41.

Group of Eight, Digital Opportunity Task Force, 2001, "Digital
Opportunities for All: Meeting the Challenge," draft report on the plenary
meeting held in Siena, Italy.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, 2000, The Ingenuity Gap (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf).

Ashfaq Ishaq, 2001, "A Virtual Creativity Playground for Children,"
Proceedings of the Education Technology 2001 Conference, Arlington,
Virginia.

United States Internet Council and International Technology & Trade
Associates, Inc., 2000, "State of the Internet 2000" (Washington).

Shalini Venturelli, 2001, "From the Information Economy to the Creative
Economy," Center for Arts and Culture (Washington).

Ashfaq Ishaq is founder and Executive Director of the
International Child Art Foundation (Washington). He has worked at
the World Bank and served as both an Adjunct Associate Professor of
Economics at the George Washington University and President of USA
International, Inc.

IMF Home  Search  Site Map  Site
Index  Help  What's New

About the
IMF  News  Publications  Country
Info  IMF
Finances  Standards &
Codes