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     mission, mandates, money

This page considers responses to digital divides in the developing world.

It covers -

• orientation - the politics of responses to third world digital divides
• the basis of 'real access' - cogent analysis from Bridges.org about 12 interrelated factors
• development issues - literature on development organisations and initiatives
• spending - how much money is being spent on bridging digital divides?
• funding - where is money coming from?

     orientation

Those responses illustrate the best and worst of global (and national) inequalities, personal/corporate opportunism and approaches by government and private sector bodies.

As highlighted in the introduction to discussion about divides, they form a continuum from people who argue that 'The Divide' simply does not exist through to those who want to leverage divides for funding broader social/political intiatives.

That continuum includes -

• Digital Denial
• Divide Skeptics
• the Aid Industry
• Wandering Cosmocrats
• Kleptocrats
• the Six Billion Dollar Mantra
• a Post-Colonial Hegemony
• and the Anti-Aid Lobby

Exponents of 'digital denial' have either questioned the very existence of the divide (often quite effectively, given simplistic characterisations of a single infrastructure-centric divide) or the appropriateness of action by governments and philanthropic bodies.

Divide skeptics have suggested that the severity and shape of divides may vary from state to state, consistent with the differing literacy rates, differing income, access to infrastructure and cultural expectations across and within states that are highlighted in preceding pages of this profile. Some skeptics, for example, acknowledge that divides exist but warn against misplaced enthusiasm for 'one size fits all' remedies based on construction of infrastructure or provision of computers.

The aid industry exhibits characteristics evident in responses to health, education, displacement or other problems - a range of government and nongovernment service providers, journalists and other entities whose performance is affected by institutional rivalries, personal agendas, corporate aggrandisement and alliances, differing expertise and practice 'on the ground'.

Andrew Mwenda, in contrast, argues that aid is a problem, not a solution. "Debt relief is a moral hazard. What is the incentive for country A to continue paying interest on its borrowings if country B steals the money, defaults and then gets debt relief". He complains that "Countries that are deserving don't get aid", arguing that aid creates the wrong incentives - makes objects of the poor and passive recipients of charity rather than active participants in their own economic betterment. "Africans don't need handouts, they need better institutions and land reform".

What some critics have described as cosmocrats - roving consultants and international policymakers - have understandably embraced the notion of a digital divide as an opportunity for increasing their income and perquisites, buffing their personal profiles or legitimating their organisations. Much of the debate around the WSIS, for example, can be viewed as jostling for personal influence, for marketing particular NGOs or for reinforcing cadres based on institutional affiliation or professional specialisation rather than state of origin.

From an Australian perspective in reading reports from agencies of the United Nations and some of the major NGOs it is striking - albeit perhaps inevitable - how little attention is paid to remoter states, particularly those with a population of less than a million. Many of the Pacific island states, for example, simply do not appear on the radar and on indices such as the US Failed State Index (FSI).

It is a commonplace that development divides are about people and societies rather than exclusively about gaps in cables and railways or excessive traffic costs. Kleptocrats (aka Divides-R-Us) in some states have embraced digital divides as an opportunity for personal enrichment. Some have an expectation that aid funding will 'stick' in their part of the development pipeline. Establishment of infrastructure will similarly provide opportunities at the national and local level for levying charges, gaining facilitation fees or enabling pilferage.

Critics of "the global digital divide mafia" have similarly referred to experts, advocates and policymakers who love humanity in the abstract but are reluctant to experience poverty in the flesh. Consistent with most global summits, the major gatherings about digital divide initiatives have occurred in upmarket cities (or quarantined in upmarket accommodation), resulting in aspirational statements that are too muted to be resounding, that are not 'owned' by participants, that appear to move at a glacial pace and that result in few if any discernable outcomes.

The 'six billion dollar mantra' has been espoused by some ICT enthusiasts. It is an echo of the 6 Million Dollar Man sci-fi series that impressed nascent geeks during the 1970s. It is evident in grand gestures such as the development of facilities that enable neurosurgery and other telemedicine in remote jungles (where a more pressing need might be for treatment of trachoma and tapeworm).

Less glamorously it is evident in various initiatives to develop the handheld wireless simputer, US$100 laptop or open source 'volkscomputer' (or is it the TrabantPC?) - in Brazil in the tradition of ICT autarky discussed in works such as 1999 study From Industry Protection To Industry Promotion: IT Policy in Brazil (PDF) by Antonio Botelho, Jason Dedrick & Kenneth Kraemer.

Some of the most effective initiatives have succeeded because their ambitions were modest, delivery was based on work by people in the field (rather than in Davos, Geneva or Seattle) and there was an emphasis on appropriate technology.

Adherents of a post-colonial hegemony have conceptualised a range of divides as the consequence of colonialism, with reparation to be provided by leading economies and corporations - whether directly or through global mechanisms such as a byte tax.

Rhetoric about restitution and disadvantage - and soundbites such as George Monbiot's 2003 claim that the combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity (around three billion people) is less than the total wealth of the world's richest 500 - has grabbed attention at fora such as the WSIS.

However it has been questioned by the World Bank and other bodies urging concentration on achievable plans for addressing specific problems. They have noted that some figures, although gaining media coverage, appear to be incorrect. Some of the rhetoric has the flavour of a cargo cult, with expectations that rolling out infrastructure (or merely privatising dominant telcos) will catapult parts of the third world into the first world and a healthy civil society. Those expectations have coincided with the aims of some solutions vendors and ICT manufacturers.

The Anti-Aid Lobby - which encompasses free-market think tanks, journalists, civil society groups and government officials - has conceptualised aid as an undesirable (and, by ordinary citizens, often undesired) relic of the Cold War, distorting markets and underpinning ineffective dirigiste regimes.

Academic critics of humanitarian assistance, along with some workers in NGOs, have more pointedly questioned the significance of aid agencies in usurping government functions, absolving Third World elites of responsibility (even encouraging authoritarianism) and undermining official capacity in weak states on the road to failure.

     the basis of 'real access'

Teresa Peters of Bridges.org, in a refreshingly perceptive statement during 2003, warned against simplistic assessments and suggested that "Real Access to ICT" involves twelve interrelated factors -

• Physical access: Is technology available and accessible to people and organizations?
• Appropriate technology: Is the available technology appropriate to local needs and conditions? What is the appropriate technology according to how people need and want to put technology to use?
• Affordability: Is technology affordable for people to use?
• Capacity: Do people have the training and skills necessary for effective technology use? Do they understand how to use technology and its potential uses?
• Relevant content: Is locally relevant content available, especially in terms of language?
• Integration: Is technology use a burden to peoples' lives, or is it integrated into daily routines?
• Socio-cultural factors: Are people limited in their use of technology based on gender, race, or other socio-cultural factors?
• Trust: Do people have confidence in technology and understand the implications of the technology they use, for instance in terms of privacy, security, or cybercrime?
• Legal and regulatory framework: Do laws and regulations limit technology use? Are changes needed to create an environment that fosters its use?
• Local economic environment: Is there a local economic environment favorable to technology use? Is technology part of local economic development? What is needed to make it a part?
• Macro-economic environment: Is technology use limited by the macro-economic environment in the country or region, for example, in terms of deregulation, investment, and labor issues?
• Political will: Is there political will in government to do what is needed to enable the integration of technology throughout society, and public support for government decision-making?

Steve Jobs (comfortably housed in one of the ritzier Tokyo hotels) sniffed in 2001 that the 'Digital Divide'

is just a new sticker we use to cover up a more important word: poverty ... I don't think we should worry about the digital divide nearly as much as we should worry about poverty. It's all over the planet. I am living in America and you in Australia, and we are really doing quite nicely, thank you. We have great medicine and good roads and clean water. We invent terms like digital divide to distract us from the real problem that must be solved in the world, and that's poverty.

     development issues

The US National Research Council's report Bridge Builders: African Experiences with Information and Communication Technology, (Washington: National Academy Press 1996), Beyond Boundaries: Cyberspace in Africa (Portsmouth: Heinemann 2002) by Melinda Robins & Robert Hilliard, Microcomputers in African development (Boulder: Westview 1992) by Suzanne Lewis & Joel Samoff, Terminal signs: Computers and social change in Africa (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter 1990) by Bennetta Jules-Rossette and the Bridges.org 2005 E-Readiness Assessment Tools Comparison and E-Readiness Assessment: Who is Doing What & Where are of value. Telecommunications Politics: Ownership & Control of the Information Highway in Developing Countries (Hillsdale: Erlbaum 1995) edited by Bella Mody & Johannes Bauer discusses infrastructure investment challenges.

Eszter Hargittai's 1999 Weaving the Western Web: Explaining Differences in Internet Connectivity Among OECD Countries paper (PDF) and 2001 Defining a Global Geography (PDF) - the latter with Miguel Angel Centeno - explore the background to some of those challenges.

Charles Kenny's 2004 Why Are We Worried About Income? Nearly Everything that Matters is Converging article comments that "convergence of national GDP/capita numbers is a common, but narrow, measure of global success or failure in development", arguing that a broader range of quality of life variables covering health, education, rights and infrastructure are converging across countries. There is a more extended examination of issues in his Overselling the Web?: Development And the Internet (Boulder: Rienner 2006). Quantification is explored in Branko Milanovic's Worlds Apart: Measuring International & Global Inequality (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2005).

As background we recommend Exporting Communication Technology to Developing Countries (New York: Universities Press of America 1999) by Emmanuel Ngwainmbi, Information Technology in Context: Studies from the Perspective of Developing Countries (Aldershot: Ashgate 2001) edited by Chrisanthi Avgerou & Geoff Walsham, India's Communication Revolution: From Bullock Carts to Cyber Marts (New Delhi: Sage 2001) by Arvind Singhal & Everett Rogers, When Telephones Reach the Village: The Role of Telecommunications in Rural Development (Norwood: Ablex 1984) by Heather Hudson and Information Resources & Technology Transfer Management in Developing Countries (London: Routledge 1997) by Richard Ouma-Onyango.

Beyond Structural Adjustment: The Institutional Context of African Development (Basingtoke: Palgrave 2003) edited by Nicolas van de Walle, Nicole Ball & Vijaya Ramachandran considers institutional barriers. It explores why natational development and a broad-based economy remain of far less a concern to elites than continued exploitation of resources for the advantage of the ruler and his network of clients. Van de Walle for example identifies a "partial reform syndrome" that features symbolic gestures and rhetorical commitments for change that in fact extend and deepen the diffusion of patronage.

William Easterly's The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures & Misadventures in the Tropics (Cambridge: MIT Press 2001), Phyllis Pomerantz's Aid Effectiveness in Africa: Developing Trust between Donors and Governments (Lanham: Lexington Books 2004), Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid: Why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa (London: Allen Lane 2009), James Morton's The Poverty of Nations: The Aid Dilemma at the Heart of Africa (London: British Academic Press 1994) and Annelise Riles' The Network Inside Out (Ann Arbor: Uni of Michigan Press 2000) offer perspectives on donor-recipient expectations and relations. Information Technology, Productivity & Economic Growth: International Evidence and Implications for Economic Development (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2001) edited by Matti Pohjola examines aspects of IT development hype in the third and first worlds.

The Role of Social Capital in Development: An Empirical Assessment (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2002) edited by Christiaan Grootaert & Thierry Van Bastelaer is of value in considering 'just add ICT and stir' rhetoric.

It is complemented by works such as Robert Guest's The Shackled Continent: Africa's Past, Present and Future (London: Macmillan 2004), The Fate of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence (New York: Public Affairs 2005) by Martin Meredith, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (New York: Penguin Press 2004) by Ian Buruma & Avishai Margalit and The Skull Beneath the Skin: Africa after the Cold War (Boulder: Westview 2001) by Mark Husband.

Fred Kofi de Heer-Menlah's succinct 2002 ACM article on Internet Access for African Countries regarding factors that hinder/help development of internet access in Africa offered the following wish list for governments (and donors) -

• the numerous controls imposed by governments continue to retard the development of net access
• governments should develop a well-planned scalable telecommunication infrastructure capable of utilising new technologies as they arise
• the infrastructure must be maintained and constantly upgraded in line with modern technology
• web presence should be promoted with the use of the ccTLD, with ccTLD management as a public service charging a minimal fee for domain name registrations so that private companies act as registrars and value-added sellers.
• the need for a policy for every player in the hi-tech industry and related fields that a certain quota of their services be offered to the rural community and another quota towards education in the rural community for each year.

For the interaction between governments, international bodies such as the World Bank and NGOs see in particular Sebastian Mallaby's The World's Banker (Kensington: UNSW Press 2005), The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs & Grassroots Movements (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998) by Jonathan Fox & L. David Brown, Fiona Terry's Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 2002), Amartya Sen's The Political Economy of Hunger (Oxford: Clarendon 1990) and The Ethics of Assistance: Morality & the Distant Needy (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2005) edited by Deen Chatterjee.

There is a more acerbic account in Graham Hancock's The Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press 1989) and Andrew Natsios' 'Illusions of Influence: the CNN Effect in Complex Emergencies' in Rothberg & Weiss' From Massacres to Genocide: The Media, Public Policy and Humanitarian Crises (Washington: Brookings Institute 1996).

Other organisations are explored in Civil Society & the Aid Industry (London: Earthscan 1998) edited by Alison Van Rooy, NGO Capacity & Effectiveness: A review of themes in NGO-related research recently funded by ESCOR (London: IIED 1996) by Anthony Bebbington & Diana Mitlin, The Role of NGOs under Authoritarian Political Systems (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1997) by Seamus Cleary, Compassion and Calculation: The Business of Foreign Aid (London: Pluto 1996) edited by David Sogge and the discussion of the WSIS elsewhere on this site.

     spending

How much money is being spent on bridging digital divides in the third world? Is that expenditure producing results? And is the money being spent efficiently?

At a global level the answer is that no one knows for sure.

In considering some of the more hyperbolic announcements at major divide 'summits' it is important to differentiate between pledges, what is actually given and when that commitment of support is given effect.

It is also important to consider how much support actually reaches the field and whether that support is appropriate. It is a sad fact that some philanthropic organisations, for example, include their marketing and administrative expenses in figures about money going to aid recipients. Attendance at a few global summits is not necessarily cheap, although possibly essential.

Particular governments, such as Japan, have traditionally adopted a mercantilist approach, with aid being tied to exports or implicitly conditional on trade/investment concessions by the recipient nation. Some vendors have similarly used 'gifting' as an opportunity to dispose of unwanted inventory (often priced at greater than market value) or lock in recipients while buffing a tarnished corporate image.

     funding

Where will money come from to address digital divides in the third world? Are the various digital initiatives at the expense of arguably more significant projects? The OECD, for example, notes that public aid for water improvements in developing countries declined from US$2.7bn in 1997 to US$1.4bn in 2002 and has subsequently remained at that level.

Aid funding (in cash and in kind) has come from a range of sources -

• grants or loans by individual national governments
• grants or loans by international government bodies, such as various United Nations agencies
• grants from national and international philanthropic organisations, drawing on contributions by individuals, businesses and governments
• gifting by businesses (separately or collectively), often in the form of hardware/software rather than cash
• service or gifting by individuals

In the absence of detailed figures it is hard to be definitive. However, it would appear that overall there has been little overall growth in aid: much of the finding has been at the expense of existing initiatives or has simply involved rebadging those initiatives.

As discussed elsewhere on this site, the notion of the 'new economy' as qualitatively different and generating unprecedented growth has resulted in suggestions for new 'North-South' taxes such as the byte tax. Many of those suggestions have been criticised as gimmicks and media grabs, rather than credible proposals for the collection and distribution of resources.

In 2005 for example African leaders called on wealthy nations to establish a "voluntary tax" at the city level on "investment in technology", with money being used "to buy mobile phones and computers for poor nations". Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade argued that the digital divide aggravated polarisation between wealthy and developing nations, saying that

It is imperative that international measures be taken. The only way to fill in the digital divide is to empower the South with information technology equipment, telephones, fax machines, the Internet and to ensure training on how to use them.

Money raised through the tax - Geneva for example has a 1% levy on profits made by the city's technology suppliers - would go to the UN-sponsored Digital Solidarity Fund, promoted as using

high-tech tools such as satellite telephones or the internet to promote economic development in areas that lack even the most basic infrastructure.

Supposedly - once detailed guidelines are in place - some 60% of revenue would go to the world's 49 least-developed nations, 30% to developing countries and 10% to projects in rich nations.

Some sceptics have questioned the self-involved nature of much aid, with Brendan O'Neill for example skewering Bono as

a celebrity colonialist. His patronising campaign to single-handedly 'save Africa' is actually damaging the continent. It is painting Africa as a pathetic place whose wide-eyed, infantile populations need a loudmouth rock star to fight their corner. His disregard for anything resembling an electoral process ('I represent a lot of people in Africa') lends weight to the prejudice that African leaders are peculiarly corrupt, and thus it is best to leapfrog straight over them - as does his demand for 'anti-corruption measures' to be attached to all forms of aid to Africa. Yet having a pop at his pomposity is not enough. Alongside making fun of Bono, let us challenge today's prostitution of African problems for the purposes of Western self-aggrandisement, which has led to his being crowned King of the Africans. Bono Must Die? Well, that would be a good start - but only a start.

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