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Digital dreams for the worldwide web of poverty
Trying to create a true World Wide Web by targeting the 90%
of the global population lacking internet access may seem like a commendable
aim. However, it is a case of putting
the computer before the cart.
By Khaled Diab
December 2003
In his own way, Atef is a pioneering
individual. He left his village in Upper Egypt for the bright lights of the
‘Mother of the World’ Cairo to provide his children with a better life.
Although he comes from the deeply conservative south of the country, he took
the novel step of working as a cleaner for well-to-do Cairiens.
Atef – perhaps a more traditional man at home –
wasn’t much of a cleaner but his simple dedication to his wife and kids was
touching, which led his customers to turn a blind eye to his corner cutting.
Illiterate himself, Atef was extremely proud of his children and he would
retell – with fatherly pride and softening eyes – how well they could both
read.
Needless to say, in addition to not being able
to read and write, Atef is computer illiterate. My girlfriend once tried to
explain to him the concept of e-mail while she was sending one off to her
family in Belgium. He asked her if she could send an “electronic letter” to his
family back in the village, thinking it would – like snail mail – somehow
appear magically with their local postmaster.
Having not received a formal education, his
ignorance of computers was hardly surprising – he’d already laughed off as
impossible the idea that subzero temperatures existed. “How can you have less than
zero?” he’d argued.
To my mind, Atef underscores the essential
folly of the recent gathering of world leaders in Geneva for a UN conference to
bridge the global digital divide. While the World Summit on the Information
Society’s goal of closing the electronic chasm separating rich countries from
poor was ostensibly a noble cause, I couldn’t help wondering whether this
conference wasn’t a case of putting the computer before the cart.
In many parts of the world, information is a
vital tool and developing countries may well be on the margins of the Internet,
but surfing the Web is a luxury that untold millions of poor people struggling
to subsist can ill afford. What use is a computer in, say, a sub-Saharan
African village where people have no electricity or communications
infrastructure, not enough food, and where a large proportion of the productive
population is dying of AIDS and other communicable diseases?
People in such situations need to bridge the
yawning diet and disease divide before they can think about crossing the
digital one. Development and humanitarian assistance is already scarce as rich
countries continuously fail to meet the modest target of devoting 0.7% of their
national incomes to aid.
I believe it would be better to use the rich world’s
limited largesse to help those at the lowest rung of the subsistence ladder eek
out a better existence and reach self-sufficiency. First, we must improve
access to safe drinking water, medicine, irrigation services, seed, basic
literacy programmes for the hundreds of millions of adults who cannot read, and
primary education for all children.
After we’ve overcome these very real but very
basic barriers to development and helped people enter the real world, then we
can start talking about bridging a digital divide. Computers, of course, are
more photogenic than a communal tap, but are they more useful? They have been
given as part of aid projects to developing countries before. However, in many
cases, they turned out to be another case of development white elephants.
Without the proper training, attitude and readiness, the gleaming machines
often languished disused in unopened rooms collecting dust and slowly growing
obsolete.
Moreover, the importing of hardware and
expertise that will be necessary will mean most of the development aid money
used will flow straight back to the donor without having touched the life of
somebody like Atef in anyway. If he’s lucky, he may get a job cleaning the
air-conditioned offices housing the alien electronic wizardry. But the fact
that he can’t read and doesn’t know any foreign language will mean that he
cannot benefit directly from the technology without undergoing years of special
training.
Representatives of the developing world who are
best heard on the international arena and in the rich world are usually members
of a well-heeled and educated elite. Their motivation is partly driven by a
desire to play with the big boys – you have internet we want it too. And it is
this elite that stands to benefit the most from becoming part of the
information society.
Although efforts to level the electronic
playing field might help to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries in
aggregate terms, it will probably succeed in broadening the already wide
internal wealth and educational divisions within developing countries by
providing the privileged with even more knowledge and the few jobs such
investments provide.
Breaking down barriers between cultures across
the globe is an admirable end, but there is a downside. As the educated classes
in developing countries find common ground with their cultural peers overseas,
this will alienate them further from the poorer classes within their own
countries.
Perhaps Atef’s literate children may, one day,
reap the future fruits of the world summit and will be able to use e-mails and
communicate with the outside world. But even they require basics including
better schoolbooks, more teachers and more classrooms before they can join the
information society.
It is a sad fact that less than 10% of the
world’s population have internet connections and the divisions between rich and
poor are widening. However, giving out a few token laptops and modems will not
set the world to rights. People need to be able to stand on their own two feet
before they can surf.
ã2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.