The International Digital Divide

Over the past 30 years ICT has revolutionised the way we live here in the UK bringing educational, social, cultural and economic benefits to people with access to the technology available. Unfortunately this is not the case all over the world. Globally, the number of people with access to the Internet via a home PC increased from 563 million people in 2001 to 580 million in 2002. The Digital divide refers to the gap between people with access to ICT, the internet and the latest technology and the people who don’t. Groups often discussed in the context of a digital divide include gender, income, and perhaps most importantly location. All over Africa there are a growing number of people seeking the benefits of this new technology. The population of Africa has grown to well over 922,011,000 in recent years. But with only 3% landline telephones it is very hard to get internet connections to the people living there, in northern Africa 3.3% of people use the internet. In the more developed towns and city’s of southern Africa 7.1% of people use it compared with 57% of UK households. The big difference between UK and African households could be something to do with a difference in the wealth of the countries, in Africa it is more important to help your family to survive where as in the UK this is not such a widespread issue.

What leads to being on the wrong side of the Digital Divide?

Guinea Biseau, Chad, Mali, Burkino Fasso & Niger are all on the wrong side of the digital divide. These countries are more concerned about basic survival rather than ICT, because of the countries poverty they can’t afford to invest money in ICT when keeping people alive is more important. Computers are also expensive and families and businesses in these countries don’t have the resources to buy computers, a computer in West Africa might cost six years salary. Because of the location of these countries they all have poor technological infrastructures; this makes it difficult to improve technology that could potentially change the countries situation. If there is no or little electricity then it’s difficult to use computers. The people in these countries are struggling to survive; they don’t want to or need to use the Internet.

News Report

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7647114.stm

The link above is a news report looking at the digital divide within Brazil. Within the report i found this quote 'Last year's figures showed that 59% of Brazilians have never accessed the Internet or used a computer' this is quite shocking when earlier in the report it says 'There are an estimated 45m PCs in Brazil, making it the world's fifth biggest market for computers'. The difference between these two quotes emphasises just how big the digital divide is.

What's being done to change this?

56,000 public schools are presently being fitted with broadband Internet, with an aim to have all of the urban public schools in the country connected by 2010. The Brazilian government is also trialling a number of laptop projects such as the One laptop per child project which provides a very basic laptop for every child at school.