ALKHOBAR, 11 July 2006 — Last Thursday, Arab News ran an article in which Chris Cornelius, managing director of Sun Microsystems, MENA region stated, “Innovation and the rapid development of technology have cut down all communication barriers. That has made it possible for people across the world to access, connect and enhance their skills over the Internet.”
It was really stunning to read such a comment, especially as just the previous morning the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) had released a report which read, “There are roughly 1 billion people in about 800,000 villages in developing countries without any kind of connection to computer networks.” Yesterday, the World Population Clock showed that there were about 6,527,445,906 people on Earth. This means that about 16 percent of the world’s population has absolutely no ability to connect to the Internet. Recent numbers indicate that for the developing world, the mobile telephone is the fastest growing means of modern connectivity. Outside the USA, Canada and Europe, Internet connectivity is far from ideal.
The digital divide between nations remains wide: a person in a high-income country is over 22 times more likely to be an Internet user than one in a low-income nation. According to UNCTAD’s newly released report, “The Digital Divide: ICT Diffusion Index 2005,” Information and Communication Technology (ICT) diffusion is only slowly becoming more equal.
The report ranks 180 countries and monitors how the digital divide is evolving. As expected, the top places are dominated by industrial nations from North America and Western Europe and by the Asian “tigers,” while many of the lower-ranking countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa. There are many reasons for the digital divide, but most are related to the primary cause: poverty.
In a high-income country, Internet affordability relative to income is over 150 times better than in a low-income nation. Even in lower-middle income countries, the cost of 20 hours of inferior Internet service is nearly one-third the average monthly income. It is only in the high-income countries that the cost of Internet service is low enough as to be broadly affordable for most households and small businesses. Even within those nations, digital divides exist between urban and rural areas, the two genders, age groups and racial groups.
“Since its inception, we have hypothesized that, while not a cure-all, the Internet could raise the quality of life in the developing world. This has led us to conduct hundreds of national “e-readiness” studies, train technicians and policymakers, run pilot studies, develop and deploy applications, and convene hundreds of conferences, including the recent World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS),” writes Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of UNCTAD in the preface of the report. “Yet, after all of this activity, Internet connectivity is nearly nonexistent in rural areas of developing countries and, when it is available in urban areas; it is decidedly inferior to the service in developed countries.”
The Digital Divide report provides six case studies on countries that have successfully promoted growth in ICT: Botswana, Chile, China, India, Singapore and the United States. These nations have combined ICT liberalization — privatization, competition and independent regulation — with responsible government planning, investment and procurement.
The report ends on a positive note by looking into the various possibilities for connecting every village in the world within a decade or so through the construction of public Internet backbones. This vision is shared by many leading experts and has inspired much research over the past 10 to 15 years. The construction of such a network will require multistakeholder partnerships at all levels.
In more specific terms, the top ten countries in “The Digital Divide: ICT Diffusion Index 2005,” as ranked in the 2004 Index of ICT Diffusion are: Luxembourg, USA, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, Bermuda, Australia and the United Kingdom. The bottom ten countries are: Bangladesh (171), Guinea, Ethiopia, Benin, Solomon Islands, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo and Niger (180).
Analysis of the situation in the GCC reveals that in the UNCTAD report Qatar is ranked first for ICT Diffusion in position 41, followed by Bahrain (46), UAE (47), Kuwait (53), Saudi Arabia (74) and Oman (107). In the year 1997, the rankings were UAE (37) Qatar (39), Kuwait (43), Bahrain (44), Saudi Arabia (84) and Oman (102). The entire Arab world could certainly do better in terms of ICT Diffusion. In the ICT diffusion index the Arab States averaged just 105. Qatar is the highest ranked Arab nation in the UNCTAD report. Other nations of interest to the Arab World were Lebanon (83), Jordan (93), Tunisia (102), Libya (112), Syria (119), Morocco (133), Egypt (134), Sudan (150) and Yemen (163). The country with the highest ICT Diffusion in the Middle East is Israel, ranked 17th.
The Index of ICT Diffusion is designed to evaluate ICT development using indicators of ICT diffusion across countries. It measures the average achievements in a country in two dimensions:
*Connectivity, as measured by the number of Internet hosts per capita, number of PCs per capita, the number of telephone mainlines per capita and the number of mobile subscribers per capita. As such, it gives a measure of the infrastructure development.
*Access, as measured by the number of estimated Internet users, the adult literacy rate, the cost of a local call and GDP per capita. This component aims at describing the opportunity to take advantage of being connected.
An index score is calculated for each of these indicators by applying the following formula: value achieved/maximum reference value. Connectivity and access indices were then calculated as an average of index scores of their respective components and the index of ICT Diffusion is itself an average of these two dimensions.
For Saudi Arabia the “Access Index” was 0.509. Luxembourg, which ranked No. 1, had an Access Index of 0.928. Saudi Arabia’s “Connectivity Index” was 0.219. Luxembourg’s was 0.703. These two measurements gave Saudi Arabia an ICT diffusion index of 0.364 compared with Luxembourg’s 0.815. Clearly there is much work to be done in the Kingdom to bring ICT resources up to the standards of the most developed nations.
Is dramatic improvement of national ICT diffusion possible? Of course it is. In 1997 Jamaica was ranked 91. In the latest ICT diffusion report it ranked 57. Mexico in 1997 was ranked 101, compared to the current 77. China was ranked 111. It is now 90. Morocco was ranked 154 and now 133. Tunisia 122 and now 102.
The message from UNCTAD’s report is clear. To close the digital divide, ICT policies of private sector participation, competition and effective regulation must be coupled with proactive government planning, investment and procurement. With petroleum prices skyrocketing, Saudi Arabia has a golden opportunity to make the investment needed to rapidly bridge the digital divide for the benefit of all its citizens.
The UNCTAD Digital Divide Report is available for free download from http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/iteipc20065_en.pdf.
