Global Digital Divide

The Digital Divide

The digital divide has an impact on everyone in the world. Economic prosperity has a large part to determining the prevalence of modern technology. The digital divide means that cities have excellent access to ICT and rural areas do not have good access to ICT. A subsistence economy will be more concerned in survival than ICT. A prosperous developed economy can both afford to devote energy and resources to fund the research and development needed to create digital technology. The developed world has its primary motive for the use of ICT is economic.

It is usually seen as more productive to automate a process by using ICT than hiring expensive staff, it is often reversed in developing nations. One computer in West Africa might cost six years salary, even if the computer is affordable the resulting unemployment might not be.

Economic prosperity also has an underlying effect on a number of factors that increase the divide and a poor economy often has poor technology infrastructure, which makes it harder to put digital technology that would improve its situation. Rich nations can bypass obstacles, for example, crossing mountains or ravines with electricity lines but poorer countries might have this as a low priority. A member of the reindeer herding people of northern Europe called Mr. Magga, speaking at the world summit on the information society said that people are sick and starving, they are fighting each day to survive. It’s the situation in many indigenous communities. He said, “it’s not a question of whether we use a computer or not, because there are no computers. It is not a question of seeing a television, because there isn’t one. Now we are knocking at the door of the information society and the question is, will we get in.”

Economic factors alone do not determine the extent of the digital divide. A very large factor in taking up ICT in less developed countries nations is the state of the technological infrastructure. There has to be a stable amount of electricity, if not, it’s not easy to use the digital technologies that are so reliant on it. A UN publication called Africa Renewal, says that no African country outside Egypt and south Africa does more than 20 per cent of the population have direct access to electricity, 2 per cent of Africa’s rural population have access to mains electricity. Large companies regularly suffer with black outs.