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Contributions from
the Column
InWEnt News
ASA supports young development activists
Expectations of modern media should be
assessed realistically
DSE restructures
“Most governments are extremely interested”
10/2004 |
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[ Information and communication technologies ]
Expectations of modern media should be
assessed realistically
It’s hard to imagine not having access to the latest information and communications technologies (ICT). If we link the structural data (telephone, PC, internet) of 162 countries to the best-known development indicators, income per head and the human development index, we can clearly see how closely connected are the spread of ICT on the one hand, and economic and social development on the other.
[ By Jürgen Bethke ]
Greater integration into world markets, reductions in transaction costs and leapfrogging straight into the information society without touching the industrial age – these are the development debate’s expectations of modern media and the opportunities it presents. The reality is often quite different. Despite close parallels, the developing countries are altogether very diverse in character. Some countries have an ICT infrastructure which is disproportionately advanced in relation to their general level of development. These “winners of the digital revolution” are the very positive exception to what statistics estimate as the standard balance between ICT and development. Even when the actual level of ICT infrastructure in some countries is minimal, the situation is in fact better than development indicators would lead us to suppose. On the other hand the “losers of the digital revolution” have been unable to implement an infrastructure which is at least consistent with their general level of development.
As a proportion of all the developing countries, winner nations are very few. Each continent has a mere handful. Latin America has Brazil and, at a pinch, Argentina and Chile. In Asia it is basically the tiger economies, but Malaysia can also be added to this group. In Africa the group of winners is limited to South Africa and some of its neighbours in Southern and Southeast Africa, plus certain West African nations and Mauritius. The losers of the “digital revolution” are mainly located in Africa and Asia: in North Africa, the Sahel and large parts of Central Africa. In Asia it is the Southeast Asian nations in particular whose ICT infrastructure is lagging behind their general level of development.
Whereas the winners and losers of the digital revolution can be identified from a global perspective, the same approach cannot be used to pinpoint the reasons. For this the internal structures of each individual country must be looked at in close detail. Findings from studies of the winner, South Africa, and the loser, Vietnam, indicate that the extent of involvement in the global economy and the national policy towards information are two of the determining factors of performance in the ICT sector. When, as in the case of Vietnam, the political leadership controls ICT and in particular the internet, limiting the spread of these technologies, then the ICT sector cannot prosper. It therefore comes as no surprise that a large number of the losers are countries which prevent their citizens from freely exchanging information via new media.
Regulating the internet and confining its spread appear to be a main reason, apart from economic factors, that this technology is far less evenly-distributed around the world than the telephone and computer. The gap opening up between the leaders and the most backward countries is far less pronounced with these less complex – and also less subversive – technologies than is the case with the essence of modern ICT, the internet. The internet is almost totally dominated by the first world. And the positive feedback, the cycle of innovation, spread and usage of internet technology is moving too fast in the advanced nations for the digital gap between the first and third world to narrow – despite the fervent efforts of development cooperation. Before this backdrop it is essential that we qualify our high expectations of ICT for development and assess present processes realistically, not just optimistically.
Jürgen Bethke
has a degree in geography and works as a trainee geography and social sciences teacher at the Herder-Gymnasium in Cologne.
juergen.bethke@onlinehome.de
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