DEVELOPMENT: Information technology for who?

DEVELOPMENT: Information technology for whom?
by Gumisai Mutume

STOCKHOLM (IPS) - Paul Themba Nyathi, an opposition member of parliament in Zimbabwe tells the tale of how, when he grew up, poor youngsters would prepare the staple maize meal, and when there was no meat to eat it with would sit downwind of the houses nearby so that at least they could capture the aroma of those wealthy enough to cook meat.

''The wind would at least blow the flavour towards them,´´ says Nyathi who is in Stockholm to attend an information technology and democracy forum here. ''And that is more or less what we (delegates from poor countries) are doing here at this conference.''

Government agencies, non-governmental groups, electoral officials and technology gurus are meeting here - in a country with one of the highest levels of Internet connectivity - discussing how best to utilise information technologies to promote democracy.

But within the corridors of the conference centre a number of developing country delegates feel the conference is talking past them. The latest wireless
applications, the ability to vote online or acquire the latest application software pales in comparison to the need in their countries to free children from hunger and illiteracy and provide adequate healthcare.

''The more I listened the more depressed I became about how this is divorced from our own reality,'' says Nyathi. ''It is a matter of priorities. How can you put 5 million dollars into buying solar panels for information technology in a village when you need bore-holes to provide water to the community?''

While the lot of developing countries varies widely, they still represent the nations where the 3 billion people who have never made a telephone call
live. They also represent countries such as South Africa where satellite technology has been embraced and used to connect municipalities during recent elections to facilitate the collation of results. In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank has, since the early 1980s, transformed the lives of very poor people through its micro-lending scheme and now lends to poor women to acquire mobile telephones.

''We come from a different reality,'' said a delegate who opted for anonymity. ''While it is well and good to speak of using information technology to monitor elections, in some parts of our country children still learn under trees, they do not even have classrooms.''

On the other hand countries such as Sweden boast broadband Internet access and high Internet user numbers - a survey by Web monitor Jupiter Media Matrix shows that in April, 50 percent of all Swedes between the ages of 12 to 79 used the web.

The three-day 'Democracy and Information Revolution' forum which ends Friday is examining ways of using information technology to open up flows of
information in countries run by authoritarian regimes, assist in election management and to use it as a tool for reducing inequalities in societies.

''We are way beyond looking at ICT as an either/or issue,'' Mats Karlsson vice president of the World Bank told a plenary session Thursday. ''For it (the
digital divide) to be resolved it is necessary for us to address all the other sectors such as debt relief, poverty alleviation, provision of education…''

Karlsson had earlier been at the receiving end of comments by Ylva Rodney-Gumede from the University of South Africa who charged that contrary to what it preaches, the Bank is only making matters worse in sub-Saharan Africa due to its insistence on the abolition of government subsidies and the promotion ofprivatisation.

During the last 25 years the world has witnessed a wave of democratisation seeing more people living under democracies today than ever before. The number of countries holding elections and upholding other democratic elements has more than doubled since 1974 says Pippa Norris, a lecturer at Harvard University's John F Kennedy School of Government.

Democracies display qualities such as allowing effective political party competition, upholding the rule of law and respecting justice. They also
guarantee human rights to their citizens and freedomof expression.

Norris says the Internet may not necessarily influence political participation in the sense that those who do not vote will not necessarily vote as a
result of having access to the Internet. She however notes that it does level the playing field significantly by providing an equal medium for allpolitical opponents.

In a survey of 179 countries that will be released in August, Norris says one of the findings is that more than a third of small political parties studied
in those countries are online, ''and they can compete in ways they often can't do in newspapers and ontelevision.''

But it may take a while before the gap improves. In fact, the other divide that of radio and television ownership has largely remained unchanged during thelast 30 years.

In its latest statistics, the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) reports that there is an average of one radio receiver per person in developed countries compared to one in four in developing countries. While every two people share a television in industrialised countries in poorer countries the ratio is one to six.

''Possibly this digital divide is going to get worse before it starts to get better,'' says Eduardo Tadao Takahashi, co-ordinator of the Information Society Programme in Brazil.

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