Dear GKD Members, Re: Completing the Revolution: The Challenge of Rural Telephony in Africa - <http://www.panos.org.uk/resources/reportdetails.asp?id=1069>
If you are in a donor agency, and looking for "Digital Divide" program strategies, if you only read one report this year, READ THIS ONE! Then think about how you can work to improve rural telecommunication policies in the developing countries in which you work. Rural telecom policy - this is the area where you will get the best development "bang" for your Digital Divide "buck". Don Richardson On Monday, July 12, 2004, UgaBYTES Initiative wrote: > In the midst of the current enthusiasm for "ICTs for Development", it is > often forgotten that most rural Africans do not yet even have access to > telephones. Initiatives such as the World Summit on the Information > Society aspire to bridge the digital divide in order to reduce poverty > and achieve the Millennium Development Goals, but this aim risks being > undermined if basic telephone connectivity is not first made available. > > In most of rural Africa, there is only one telephone for every thousand > people. It is true that the number of phones in Africa has risen > enormously in the past decade, especially since liberalisation, but most > of the new telephones are mobiles, and they are mostly in cities. For > rural people, buying and using a mobile phone is very expensive -- a > single call can cost as much as half the daily wage of an agricultural > worker. > > This report, based on case studies from Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda > and Zambia (click to download), argues that policy-makers should pay > more attention to the challenge of providing telephones to rural people > in Africa. If they do not, the development benefits of the information > revolution will by-pass many of the world's poorest people. To read more > or download the report, follow the link: > > http://www.panos.org.uk/resources/reportdetails.asp?id=1069 ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
