Bits of help for developing countries

It's only two or three years since the Internet really took off, yet it's already common-place to say that the world is being swept by a telecommunication revolution. So we shan't say it. It's valid to ask, though, what is meant by 'the world' in this particular case. While the US government intends to provide all schoolchildren over twelve years of age with an Internet connection by the year 2000, hundreds of millions of people in less well-to-do parts of the world still haven't even heard of data communications, let alone appreciate what it could do for them. The vast majority of Africans never make a single telephone call during their entire lives.

Something to worry about? Very much so.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the tremendous power to sweep away poverty and ignorance, which of course is a far more interesting application than sweeping the world as such.

Fostering ICT in developing countries is the mission of the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). IICD, founded by the Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation Mr Jan Pronk in late 1996, is based in the Netherlands and will have staff of about ten people. Although generously funded by the Dutch government up to at least the year 2002, connecting countries or regions is far beyond its means or indeed the means of development aid in its
broadest sense. But before narrowing down on the main task of IICD, something should be said about the pivotal issue of connectivity. Before you can communicate - Tele or otherwise - you need a link, and such links are generally lacking in the developing world.


However,

• Even the least developed countries do have some international and national telecommunications capacity, but it is often not used in the best nor the most efficient way. Therefore, connectivity can often be increased with very limited means.
  
  
• Even without a real-time connection to the Internet you can still use the World Wide Web, although it won't be exactly world wide. A local area network (LAN) connecting the PCs of a university or an NGO office can be loaded with many gigabytes of information, shipped from elsewhere on tapes or on CDs. Apart from being cheap and quite useful, this approach has two enormous benefits. As soon as the LAN is actualy linked to the Internet, no time or money will be lost while people are learning to use it. Also, while not yet 'online', people can look for and produce 'local content' to build their own databases, which can then be turned into active www-sites once a link is established. This is no trivial matter: information flows between the industrialized and developing countries, via the Internet in particular, are unbalanced to a degree.
  Helping institutions and organizations in developing countries to build their own websites, will become one of IICD's core
  activities.
  
  
• -Small-scale connections can be established quickly and cheaply anywhere via satellite. This is already possible, and it will become far cheaper and easier in a few years' time.
  Several brand new multi-billion dollar plans for satellite systems are presently being developed especially for this purpose. Linking the LAN of a technical school, a library, or a small hospital to the Internet is therefore not beyond the means of IICD, and doing so will fit its charter in some cases.
  

• Although IICD will not focus on actually establishing connections, it can show how to get one, which technology to choose, which configuration, what power supply will be needed, who might be willing to provide funds, and where staff or staff training facilities can be found.
  
  
• IICD can advise governments and NGOs on how to make the optimum use of ITCs in their work.
  
  
• IICD can help blaze trails by engendering, supporting, and in some cases carrying out pre-competitive research in certain areas - geographically or thematically.
  
  
  All of these activities can be applied to a wide variety of fields.
  For instance:
  
  
  
  • ICTs can be used to shift certain kinds of work. The low wages and advantageous time differences are already pulling various kinds of work to developing countries: administration, translation, software management, design... the range of examples is mounting rapidly. Some countries (India is a good example) are already taking advantage on a large scale of the new opportunities being offered by ICTs. IICD could help find new applications, and help people seize these new economic opportunities they offer.
    
    
  • ICTs can be used by developing countries to increase the volume of work already being there by advertising their products and services on the Internet.
    
    
  • ICTs could strengthen all sorts of human rights causes. Dictators do well where distance divides people, so that improved telecommunications are providing a very powerful antidote to geographical separation. E-mail in particular is turning out to be a great booster of freedom and democracy
    wherever it is introduced. Politically sensitive messages will of course need to be encrypted, which is one of the areas where
    IICD might offer advice. Some assistance in the field of human rights can well be offered in the West: because e-mail is such an affordable and efficient means of communication, it is being widely used to bring together refugees with common origins who are scattered over many countries.
    
    
  • Certain aspects of ICT have become the last source of hope for indigenous peoples. Indians in the Amazon region, for example, are spreading e-mail messages over the Internet to tell the world about new waves of settlers and their chainsaws.
    
    All sorts of libraries in the developing world could benefit tremendously from ICT. It goes without saying that full Internet
    connectivity plus a few terminals and a good printer can boost the usefulness and capacity of any library anywhere, but this is especially true when sought-after printed material is hard to obtain. Just a few PCs installed in a library, together with a collection CD-ROMs, is an even cheaper yet very effective application of ICT.
    
    
  • By bringing large volumes of up-to-date information to the world's backwaters, ICTs can help stem the flow of educated
    people from the developing world to the West. A sense of intellectual and professional isolation is often one of the main causes of the brain drain. In the world of medicine, for example, it may be quite laudable for a doctor to choose to work in a
    far-off field hospital, but both he (or she of course) and his work will suffer from the lack of access to the latest scientific findings
    and medical databases generally. The answer to this isolation is known as telemedecine, a phenomenon that is now gaining momentum all over the world. Alleviating the sense of isolation among medical professionals is just one of the blessings of a telecom link; it can also be used by professionals to make new contacts, and to obtain valuable advice that could save lives. For instance, a doctor in a developing country can send an X-ray of a complicated fracture as a data file to a specialist colleague in the West, who can then indicate the most effective treatment.
    n fact, many such telemedecine alliances have recently been formed between hospitals in developing countries and in the
    West, and many more could be made.
    
    
  • IICD could also play a role in disaster relief operations, although the particular telecom solutions required in these situations have already been well sorted out by organizations like Medecins sans Frontieres.
  
  
  All of this needs training, here as well as there.
  
  
  
  • IICD will help to add ICT courses to the existing pogrammes of training institutes in the West, the Netherlands in particular, with curricula tailored to suit the needs of students from developing countries. Attracting the right trainees and helping them to find ways of funding their stay, should of course be part of this.
    
    
  • One of the best ways to speed up the introduction of ICTs in developing countries is simply to demonstrate to them what is
    possible. In fact, this is what is happening all over the world all the time: visitors from developing countries to the West who see the World Wide Web at work, will often trongly push for its introduction in their own countries when they return. However,
    it could soon be unnecessary for people to travel to places where the Internet or a state-of-the-art PC with CD-ROMs are
    available: IICD could develop modular courses to be given on location, and provide the stand-alone hardware needed for
    demonstrations.
  
  
  Although still in its infancy, IICD has already begun to take action. For example, IICD is preparing national ICT Roundtable discussions in which representatives from various sectors in developing countries will be able to draw up imaginative policy scenarios on new development opportunities that could be crated by the widespread introduction of ICTs. In addition,
  developing a state-of-the-art website is at the top of IICD's agenda. At this point in time, March 1997, the content and structure of this website are still matters of debate and consultation, but its purpose is clear:
  IICD's website should be the first port of call for anyone with any question related to ICTs and the developing world. In order to avoid adding unnecessarily to the already unbalanced flow of information between the West and the developing world, mirror sites will be set up in developing countries, and great efforts will be made to ensure that initiatives and programmes being undertaken in the South can present themselves. www.iicd.org should be fully operational by May or June 1997.
  
  By virtue of its interactivity and the two-way flow of traffic, ICT is a far more democratic and egalitarian means of communication than the one-way flow of the signals in the form of Mr Bean, Oprah Winfrey and Dynasty being showered by satellite TV over a rapidly growing number of households in developing countries (not to mention the commercials for hundreds of Western blessings ranging from fast food to fast cars).
  
  ICT has opened a whole new window of opportunity: those who are bothering to look through it are already enjoying a view of a landscape full of new ways to tackle poverty and injustice.

  Michiel Hegener, Journalist
  March 1997