industrialized countries' HYPERLINK "http://www.g8kyushu-okinawa.go.jp/e/index.html" summit next month. The experts propose measures to elevate the priority of ICT by countries and international agencies, and suggest ways to attract funding. Based on their own experiences, the experts document campaigns that have succeeded even in countries battling extreme poverty or complicated political situations. "The international community, working in concert with national governments, private business and civil society, is fully capable of reversing the current alarming trend of the growing digital divide," enabling Internet access in homes, workplaces and communities by 2004 for the 80% of the world population that continues to be unconnected, the report says. While developing countries have great potential to tap into this global market, "unless they promptly and actively embrace the ICT revolution, they will face new barriers and the risk of not just being marginalized, but completely bypassed," the 17-member team cautions (UN release). The experts also indicated that the value of e-commerce was expected to swell from $45 billion in 1998 to more than $7 trillion by 2004. The report says that ICT should be a top priority for developing countries as it "brings early, tangible and important benefits to the poor," and that the growing "digital divide" between rich and poor countries must be stopped (AFP). There are 1.5 billion Web pages in existence, growing by nearly 2 million every day, but they are produced by less than 5% of the world's population. This is creating an electronic "trade barrier," the report said (UN release). Cash for the $500 million fund could be sought from donors like the UN Fund for International Partnerships and "would be matched by funds raised from the private sector and foundations," the report says (AFP). "There is a vast untapped potential out there and a huge incentive for industry and foundations to pursue that," said Chuck Lankester, a UN consultant on information technology, wh
o organized the panel. Against criticism that food or health aid to developing countries should come first, Lankester added that developing countries themselves asked for the technology, in addition to aid deliveries. "What they said was, please continue to give us fish, but do give us ... the fishing rods so that we can help ourselves, because this is a technology that will enable us to pull ourselves out of the desperate situation which we now find ourselves," Lankester said (Harmonie Toros, Associated Press, 20 Jun). INCLUDEPICTURE d "/unwire/images/blank1.gif" ESCAP Proposes National Index To Demonstrate Readiness Meanwhile, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) today proposed the creation of a national information index to measure readiness in high technology areas, including the Internet. The commission recommended systematic identification of issues in developing countries, including India, by publishing a single composite index of readiness for the digital er
a. Other proposals include "assisting countries to identify the areas where action is required and to carry out the necessary interventions based on the scores on individual parameters" (Asia Pulse, 20 Jun). INCLUDEPICTURE d "/unwire/images/blank1.gif" Addressing Technology Inequities Crucial -- Malloch Brown In a commentary in the current issue of the UN Development Program (UNDP) publication Choices, UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown writes that the information and technology explosion currently "is seen as a major contributing factor to the growing gap between the rich and poor, both within and between countries." As high technology becomes increasingly important to the world economy, "poorer countries with fewer resources and less well-educated workforces are being left further and further behind," he writes. Malloch Brown said that finding the answers to the growing divide is crucial in order to take advantage of "perhaps the most important" aspect of the Internet: "By eliminating space and
time, it gives us an unprecedented means of overcoming two of the root causes of extreme poverty -- ignorance and isolation" (Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP Choices, June 2000).
