'Digital provide' or product consumption diffusion cycle? The diffusion impact and potential of digital technology in the Global South (original) (raw)
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Journal of Information Technology, 2004
The global digital divide is usually measured in terms of differences between rich and poor countries in the extent to which they use ICTs in general and the Internet in particular. Such a view of the problem, however, ignores the fact that there are all kinds of ways in which poor, illiterate persons in developing countries benefit from the Internet without any use of computers and Internet connectivity. Most of these benefits occur as a result of intermediaries who, in one way or another, transfer relevant parts of the knowledge available from the technology to recipients in a form that is relevant to their specific needs. Using India as an illustration of this argument, we find that usage understates actual beneficiaries by at least 30 percent. On the basis of this finding, we suggest that a reconstrued notion of the digital divide be based on usage as well as other more indirect forms of benefit from the Internet in developing countries. To this end, much more needs to be known ...
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Although Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are today deeply embedded with almost every aspect of our lives, they are still far from achieving the tremendous potential in terms of innovation and development opportunities that they are recognised to have (European Commission, 2013; United Nations, 2014). This achievement is limited by the existence of disparities in the rates of adoption and use of these technologies the so-called digital divide. Digital divides exist both between and within countries, among the different socioeconomic groups of the population, and are known as international and domestic digital divides, respectively. With this Dissertation we intend to contribute to a better awareness and understanding of ICT asymmetries across countries, i.e., the global digital divide. In order to do so, we develop five studies. The first of these (chapter two) is a literature review of
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OECD Development Centre Working Papers, 2016
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The global diffusion of digital technology, which occurred more rapidly than the global diffusion of any technology previously, has been mired by its uneven distribution across, and unequal effects on, societies worldwide. In addition, policy initiatives to close this global digital divide, which peaked with the two World Summit on Information Society conferences, still did not change the course of this differentiated globalization process. In this article, I attribute the cause of such stalling of policy on the issue of the global digital divide to the bifurcation of current international policy: attention is split between concern for the impeded access of the poor to this revolutionary technology, on the one hand, and the race to lead the world in creating the next ''hot'' technology, on the other. These two concerns, which have been given the pithy titles of the ''global digital divide'' and the ''global innovation divide,'' are leading to two separate policy tracks, targeting the world's laggards and leaders as separate entities and operating under separate logics. This separation is problematic because the issues of access to technology and ownership of rights to technology are intertwined. This article describes the two global technology divides and analyzes the policies that are currently charted to address them.
Digital Opportunities and the Missing Link for Developing Countries
Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2001
Section II examines the evidence in support of claims about the potential gains from the transfer of digital technologies to developing countries. Section III considers the extent of the so-called ‘digital divide’ and its relationship to the position of countries with respect to per capita income and educational attainment indicators. In section IV the opportunities created by the development of electronic commerce for firms in developing countries are examined, particularly with respect to whether the Internet offers a new means for firms to enter global markets on terms that are more favourable than in the past. Section V illustrates the institutional conditions that must be in place if the new global electronic trading environment is to be open to many firms in developing countries. The final section draws some conclusions about the likely prospects for successful ICT-based technological leapfrogging strategies.