The fact of being connected to the Internet doesn't say anything about the number of users. Here are some numbers which show the immense differences in use of Internet between First World and Third World.

There are three pre-conditions for using Internet. First you need a phone connection, second a computer and a modem and third electricity. Such prerequisites are the exception rather than the norm in Third World. Let's have a look to the actual situation of this pre-conditions in developing nations.

With regard to electricity this is mostly a first insurmountable obstacle. Characteristic for many developing countries is the missing stable power supply system with frequently power failures in cities and the total lack of power supply in rural areas is. 70 % of all Africans live in rural areas without any power supply. Also on the Indian subcontinent more than half of all houses in rural areas lack any power supply.

Here are some figures about electricity in Latin American countries:

Source: Expreso (Peru) from 14^th of August 1994

As mentioned above the other prerequisite for an Internet connection of a PC is a telephone line. But 80 % of world population doesn't have one. In 49 countries there are less than one telephone mainline per one hundred inhabitants and 35 of these countries are in Africa.

Telephone mainline density in selected countries

Source: CIA The World Factbook 1995

The ten richest countries with twenty per cent of world population have three quarters of all telephone mainlines. The average density of telephone mainlines in developing countries is 5,2 per 100 persons while in industrialized countries it is 52,3. The following table demonstrates the fact that there are immense differences in Third World regions too.

Source: Alain Servatie et all: European Community Cooperation with Countries in Transitation and Developing Countries in Telecommunications and Information Society, in Health, Information Society and Developing Countries, Editor Marcelo C. Sosa-Tudicissa et all, IOS Press 1995

Bill Gates, founder and head of Microsoft, thinks instead, that the fact of lacking telephone infrastructure can be an advantage for developing countries, as they do not need to use the roundabout way of mainlines but can use directly mobile radio stations.

So it isn't surprising that Microsoft in conjunction with McCraw, an United States mobile telephone services firm, has announced to implement the satellite based communication system named Teledesic.

Although with the WTO agreement on reduction of customs duty for telecommunication infrastructure and PCs from February 1997 in Geneva, Switzerland, and the liberalization of world market it remains somewhat doubtful if this will lead to more investment in the Third World.

There are fears, for instance, that liberalization will conduct to telecommunications being developed for wealthy urban businesses, and not for the rural poor.

After being created for the U.S. Pentagon, the Internet was a net for communication between universities in the United States and later for the whole world, but now it is commercialized by big firms. About a quarter of Internet hosts belong to the com-domain. Many of the former free services are now offered only for cash. In analogy to the highway you must now pay a toll for its use.

After liberalizing to telecom-markets for many years there is now a trend of concentration in every area. The telecom market is dominated by three global alliances as there are Concert with British Telecom and MCI and some others, Global One with Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and Sprint, and Unisource with AT&T and NTT.

Beside Internet there are numerous other networks which connect computers in different countries. IBM Bitnet exists since 1981 and was created first in the United States. Meanwhile Bitnet consists of the American Bitnet, EARN from Europe, ASIANET from Asia, NetNorth from Canada and GULFNET from Middle East.

One should not forget Fidonet, a computer network for PCs created for NGOs to serve for BBS and e-mail. Fidonet is wildly spread in Africa. Some Africans call it "Third World Software", but it is an appropriated technology to the mere quality of African telephone lines.

1. Job creation: Creation of new working places in the information technology sector and more and better statistics about the situation of the employment situation.
2. Health: Setting up of health information systems and use of tele-medicine, reducing of costs in health sector.
3. Education and research: Tele-learning, interconnection of research institutions at regional and worldwide level, and reduction of costs.
4. Culture: Creation of African museums in the Internet, keeping historical documents and other information on CD.
5. Trade and commerce: Connections to foreign chambers of commerce, reducing of costs, information over import and export of products, developing and marketing of news products.
6. Tourism: Strengthening of international tourism, reducing of costs for advertising, improvement of image.
7. Food security: Improvement of import and export of agriculture products, improvement of production, reducing the premature decay of food by means of better distribution.
8. Gender and development: Improvement of rights and possibilities of women, use of new technologies for propagating gender equality.
9. Man-made crisis and natural disasters: Management of environment degradation and natural disasters; information systems about region with disasters; communication in emergency situations; warning systems.

It's obvious that they do not mention the problem of poverty, settlement conditions, corruption, justice, and crime. They try to solve social and economic defects by technical means. Injustice and poverty are not technical problems, they need other solutions. Technology may only help in solving theses problems, if used properly.

Let us have a look how people of developing countries, NGOs and governments in Third World are using the Internet and how they are supported by international organizations and institutions or governments from the North. In this context I will discuss the question if Internet is really a tool to achieve improvements in basic needs for people in the Third World.

Using usegroups and discussion lists people working or studying abroad can keep up contact with their countries and inform themselves what is going on in their native countries. NGOs can communicate with each other of their partners in the North.

"Electronic conferences and mailing lists are an appropriate technology for decentralized communication, they are effective and are a low cost communication for NGOs. The informal and interactive character of this technology makes it possible for grassroots and international organizations to participate in a dynamic dialogue and lets them cooperate in many different strategic matters. One great advantage of electronic conferences is that they are non hierarchical." (Bissio 1995)

Besides many NGOs had used the Internet to inform from various places of UN conferences or to communicate with their native partners.

For the first time NGOs reported from the RIO summit in 1992 by means of computer networks. There were similar actions from the Human Rights Summit in Vienna in 1993, the World Conference on Population in 1994 in Cairo, the World Summit of Social Affairs in Copenhagen, the Summit on Climate in Berlin in 1995 and the World Summit on Women in Peking in 1995.

As of September 1st, 1997 TOOLnet stopped it's activities and no longer exists.

"There are, however, two big risks in this process of "wiring up" NGOs which are both related to representativeness issues. First, the ability to post information world-wide is orthogonal to the actual representativeness of the NGO. For instance, a small organization with a good hacker can create very effective WWW-pages, while another organization with more members and more popular participation may have considerably less visibility just because it lacks a member with computer skills. The existence of a reliable global civil society requires stable, representative, and credible NGOs, and relying too much in Internet exchanges can jeopardize the foundations of this structure.

A similar problem may develop inside the organizations through a process of empowering too much the middle class, literate leaders in those movements. If the NGOs start to depend too much on their Internet connections, there is a tendency of giving priority to more "academic" type of leadership and broadcasting the "1st world" versions of the solutions for the "3rd world"."

1. designs of ICT systems that ensure that men and women have equal opportunity to be involved in every facet of ICT development, from infrastructure through front-end use, recognizing that this may involve strategies to support the contributions of and address the barriers to women's full participation;
2. assessments of the differential impacts on both men and women of the effects of any and all ICT development programs;
3. evaluations of ICT development to take into account the distinct situations and resources of women and men, to ensure that all have learning.

None of this is possible without the concerted effort of all development sectors to support women's full participation in decision making, access to, contributions to and benefits from the generation of knowledge for development.

Let's have a look at the current situation of women in our world. Women are underrepresented in almost all fields of public interest.

According to James Gustave Speth (UN Development Programme) this situation is widespread. He observes, "Women are considered unequal to men by legal systems in developing countries, they constitute 70% of the world's poor and two-thirds of its illiterates. They occupy only 14% of managerial and administrative jobs, 10% of parliamentary seats and 6% of cabinet positions. They often work longer hours than men, but much of their work remains unvalued, unrecognized, and unappreciated." (Speth 1996)

As expressed by women from NGOs in the declarations mentioned above Internet perhaps can help to overcome this situation. Here are some examples how women use computer networks to advocate for gender equality and their rights.

ENDA-SYNFEV also provides a service for women and women's groups in the Third World, particularly in Africa: the research and dissemination of information, publications, documentation and contacts.

The network acts in specific cases to fill certain gaps identified as handicaps for women in the improvement of their living conditions.

The WLN is an international network composed of women who wish to make a contribution to the policy and decisions of APEC and its member economies. They are women who are leaders in their fields, from all 18 APEC economies - women who make a difference. The Network taps into the expertise of women in business, government, academe and civil society (NGOs, community groups and labour)."

Participation of women in Internet

Internet offers a great help against human rights violation. Human rights groups can disseminate information about violation of human rights very quickly using e-mail, thus obtaining international attention for their urgent actions.

In the case of the occupation of the Japanese residence in Peru the intervention of Human rights groups was as unsuccessful as in the case of Ken Saro-Wiwa from Nigeria who was murdered by Nigerian authorities.

• use of robust technical solution
• a market for the service
• a non hostile regulatory environment

Since then the "Club of Dublin" (which was renamed the "Regional Facility for Environment") subsequently became the "Network for Environment and Sustainable Development in Africa" (NESDA). NESDA has been incorporated as an International NGO with its Secretariat based in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire.

The Network for Environment and Sustainable Development in Africa (NESDA) is a resource and forum of African experts in the management of environment and natural resources.

It has three different characteristics:

1. It is an African initiative run by Africans open to global trends of thoughts and action on environmentally sustainable development.
2. NESDA maintains a long term vision on the environment and natural resources in Africa within the framework of efforts to promote environmentally sustainable development.
3. Backed by its members and its donors, NESDA provides practical services to African "green planners" in their efforts to draw up strategies and translate them into reality.

Use of Internet and other computer networks in environmental issues also has its shady sides, as by the production of computers and other electronic goods the environment is damaged mainly in developing countries. Nearly all resources for production of computer come from Third World. To produce a PC you need the amount of 2250 kilowatt hours electricity. This is about half of the yearly consumption of a German citizen or 160 times the consumption of a person from Cambodia. 60 kg garbage, 25 kg of it as special rubbish, arise from producing PC's. 33000 liters of water are polluted and 50 million cubic meter of air is polluted near limiting value. After three years of use this computer is outdated and is very probably brought to waste disposal in some developing country. Now it's their turn to look after arsenic, lead, cadmium, strontium, tin and other chemical elements which pressure the environment.

Beside computer waste, we have electronic litter from TVs, FAX, and video recorder etc. In Germany every year 3.5 million TVs out of 41 million are carried to the dump.

Another unexpected negative impact of computer use is the rising of paper production which has conducted to further environmental destruction.

Thus the computer industry is one that has most consistently produced the least sustainable products.

As in industrialized countries use of networks between universities and educational institutions in developing countries can offer access and exchange of information otherwise being accessible only in capital cities. Besides scientist, academics and university students can consult databases outside their countries and get knowledge otherwise closed for them. Most libraries in Third World countries have only a few books and students cannot afford to buy expensive books from abroad.

But it is not sure that every information from the North is really important for developing nations. Every thing which is important in industrialized countries may not have the same importance in Third World and certainly there are other priorities.

Network connections by Internet render possible the access from geographical locations far from main cities. Thus people may participate in scientific dialogue.

But there are mostly private universities which can afford to build up the necessary infrastructure in communication technology. Here study fees are often higher than the monthly income of common people. So only the rich elite can profit from new technology. All demographic internet surveys prove this matter of fact: Internet is used by a minority all over the world, the rich people. A typical Internet user in Peru lives in the residential suburbs of Lima with high income structure and the typical user in the United States has an monthly income much higher then average income.

China has the Chinese academic network named CERNET since late 94/ beginning 95. Beginning with ten universities it now connects more than a hundred educational institutions.

AVU will involve six English speaking countries and similar number of French speaking countries. It is expected that by the 2^nd quarter of 1998 some programs might be ready for transmission to Portuguese speaking countries.

Demonstration workshops have been organized in February 1997 in Addis Ababa in English language and in April 1997 in Dakar in French language.

• Objective of development through qualitative and quantitative improvement in training
• Objective of production through the establishment or strengthening of infrastructures for software production or maintenance
• Objective of optimization and innovation

The Intergovernmental Committee for the IIP is composed of 35 member nations. Every six months, half of its members are renewed. There are 253 projects submitted with a budget of round about 8 million dollars. Actually there are the following numbers of financed projects:

• 21 in Africa
• 45 in Latin America and the Caribbean
• 19 in Asia and the Pacific
• 12 in Arab States
• 12 in Eastern Europe

The following projects are in action:

Regarding the many projects of wiring up schools to Internet the intentions propagated mostly by computer or telephone companies I want to cite Claudio Pinhanez:

"I don't believe that providing Internet access to students in poor schools is feasible or useful. Most schools can not afford even to provide books for their students, and in some areas the perspective of receiving a meal is still the most powerful attractor for students. Putting computers connected to telephone lines, under these conditions, is completely unreal."

The task of both projects is to support countries in access to information about environment issues and help them use new technologies to achieve economic growth without damaging resources for future use.

INFODEV's priorities are:

Projects are supported from the World Bank with up to US$ 250 000 when they are co-financed by other organization.

Beside PAHO there exists the medical database MEDLARS (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System) in Maryland, USA, which is connected to over 40 online databases specially for Latin America.

HealthNet was founded in 1992 by SatelLife, an NGO for physicians providing medical information to Third World. HealthNet serves approximately 4,000 health care workers in more than 30 countries worldwide.

SatelLife is managing two satellites for connecting developing countries by ground stations in various countries to its FidoNet based HealthNet.

SatelLife is opting for more simple approaches to support physicians in Third World by connecting users to HealthNet via UNIX-to-UNIX-Copy (UUCP) or Fido when telephones are available, and by satellite when appropriate.

As the causes of most diseases are insufficient nutrition and bad housing and living conditions, use of modern telecommunications technology as Internet, can't solve the health problems of the Third World. Typical diseases are diarrhea, respiratory problems, tuberculosis, sleeping sickness, cholera and typhus. The causes of these diseases are all well known and consulting medical databases doesn't bring any new knowledge.

There remains the question whether the use of new communication technologies will consume funds that are elsewhere more necessary. What lacks are more doctors everywhere in rural areas. Tele medicine by amateurs can't replace professionals.

Persons doing Voluntary Service Overseas can use e-mail services on Internet to maintain a better and more efficient contact to the donor states and get access to sources of information in their home countries. After return this persons can keep up contact to the developing country and the ongoing project which otherwise normally breaks down. Losing contact with the project often results in terminating the whole project.

CGNET offers PC and telephone based store-and-forward e-mail services for over 300 research centers in more than 100 countries. In 1993 CGNET launched a gopher service and now operates a web service too. Its spectrum of electronically conferences reaches from forestry information to rice yellow mottle virus.

After successful initial phase CGNET was transferred into private ownership.

How new communication media could serve for farming remains to be shown. Hopefully the expectations will not be disappointed as they were by the Green Revolution, which should solve world's hunger problem but had led to more inequality, underdevelopment, more dependencies, and more environmental destruction. As long as developing countries are still opting for mono culture and exporting their products and the rich North maintains its trading barriers or is invading the local markets in Third World with highly subventioned agricultural goods, the situation of the poor in the Third World will not change. Instead of information highways, developing countries need real highways and feeder roads to sell its own products to its own population.

Many foreign companies working in developing nations use Internet to get a quick and cheap connection to their parent branch in the USA, Japan or Europe. Fees on Internet are essentially less expensive than charges for telephone use.

For transmission of 2000 words from Ghana to the Netherlands, the following cost comparison exists:

In many West African countries there are packet switched networks to satisfy requirements of international oil companies. France Cable & Radio, a subsidiary company from France Telecom, AT&T and MCI are players in African telecommunication market. Projects to improve communication infrastructures are financed by World Bank and the African Development Bank.

The main argument to connect Third World companies to the Internet is the hope of improving the competition abilities by quicker reaction to changes on export markets. This contradicts by the fact that most developing countries depend from mono culture and export of a few raw materials, which are mainly in the hands of multi national consortiums. Moreover these states don't have any influence on world's market policy.

Unequal conditions for exchange of goods and customs barriers are another burden for developing countries to improve living conditions for its population. For example, Germany has made much profit in 1995 in trade with the Third World. Trade surplus with developing countries has risen from 6,6 million DM to 14,9 million DM in 1995. Entire balance for export of Third World was 104,4 billion DM but import reached only 89,5 billion DM.

Development of high speed networks and progressive services are leading to international distribution of work. Distances are vanishing. Local niches in foreign countries can be used in a better way. There is a shift in using man power in developing countries, and outsourcing is emerging, for example software production in Asia. employees in Third World are less expensive than in Western industrialized nations. More than one billion employees in developing countries earn only three dollars a day while their colleagues from United States or the European Union earn 85 dollars.

Another form of using Internet is the export of qualified office work into countries in transition to be industrialized as for example India, where there are low wages, a wide-spread knowledge of English and where a comfortable access to computer networks exists. Workers in this countries are more undemanding, less labor organized and more easily persuadable. Therefore Indian software industry is well known.

The Indian subcontinent possesses twice the software developers of Germany and reach nearly 70 % of the U.S. capacity.

Actually there are 40 software technology parks, which are using its own SoftNet intensely. The 40 technology parks, united under ist umbrella organization Software Technology Parks of India, have network connections to the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands.

In 1994 India's software industry had a turn over of 800 million dollar.

India's software programmers wrote a logistic program for the container quay in Bremerhaven, Germany, and a reservation system for German Lufthansa. Other German companies which had developed software by Indian Programmers are Siemens, Bosch, and Deutsche Bank.

Beside India there are also the new East European countries emerging in software market. A Lettonian softworker for example costs about 300 DM per day while his German colleague costs 1200 DM.

Brazil is Another emerging competitor on the software market and recently opened dependencies in Germany and China.

There is no geat probability for job creation with Internet or telecommunication as a whole. Experiences in privatizing of industrialized countries show that there is much more probability of working place destruction. For example, since British Telecom was privatized in 1984 this former state owned company has lost 110 000 employees while on the other side job creation in new sectors and competitor company account for only 40000 jobs. [El País (Spain), August 8, 1997]

In the developing country of Peru, Telefónica Peruana, privatized in May 1994 and now owned by Spanish Telecom has fired more than 7000 of his employees.

After Bill Clinton had started offering governmental official electronical information systems in Internet, now there are over 174 governments from industrialized and non industrialized countries use this media for the same purpose.

When in January 1994 the frontier dispute between Peru and Ecuador once again was emerging, a battle of electronic propaganda begun to spread in Internet.

Lately Nigeria has announced to setup four web pages in foreign countries to correct the bad image which this country has with respect to human rights.

Internet analysts see the Web page as a positive sign in China's love- hate relationship with global communications. Russell Liu, director of a Beijing-based Internet company, said: "Even the Chinese government is starting to realize how important the Internet is." (Asiaweek 1995)

Telecommunications Minister Wu Jichuan said that the government "is of the view that it must take advantage of the Internet while eliminating its shortcomings."

Another area using Internet are the possibilities of supporting consular activities, for example to issue visa and to renew passports. It is much easier to manage consular mail by e-mail than by normal postal service.

Besides consular work Internet offers possibilities to improve their country's image and to promote tourism, in the same way as the Highlevel Working Group from Africa has proposed. Last year for instance Cuba began promoting for tourism.

In this context I want to put emphasis on the terrible consequences for environment which long distance tourism could cause.

The Internet offers a better access to information for people which is otherwise inaccessible. But one should have in mind, that they are mainly persons from upper class or upper middle class who can afford spending surfing in Internet. Specially in dictatorially or authoritarian governed countries Internet often is the only possibility to get critical information.

In authoritarian countries like China, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia there are different types of restrictions for free press, as there are in African countries too. But the more economically strong a country is the more its citizen can afford buying a PC and a modem to get connected to the information highway to overcome this way the imposed restrictions.

Since February 1996 China has opted for this way. All round about 40000 users of Internet and other computer network had to register in police stations.

Singapore has a similar divided attitude against new information technology to China's. On one hand Singapore produced - beside Japan - the most computers, has more than 20000 well skilled computer professionals, and produces one half of all sold harddiscs, and 30 % of all households have a PC. On the other side Lee Kwok Cheong, responsible for Singapore's Information Technology Plan 2000, said: "We must create a safe belt to protect our Asian values. We don't want to put our people to pornography." (Johnstone 1970)

Critical voices about government politics, for example the Business Time, who doubted data about economic growth given by government in 1992, are persecuted. Foreign newspaper are totally banned out of Singapore. Since mid of 1996 the Singapore Broadcasting Authority is monitoring content of Internet coming into this nation.

But control is non restricting on developing countries. The U.S. American FBI prepares for monitoring Internet too. FBI wants to have the right to control one percent of all e-mails.

Also in Germany, there are efforts to prohibit e-mail encryption. And the Bavarian authorities ordered the blockade of newsgroups offered by German Compuserve in regard to pornographic contents.

In March 1996 the German Minister for Research, Mr. Rüttgers, expressed his opinion how to solve censorship on Internet. As there can't be a national solution for this problem, he opted for an international approach and he knew very well who has to decide which laws to adopt. For him the only ones who can do this are the G7 countries. One more time that the rich nations should determine over the vast majority of other nations.

But television is considered to be a larger threat than Internet, because there are more people who have a TV, about 1 200 million TVs, than a telephone mainline, that are about 640 million. One remedy against the fear of uncritical taking over of northern consuming attitudes and northern values could be a counter production from the South. Perhaps this way the South could prevent the loss of cultural integrity, loss of national values and identity. Otherwise "culture shock" may easily become a disease.

One major concern about languages is written language. Written languages which do not use Latin alphabet are due to use of ASCII 7 bit code, which is used in international networks, at great disadvantage. But also Germans who use Latin alphabet know about problems with "Umlaut".

Although members of the G7 summit in February 1995 in Brussels opted for the preservation of different culture and languages, they didn't propose any measures against U.S. dominance in media sector.

Another aspect in judging the spread of Internet in Third World nations that should not be neglected is the danger of widening the existing differences between the poor and the rich in these countries. Already today these gaps are greater in developing countries than in industrial nations.

In Western industrial nations the gap between the poor and the rich is big, about 1 to 6, in Latin America the income is even more unequally distributed. Here the relation between the poor and the rich is 1 to 32.

Besides the abysmal gap from North to South the gap will steadily increase in developing nations, a gap which is also perceptible in industrialized societies.

I spoke about the "software forge" in India and the transfer of jobs form Northern countries to the South. But the example of India demonstrates that this fact isn't combined with improvement for all Indian people. Today there are only 13 percent of the 57000 villages in India linked to the nationwide telephone network. The Indian government tried to change this and called for an international convocation to establish telephone infrastructure in 13 of 20 regions. But there wasn't any bid for 8 of the 13 regions, because establishing the telephone mainlines didn't promise sufficient income. That's not surprising, as only 3 percent of all Indian owners of mainlines make up 80 percent of sales and the remaining 20 percent are made by 11 percent more users. That is only a very little upper class that can afford such service. It's obvious that there is no need to think on Internet connections.

1,5 billion human beings are living in absolute poverty, i.e. they have less than one dollar to spend every day. This corresponds to a monthly income of less than 30 dollars. One year ago there were "only" 1,3 billion living in absolute poverty, i. e. poverty is on the rise despite technical progress.

The relation of income between the 20 % of world population who are the richest and the most 20 % poorest people increased from 30:1 in 1960, passing 59:1 in 1989 to 61:1 in 1991 in spite of advancing technology in developing nations.

If we compare the 30 dollars monthly income of the poor with the 75000 dollar yearly income of a common Internet shopper, certainly raises the question about the importance of Internet access for people in developing countries.

Aren't civil wars, hunger, malnutrition, diseases, lack of jobs, and unequal distribution of income in Third World an more important challenge than the almost not realizable plan to connect all persons to Internet?

In many countries the demands of UNESCO in regard to information supply aren't fulfilled. The demands are:

The only country from Third World fulfilling these demands is Cuba.

In any case the opinions of experts monitoring the G7 Summit in Brussels in February 1995 differed, if the information highway planned by the North for the South would be a benefit or a loss for poor nations.

I want to terminate this chapter citing John Seymour from an interview with the German newspaper "Frankfurter Rundschau" from November 26, 1995 when he was asked about the need of information highway to solve the current problems of the world: "I can't eat bits and bytes."

The use of Internet in Third World has its benefits, but usually only the elite of the countries will profit from it. Although the various use of Internet by engaged groups is something good, the implications for improvement of the vast majority is limited.

Medical networks may help in emergency situations and contribute to a limited success, but most diseases in Third World are typical diseases caused by poverty, which cannot be eradicated by consulting specialized databases.

Promoting human rights are not only useful but are also necessary. But the fact that violations against human rights are getting known more rapidly by use of Internet can't prevent the violation in most cases, as was demonstrated painfully by the murder of the Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Internet used by NGOs and by education and research institutes on high level as well as in government influenced areas will only help, if the elite is conscious of its responsibility for the well being of the whole society and if we, the people of the wealthy North, don't continue to monopolize the new communication media at the cost of the others.

References:

Last modified: September 22, 1997