Broadband empowers global partnerships for development

Millennium Development Goal 8 on partnerships for development includes a specific target on extending the benefits of new technologies, including information and communication technologies (ICTs), in cooperation with the private sector. While the phenomenal growth of mobile telephony in the developing world has transformed access to basic connectivity, the ‘digital divide’ remains enormous, especially where the Internet and broadband are concerned.

While a quarter of the world’s population now uses the Internet, in the very poorest countries, that proportion is just two per cent. The gulf in access to broadband networks – and to the myriad benefits and services they can provide to businesses and individuals – is even greater.

The ITU’s ‘Connect the World’ campaign aims to narrow the ‘digital divide’ by connecting all communities by 2015, the MDG target date, and by ensuring half the world’s population has access to broadband services. In developing countries, and more remote areas of industrialized nations, this is likely to be achieved largely through new wireless mobile broadband technologies such as WiMAX, which already serves over twenty low- and middle-income countries.

Amir Dossal, former Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Partnerships and the founder of the Global Partnerships Forum, says progress will depend on thinking creatively about how to speed up access to broadband, including building multi-stakeholder partnerships involving governments, the private sector and civil society. The resources required are well beyond what governments or donors can provide on their own, he points out.

By giving people access to information, broadband helps them find ways out of poverty, he argues. “We should be thinking of it as investing in the poor, rather than just focusing on aid.”

Broadband networks can also help with other targets within MDG 8, such as addressing the special needs of landlocked and small island developing countries. High-speed internet connections enable these countries to overcome geographic disadvantages and link up with the rest of the world, including through e-commerce and by exporting services that can be delivered online, such as call centres and business processing.

Similarly, distance working or teleworking enabled by broadband can help in advancing another MDG 8 target, to develop strategies for ‘decent and productive work for youth’. And by enhancing distance learning through video conferencing, interactive discussion, social networking and so on, broadband internet can help improve skills of all kinds, not only in ICT.

However, the greatest contribution of broadband towards achieving the MDGs may be its catalytic role in empowering people by giving them both knowledge and a voice in the public arena. As Sam Pitroda, adviser to the Indian Prime Minister on public infrastructure and innovation, and a Broadband Commissioner, observes, Information Technology “can put unequal human beings on an equal footing and that makes it the most potent democratizing tool ever devised.”