When the Millennium Development Goals were developed in 2000, the vast potential for information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support development efforts was recognized; but so was the inequitable access to those technologies.
Read more: UNDP Administrator Helen Clark - Broadband Commission for Digital Development
Successfully connecting our rural communities and other underserved areas with ICT is dependent on the presence and effectiveness of among others, the policy framework, legal and regulatory framework, relevant skills as well as the presence or absence of technical barriers.
Involvement of the private sector in the universal access development process, including its funding and its implementation through the public private partnership (PPP) initiative is important for the effective design of the policy, improvement on implementation and over-all project costs and lower end user tariffs.
The 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, which envisions “The Future We Want”, has singled out information and communication technologies (ICTs) in facilitating the flow of information between governments and the public, promoting knowledge exchange, technical cooperation and capacity building for all three pillars of sustainable development – economic growth, social inclusion and environmental sustainability.
The strategy reflects rapid changes in the ICT sector over the past decade, including a dramatic increase in use of mobile phones and the Internet, plunging prices of computing and mobile Internet devices, and the increasing prevalence of social media.
But what if our eagerness to connect the world is inadvertently exacerbating the global economic divide?
In 2008, The New York Times reported that mobile phones may hold the key to ending global poverty altogether. The enthusiasm was—and is—understandable: From 2005 to 2010, cellphone use tripled in the developing world.