Digital Dividend (debate) - 1x46’ - English
September 2005

In 2005, presidents and pop stars endorsed the target of “making poverty history”.
Precious little progress has been made in meeting the UN’s Millennium Development Goals aimed at halving poverty in 2005.
However, there are those who hold the view that information and communication technologies (ICTs) could provide a fast track out of poverty.
They point to numerous instances around the world, from Bangladesh to Bolivia, where getting connected has also meant poor communities getting better off.
Others – inclusive of Bill Gates – take the view that the poor need the basics (health facilities, roads, schools, food security) before computers and mobile phones. It follows that these sectors should take the lion’s share of the development assistance funds.
The second and final leg of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) took place in mid-November in Tunis.
To date, most of the attention has focused on the rows over who should run the Internet. But there are those who believe this is a distraction from the real job at hand, which is bridging the digital divide.
The view is that the concentration of ICTs in the hands of the rich is making them richer and widening the income gap, within and between countries. Hence the developing nations, especially, seek to use the Summit as a means to add to the assistance they expect from the donor nations.

At the ITU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, 30 participants representing all sides of the ICT universe debated for 120 minutes the measures they say should be taken to get a digital dividend for the poor.
The debate has been edited to 46’ with video inserts illustrating the themes tackled by the participants.

Topics covered include: bridging the knowledge gap; why investment in ICTs are so low on the international agenda; contribution of the private sector vis a vis government; ICTs as a tool for education; neglect of the traditional communications technologies, mainly radio; lack of energy as a main barrier to the spread of ICTs; ICTs for human rights and free expression; outlook for what Phase two of WSIS will achieve.