/REPEAT/TECHNOLOGY-OUTLOOK 2000: Will the millennium usher new hope?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gumisai Mutume

MEXICO CITY, Nov 24 1999 (IPS) - “In the 20th century nations depended upon natural resources for wealth. In the 21st century and probably well beyond, wealth will depend upon the ability to master the three revolutions of physics, information intelligence, bio-molecular science, and the ways they converge”.

That observation from KY Amoako, secretary general of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, captures one of the great challenges of this era: how to use the power in the new information and bioengineering technologies to free the billions of people trapped in ignorance and poverty in many developing countries.

With most of the new knowledge concentrated in few transnational firms and the United Nations system starved of resources for transferring technology to developing countries, some observers are skeptical that the challenge will be met any time soon.

“Perhaps, the time has come to ask some new questions. Could research of a new kind … find ways to empower the common ethics of humanity such as those embodied in the charter and conventions of the United Nations?” asks Parker Rossman U.S. researcher and author of ‘Research On Global Crises, Still Primitive?’

“We ask such controversial questions on the assumption that converging technologies and cyberspace now open new possibilities for discussion, debate, experimentation and research.”

One of the great promises for sustainable economic development lies in the information technologies which have come a long way since the first big computer, based on vacuum valves, was built in 1946. Yet it is only in the wealthiest nations such as the US that have reached high penetration levels in ownership.

Since the communications explosion at the start of the 1990s, tremendous productivity gains in the sector have seen ever-falling prices of computers and mobile telephones. If the automobile industry had the same productivity growth, a car would cost three dollars today notes the UNDP.

But prices remain high in developing countries owing in part to high import duties and low economies of scale. In some regions government policies directly hindered the use of new information technologies.

Tanzania, for example, banned computer imports in 1974 because the government felt the country was not yet ready for computerization.

As the new millennium beckons, the UNDP in its last Human Development Report of the century says the majority of the world’s people have never even heard a dialing tone. South Asia, home to one fifth of the world’s population has less than one percent of its people on-line.

The rules of the new information revolution “focus on integrating global markets, neglecting the needs of people the markets cannot reach”, warns the 1999 Human Development Report.

To benefit, some developing countries have gone flat out to liberalise their telecommunication sectors. Ghana became one of the first African countries to introduce privatization and competition in all areas of telecommunication selling a 30 percent stake in Ghana Telecommunications.

From a situation where there was one main telephone line for 400 people and 10-year-long waiting lists, the country now has at least five licensed cellular telephone providers supplying 30 percent of all telephone lines.

Ghana boasts several Internet service providers one of which has an aggressive programme to provide access to rural areas with the help of the post office. Telephone lines rose from 90,000 to 120,000 in 1997 alone notes the World Bank.

Despite these and other examples of liberalisation in the sector, it is widely acknowledged that developing countries have a long way to go.

“I think the main reason for the lack of promise so far has been the fact that some countries are slower than others at adopting progressive policies,” notes South African information technology consultant Mike Jensen.

To benefit, developing countries need to adopt policies narrowing the knowledge gap such as investing in education. They need to maintain open trading regimes to tap investment and remove barriers to competition in the telecommunications sector the World Bank recommends.

About 25 percent of girls between 6 and 11 years of age are out of school and the number of adult illiterates is continuing to increase at a time when the information age provides economic opportunity only for those who have the right skills. (more-2-E)