By Suvendrini Kakuchi
NAGO, Japan, Jul 22 2000 (IPS)

The Group of Eight countries on Saturday vowed to curb the ‘digital divide’ between information-rich and information-poor nations, but activists say there are far more pressing and urgent concerns in addressing poverty than this.

Still, the eight countries — the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Canada, Italy and Russia — said information technology would give poorer countires a chance to leapfrog hindrances to economic growth and allow them equip their workforces to boost development.

Indeed, the challenge of bridging the information divide between rich and poor countries cannot be “underestimated”, they said in a special document called the ‘Okinawa Charter on Global Information Societ’ released on the second day of the Jul 21-23 summit in Okinawa, southern Japan.

A Japanese spokesman told a news briefing that Saturday’s discussions covered the information divide, as well as the issues of environment and genetically-modified food safety in the afternoon, for the first time at a G-8 summit and at the initiative of Japan.

Japan has already pledged 15 billion U.S. dollars in five years to reduce the gap between developing and developed countries by mobilising both goverments, private sector and non-government organisations, and by training information technology experts in developing countries.

The average number of personal computers per 1,000 people in the sub-Saharan African countries is just over three, compared to 282 in the G-7 club of rich countries, according to statistics of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Likewise, 90 percent of Internet host computers are in found in rich countries and many countries in Asia and Africa are still grappling with lack of access to telephone lines, not to mention problems from lack of electricity to illiteracy.

Development activists are less enthusiastic about the new G-8 document on bridging the information gap. While welcoming the attention the big powers are paying to problems caused by the ‘digital divide’, they argue that far more pressing are issues like debt relief, which would reduce poverty faster.

“With one billion people living in extreme poverty, a computer will not provide the answer to malnutrition or curing disease,” noted a statement from Jubilee 2000.

The statement points out that it is possible to vaccinate 200 children against six killer diseases for the price of a decent laptop computer.

In the Okinawa document, G-8 countries pledged in a special section termed ‘Bridging the Digital Divide’ to pursue effective partnership between government and civil societies toward this purpose.

Key components in this strategy included a pledge to foster market conditions that would provide affordable communication services, improve IT education, and to pay attention to the needs and constraints of the socially underprivileged, people with disabilities, and older persons to be able to facilitate their access.

G-8 leaders also agreed to set up a ‘Digital Opportunity Taskforce’, dubbed “Dot Force”, by the end of this year with a view to integrating stakeholders in a manner responsive to the needs of developing countries. The group will report on the information divide to next year’s summit.

Japan, which holds the position of host of the G-8 until the end of the year when Italy takes over, will work toward the implementation of the new taskforce. It has to yet to decide on how the funds will be used, which companies will participate in the ‘digital divide’ work and the selection of countries to be covered, a Japanese spokesman said.

Critics however said that giving more money to developing countries will not by itself enhance access to information technology.

Adding further to the frustration of NGOs here is what they call the failure of the G-8 countries to take concrete steps to address a very basic problem of poor countries — access to cheap drugs.

NGOs have been hoping for new mechanisms, such as the establishment of a differential pricing policy, so that patients in poor countries can pay much less for essential medicines such as antibiotics, and have access to generic drugs.

Another point of contention, activists say, is the rich countries’ neglect of the urgency of developing world diseases which they no longer have to battle.

Of the 1,223 new medicines brought into the market between 1975 and 1997, only a fraction were for the treatment of tropical diseases such as sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis and certain forms of meningitis.

“The situation is disappointing,” said a representative from Doctors Without Borders. The organisation says its work in Africa and Asia has revealed the urgent need for funds for medicines and “development fair’ policies that will protect millions of people who cannot access drugs to cure or prevent diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Each year, infectious diseases kill 17 million people, 90 percent of whom live in poor countries. In addition, the organization says, 95 percent of the 34 million people with AIDS do not have access to treatment.

“Our doctors have diagnosed the diseases but have not been able to save lives because of the lack of medicines,” the Doctors Without Borders official explained.

The activist group Oxfam released a statement saying that the quick implementation of the relief of 100 billion dollars worth of debt, promised by rich countries at last year’s summit but plodding along slowly, will save millions of lives in poor countries by freeing up more money to be invested in health and education.

It explained that the anti-AIDS drug stavudine anti-retroviral, for instance, costs 6.10 dollars per daily dose in Uganda, where it is marketed by the pharmaceutical firm Bristol-Myers Squibb, but just 55 cents in Brazil where is it produced generically.

Brazil and India are among the few countries in the world that started local anti-AIDS drug production before the World Trade Organisation’s rules on intellectual property rights were applied. The Japanese spokesman said that the urgent need for drugs to treat infectious diseases in poor countries was acknowledged by the G-8.

He added a new NGO fund — for which Tokyo is pledging funds for the next five years to aid NGOs to be established within the United Nations — would be used toward this purpose.

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