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COMMUNICATION: Price Tag Pushes Back Development

Stefania Milan

BERLIN, Nov 26 2004 (IPS) - Information technology must be used to promote development, but experts are less clear just how.

"We should look at ICT (information and communications technology) as an enabler of all the other conditions of development we are moving toward," chairman of the United Nations ICT task force José María Figueres Olsen said at its meeting in Berlin last week.

The meeting was called in preparation for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia next year. The first phase of the conference was held in Geneva last year.

The WSIS aims to take steps to bridge the ‘digital divide’ between developed and developing countries and to facilitate development through use of ICT. The task force set up by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is seeking to keep momentum going in that direction.

One of the declared tools towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals is to "make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications, in cooperation with the private sector." But ICT needs to be funded before it can hope to aid development. The task force seeks to explore ways to do this. The Berlin meeting was not expected to find solutions but to "promote debate" between different "stakeholders" – governments, civil society and the private sector – with their varying concerns over the kind of ‘digital environment’ they want.

But delegates found money the inevitable obstacle in translating ideas into practice. Several financing proposals were debated at the Berlin meeting.

"This is a capital meeting because it talks about new models of financing ICTs," Nigerian activist on information rights Nnenna Nwakanma told IPS. "In Africa we need ICTs for education, health and commerce, and to mobilise financial resources. We have our human resources, but they need training and consolidation."

A task force on financial mechanisms (TFFM) established last month under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is also considering a range of proposals from government contributions to global taxes and a ‘digital solidarity fund’ (DSF).

The DSF was proposed in Geneva by some African countries led by Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade as a financial mechanism to build up ICT infrastructure in developing countries.

The proposed DSF is a global tax on ICT-related projects. It requires public authorities and companies to contribute at least one percent of the value of their contracts to the fund.

The proposal was opposed by the United States and the European Union. The idea of a fund was reduced to voluntary contributions by governments and subordinated to a feasibility study.

Civil society groups and even private companies such as Enablis spoke out in Berlin in favour of "global taxes for global goods" but no agreement looks in sight. U.S. delegate at the meeting David Gross said the United States would never accept any form of international taxation.

Developing countries may have to turn increasingly towards themselves to find the funds for their goals.

"In developing countries we should develop our own ITC business and its local contents," Mozambique minister for high education, science and technology Lidia Brito told IPS. "Education and skills-building cannot be divorced from any poverty reduction strategy: we should improve people’s capacity to understand technology and use the contents in a critical way."

The private sector has its own interests. The Berlin meeting recognised that the private sector vision is based on trade liberalisation and "policies to foster innovation and creativity on the Internet, which include the effective protection of intellectual property rights."

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) presented a statement at the task force meeting encouraging "all governments to develop an enabling environment that promotes competition and private sector investment."

To the private sector its knowledge and skills are property that needs to be paid for. But "intellectual property can be interpreted as something restricting access to knowledge," William Drake from the non-governmental organisation Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility told IPS. "We need to balance between commercial goals of big companies and the desires of others. There is a sort of ‘Washington e-consensus’. But we should recognise that there are limitations in that consensus."