social inclusion

Internet use is rapidly spreading to the developing world, bringing connectivity to individuals and groups and promoting the transformation of communities on a global scale. Yet only a small fraction of the people in the developing world can afford to have home connection to the Internet. A dial-up connection, the way most people connect, implies to have a fixed telephone at home, to buy hardware and software equipment and to pay the monthly telephone and Internet charges. This way of connecting to the Internet is evidently not suited for all people, as most people in the world do not have the resources to afford all this.

Within this difficult context, collective access is the only alternative that can give Internet connectivity to the masses. Places for collective access have been growing steadily in the cities of the developing world, established by three main stakeholders: (1) governments, (2) NGOs, activists and the development community, and (3) the private sector.

1. Governments’ Programmes. Universal access to the Internet is acknowledged by most governments as an important step towards the progress of their nations. Programmes have been created with that purpose, sometimes under an umbrella programme, sometimes as fragmented small scope policies addressed to different target groups (students, low-income groups, isolated communities). However, developing countries’ governments have scarce resources and urgent problems, so they have difficulties to properly fund universal access programmes, which generally end as good intentions, or having modest goals and target populations. Further, governments’ telecentres may have social goals or not. Many public programmes have been addressed to simply establish public access centres while expanding the geographic coverage of public telephony and Internet in their national territories.

2. Socially Oriented Projects. NGOs, activists and other non-profit institutions have established ‘telecentres’ or public access centres with socially oriented goals. These have been set up in developing countries thanks to the support of the international donor agencies, which see in them the best feasible model for providing Internet access in rural and poor areas. Telecentres do not consider themselves as providers of universal access, they rather provide training on new technologies, youth and community gathering, and promote local economic activities through support to micro-enterprises and associations. Although the telecentre community is very dynamic and highly networked, there are no large numbers of this type of collective access points, which also suffer from problems of economic sustainability.

3. Demand-oriented Cybercafés. The commercial type of public access centres is, for the users, the most popular of the three types. Cybercafés are flourishing in places of concentration of activities in cities of the developing world. Cybercafés have existed in the large cities almost since the commercial introduction of Internet in cities. Originally, they were addressed to the demand of tourists or businessmen, and located in business and commercial districts. However, the new trend is another type of cybercafé run by local entrepreneurs addressing the demand of those who cannot afford home connection. Therefore, the prices per hour in this new type are much cheaper and tend to decrease when new businesses open their doors in the vicinity. But cybercafés have no social pretensions; they are simply the fruit of thousands of individual business initiatives of small entrepreneurs. Their function is to provide connectivity to the customers that pay for it, and as such, they are highly demand-oriented.

The example of Peru: the cybercafé as a new urban facility

In some countries of the developing world, cybercafés are by far the main way to connect to the Internet and to interact with computers. One of these countries is Peru, where more than 80 percent of Internet users connect from collective places. The effect of the popularity of cybercafés is visible in the Peruvian society. They have become a new urban facility at neighbourhood level. The use of computers and Internet has become common by school and university students. Peruvian have changed their recreation activities and since 2002 the visit to the cybercafé has become the first recreation activity. Peruvians are much better communicated with their relatives abroad than before, which has partly contributed to increase the level of remittances to the country. At city level, cybercafés are offering different urban services which have been systematically denied to poor neighbourhoods. Libraries, post-offices, recreation facilities, youth centres, training centres, etc. are now present and combined in the multiple services offered by cybercafés (Fernández-Maldonado, 2003). All this has happened without any support from the state, and in a country that has more than 50 percent of its population living in poverty.

The wide availability of affordable cybercafés in cities of Peru has developed a local Internet culture which is especially clear with youth and students of all sectors of society. This has already called the attention of outsiders, since Peruvian cybercafés have removed the first barrier that lower-income groups have to connect to the Internet. The experience in Peru poses a series of questions, from which an important one is: are commercial cybercafés a good alternative to tackle the digital divide in developing countries?

The nature of the Digital Divide: from access to the networks to the ‘effective use’ of ICT

But the answer to this question is not straightforward. There are multiple debates going on in the academic and practitioners fields that need to be spelled out to understand the context. To begin with, the very existence of the digital divide is a matter of debate. In developing countries, the ‘digital’ divide is just another symptom of the social and economic divide among rich and poor and, as such, not a very useful category. To alleviate it requires structural solutions. To solve the digital divide would be then, a matter of development.

Another important debate is on the nature of the digital divide. The initial conceptualisation of the digital divide as a difference in access to the networks has given room to a more comprehensive concept that encompasses the notion of ‘effective use’. The idea behind this is to redirect the resources to fight the digital divide from simple access towards more sensible strategies that provide more visible benefits to users. Because it is obvious that large software corporations and telecommunications firms are the great winners from the increased global connectivity.

But the notion of effective use, while useful in rich countries needs some attention in the context of developing countries. What is ‘effective use’? Michael Gurstein defines it as “The capacity and opportunity to successfully integrate ICTs into the accomplishment of self or collaboratively identified goals.” (2003: 8). If effective use is a matter of the users, individually or collectively, it is them who have to decide if they are getting an ‘effective use’.

The importance of the Internet in the ‘Global South’

When users in developing countries, and especially young groups, are consulted about the significance of Internet use in their lives, they all answer straightforwardly, enthusiastically and positively. This differs greatly with responses in rich countries, where access to the networks, and the new uses it brings, may be experienced as a threat to the familiar ways of doing things, especially in work environments. In affluent countries access to the new technologies is a matter of personal election; in disadvantaged regions it is a new resource that generally implies an improvement of daily life.

Regarding communications, if in the developed world the Internet complements other telecommunication media such as telegraph, traditional mail, fax, and local or long-distance telephone, in the developing world access to the Internet provides new possibilities for communication among peoples who previously could not contact others who were distant from them, because of the absence, scarcity, inefficiency, or unaffordability of traditional communication services.

Regarding information, if in the developed world the Internet complements familiar sources of written information as newspapers, books, magazines, bulletins, brochures, data bases, research papers, in the developing world access to the Internet provides new possibilities for information for peoples who previously could not afford a book, attend a library, read the news or consult an encyclopedia.

Common sense tells us that access per se is not an end in itself. But for the people in the global South, and especially for young users, access to Internet is making a big difference from their previous situation, a fact which is sometimes difficult to perceive for outsiders, or those interested in measuring economic impacts. In the developing world Internet is more a cultural than an economic phenomenon, and its use is rapidly transforming communities in unprecedented ways.

Another related debate goes on regarding the observed uses of commercial cybercafés in cities of the developing world. Several surveys and observations point out that the use of Internet in cybercafés is highly linked to communication and entertainment purposes, while didactic and economic uses are not as popular as the first. The public that attends cybercafés is mostly young people and students, who enjoy the possibilities to communicate and chat with their peers. The example of the success of text messaging in countries of the North suggests that young people’s strong ‘communication need’ is an age-related phenomenon.

But it becomes difficult to separate communication, work, entertainment and learning while using the Internet, because one of its singularities is precisely its multifunctionality. Further, almost no ethnographic studies have been yet carried on to see the impact of cybercafés on people’s lives. On the other hand, the great enthusiasm of young users towards the Internet as a window to the world is not taken into account. If we ask the users, they generally express the importance they give to improving their computer skills and training to get more chances in the highly difficult employment market. As in the previous debate, the scepticism towards Internet use in cybercafés suggests the higher importance assigned to economic productivity than to the daily life concerns of the users. The social implications of the Internet are not straightforward (DiMaggio et al., 2001).

Challenging the logic of the Digital Divide discussion

Recently, two economists from the World Bank have challenged the logic of the main arguments on the digital divide discussion, and provoked a lively discussion within academics and practitioners circles. Carsten Fink and Charles J. Kenny (2004) have point out that measuring absolute differences is quite a different affair than measuring relative differences in access to ICTs. They state that, given the presence of collective ways to access telephone and Internet services in developing countries, per head measurements do not constitute a good indicator of diffusion.

A better indicator, which gives idea of the relative importance attached to ICTs by users, is their per-income availability. On this indicator, low- and middle–income countries are ahead of affluent countries, a fact which becomes more surprising given the worsening of income inequality between the developed and developing countries during the last decades. This suggests that developing countries have found their ways to “catch up digitally”. Fink and Kenny finally state that the divide between rich and poor countries is closing instead of growing and that there are more digital opportunities than divides.

These and other related debates give an indication of the importance of the topic for academics, practitioners, NGOs, the development community, and policy makers. Perhaps is useful to remind that, despite its rapid diffusion, global use of the Internet is still in its infancy. The rapid pace of technological advances in ICTs may change the present picture in unforeseen ways. In the meantime, it is necessary to give careful attention to the digital problems and opportunities of the most disadvantaged groups. References:
· Di Maggio P., E. Hargittai, W. R. Neuman, and J. P. Robinson (2001) “Social Implications of the Internet” In: Annual Review of Sociology 2001, Vol. 27, pp. 307-336.
· Fernández-Maldonado, A.M. (2003) “Satisfying the demand for ICT connectivity of low-income groups” In: Badshah, Akhtar; Sarbuland Khan and Maria Garrido (eds.) Connected for Development - Information Kiosks and Sustainability United Nations ICT Task Force and Digital Partners. (pp. 57-61)
· Fink, C. and C. J. Kenny (2004) W(h)ither the Digital Divide? Development Gateway.
· Gurstein, M. (2003) “Effective use: A community informatics strategy beyond the Digital Divide” In: First Monday. Volume 8, Number 12 — December 1st 2003