World Bank group sees fast internet as key to job creation, others
By Adeyemi Adepetun
A report from the World Bank Group finds that access to affordable, high quality internet and mobile phone services enables development across all levels of the economy and society.
Information and Communications for Development 2009: Extending Reach and Increasing Impact takes an in-depth look at how ICT impacts economic growth in developing countries.
The report finds that for every 10 percentage-point increase in high speed Internet connections there is an increase in economic growth of 1.3 percentage points. It also identifies the mobile platform as the single most powerful way to reach and deliver public and private services to hundreds of millions of people in remote and rural areas across the developing world.
According to World Bank Group Director for Global Information and Communication Technologies, Mohsen Khalli , "Internet users in developing countries increased tenfold from 2000 to 2007, and there are now over four billion mobile phone subscribers in developing countries."
He added that these technologies offer tremendous opportunities. Governments can work with the private sector to accelerate rollout of broadband networks, and to extend access to low-income consumers."
Khali said broadband also provides the basis for local IT services industries, which create youth employment, increase productivity and exports, and promote social inclusion.
Developing countries should seize this largely untapped opportunity, with less than 15 percent of the potential global market for IT services industries currently being exploited. In 2007, this market represented nearly US$500 billion.
The report also contains new empirical evidence from Brazil, Ghana, India and other countries demonstrating that modern, technology-enabled governments can become more efficient, transparent and responsive. A survey of over 30 countries shows that successful e-government require organizational and behavioral changes that must be driven by
high-level political commitment and effective coordination.
"Access to broadband completes the information foundation for a modern economy and should be a priority in national development plans." says Katherine Sierra, World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development.
"Governments can play a key role in expanding broadband access by policies and incentives that encourage competition and private investment."
The report builds on experience drawn from the Bank's own significant involvement in the sector. The Bank Group is the largest international donor in the field of ICT for development and supports ICT activities projects in over 100 countries with a portfolio amounting to more than US$3 billion.
Recently at a forum in Lagos, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Ernest Ndukwe corroborated the need for broadband internet penetration in the country when he said wireless technology is a Means to achieving universal access and will help to unlock the hidden potentials of the Nigerian market, stressing that it will enable the country to capture the underserved people.
The NCC boss said the activities of the commission in the last two years has been a deliberate attempt at promoting wireless connectivity to rural Nigeria, which is aimed at empowering the masses in particular in the country.
He explained that in the past two years the NCC has declared each year as the year of Broadband.
"What the Commission has done within this period is to encourage the roll out of broadband facilities in the country so as to encourage people, whether in the cities or in the rural areas to develop broadband attitude and learn to deploy the technology for daily operations and aid them in making some money", stressed Ndukwe
In chat with the Guardian recently, the president of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem said the power and advantage that Broadband would bring into the hands of Nigerian people especially the rural underserved population which is more than 70 per cent of the country's population, is enormous and would be difficult to be quantified in mere currency value.
The ATCON President said there is greater need for the country to develop the broadband internet facilities to help enlarge the growing ICT market in the country.
Also sharing this optimism, the President of the Nigeria internet group (NIG), Mr. Lanre Ajayi announced that the country was most certainly going to experience a Broadband revolution by December 2010 at a time when he said the Main One Cable, a first ever private undersea cable initiative by a Nigerian company, would have become operational.
The NIG boss said this cable would reduce the cost of internet by about 90 per cent or more and this he said was bound to reduce the over dependence on the SAT-3 cable that has enjoyed a monopoly of the sector for a long time.
Ajayi said the potentials in the internet market cannot be over emphasized, stressing that if only, there could more funding, training and re-training plus necessary awareness, the country is aimed benefiting so much from it.
