The Politics of the Internet in Third World Development: Conclusions in Comparative Perspective

The dominant discourse tends to address the developmental issues associated with the NICT under the concept of the ‘digital divide,’ focusing on the quantitative disparities between North and South in the diffusion and use of the Internet and other NICT. These inequalities indeed are staggering. Moreover, although some observers proclaim a gradual closing of the gap, this is so only superficially. The number of NICT users in Third World countries has in fact been growing rapidly in recent years, but a closer look at the data shows the qualitative differences in NICT use between the ‘information rich’ and the ‘information poor’ have been growing even stronger.