ABSTRACT
At the turn of the millennium, the ICT4D (information and communication technologies for development) discourse had envisaged that access to the Internet and computers would induce development in the Global South. Ideas about the empowering capacities of both computers and mobile telephony echo media and communication scholars’ debate on the digital divide. The digital divide concept emerged in the 1990s to refer to the unequal access and usage of digital technologies. Castells’ (2001, 269) argument that not having access to the Internet is tantamount to marginalization in the global, networked system summarized the digital divide idea well.
