Real Digital Divide (The): Response from Panos

This article by Murali Shanmugavelan, Programme Officer of Communication for Development for the Panos Institute, is written to contest an article published by The Economist (March 12, 2005) which proclaims that mobile phones are the way forward for development. The article in The Economist refers to poor people as "rushing to embrace" mobile phones and Shanmugavalen suggests that this is a "distorted" view. He contends that for rural people a single telephone call can cost as much as half the daily wage of an agricultural worker. Shanmugavelan suggests that basic infrastructure including roads and electricity are what are needed to make this technology work, and help poor people.

Shanmugavalen refers to several factual errors in The Economist article. He first states that The Digital Solidarity Fund was not set up by the United
Nations but was instead is a Swiss foundation and launched by a number of African governments. The second point he makes is that mobile phones do require permanent electricity supply. He notes that electricity is mostly unavailable to 90 per cent of East Africa's population and that people who live in
rural areas travel far to charge their phones.

Shanmugavalen states "The divide that actually really matters, then, is between those with better infrastructure who can make use of their communication technologies and those without."