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Study: Net growth fastest in Mideast, North Africa |
Arvind Nair
DOHA: The use of Internet has been growing the fastest in recent years in the Middle East and North Africa, a World Bank study has found.
Between 2000 and 2005, the Internet use grew by 370% in these regions as opposed to a quadruple growth worldwide, says the study, which was released by World Bank Group on Thursday in Doha, on the sidelines of the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC).
There are no answers to many questions, remarked Mohsen Khalil, director of Global ICT Department at the World Bank Group, while releasing the book. But the idea is to provide a benchmark to measure the growth of ICT, he said.
Also present at the function, among others, was Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang, one of the authors of the study.
Europe and Central Asia are the leading Internet users with 117 users per 1000 in 2004 — four times as many as in 2000 and six to eight times as many as in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the book says.
Over the past 25 years, developing countries have considerably increased ICT access, especially for telephone services. Developing countries accounted for more than 60% of the world’s telephone lines (fixed and mobile) in 2005, up from less than 20% in 1980 in 1980.
During this period, population increased by half and real GDP more than doubled in these countries — while the number of telephone subscribers rose 28-fold.
Recent growth has been especially striking. Although the proportion of subscribers to total population in developing countries did not even double between 1980 and 1990, over the next decade it nearly quintupled, from 27 to 129 per 1000 people. And between 2000 and the end of 2005, it is estimated to have tripled, reaching almost 400 subscribers per 1000 people.
Most of the recent growth has involved mobile phones, which now outnumber fixed ones. In Nigeria, the number of mobile subscribers jumped from 370,000 in 2001 to 16.8mn in September 2005, making its mobile market the second largest in Africa.
In the Philippines, which has had more mobile than fixed telephone subscribers since 2000, mobile subscribers continue to multiply. By the end of 2005, the country had about 40mn mobiles subscribers — six times more than in 2000.
Mobile phones have an especially dramatic impact in developing countries — substituting for scare fixed connections, increasing mobility, reducing transaction costs, broadening trade networks, and facilitating searches for employment. With prepaid services and calling cards, even poor households have been able to benefit from increased telephone access, the book says.
Releasing the book, the officials said the report assesses what has worked well and what has not in developing ICT around the world. The digital divide between countries is not insurmountable as shown by the phenomenal success of new technology — such as mobile telephony — bridging the access gap, as well as the positive impact of efforts to stimulate competition and develop independent regulation of telecommunications markets.
But many developing countries still require improvements in their ICT policies and strategies, the officials said. Among the biggest challenges facing these countries are weak policy and implementation capacity, opposition from vested interests, and persistent obstacles to adoption of ICT. Many also lack adequate tools to monitor, evaluate, and guide investments in ICT and connectivity in undeserved areas, the officials said.
The World Bank hopes to make this report a regular publication. Doing so would contribute to continuity in benchmarking of ICT data and in monitoring and assessment of trends, themes and programmes supporting ICT in developing countries, they said. |
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