Ladies and gentlemen,

One of the slogans at the demonstration against G8 in Genoa was that the hungry cannot "eat computers."

I like this quote. In our discussions on how to bridge the digital divide it reminds us that the fundamental problems of the developing world are still poverty, disease and illiteracy. It therefore serves as a reality check for those who might think that the problems of the poor can be solved by giving them electronic gadgets and sufficient bandwidth. Poverty is not virtual.

Computers are tools. Tools, however, can be used for better or for worse. Under the right conditions I believe that computers and other ICT equipment can be very powerful tools in helping us to solve the more basic problems of development. You know, you cannot eat plows either, at least I wouldn’t recommend it. But they are an extremely useful tool, and help feed almost the entire world.

The opportunities that ICT offers for development are obvious and the success stories are many:

In South Africa and in India an Internet-based system, initiated by, among others, NORAD, has been very successful in providing professional support to village doctors who care for poor people.

In Bangladesh the Grameen Phone project is a good example of how ICT can help increase people’s incomes by improving market information.

The African Virtual University uses modern information and communication technology to give the countries of sub-Saharan Africa direct access to some of the highest quality academic and teaching resources in the world. The aim is to bridge the digital divide by training scientists, engineers, technicians, business managers, and other professionals who will promote economic and social development.

Scan-ICT is a Norwegian-supported initiative for developing Africans’ ability to collect and manage information to support investment in ICT, to support Africa’s transition to an information society and to encourage the development of made in Africa solutions, applications and content in ICT.

On a much larger scale we have seen how ICT – in concert with a range of other enabling factors – was an important driving force in industrialization and poverty reduction in South East Asian countries.

Examples like these show that ICT can benefit health and education and that it can help create companies and jobs. It can also serve as a catalyst and generate more dynamism in the economies of poor countries.

This last point is crucial. Poverty reduction is not necessarily about targeting the poor specifically. It is also about creating employment and an economic surplus that can be redistributed – which of course requires governments to adopt equitable distribution policies.

This also means improving national governance systems to empower the poor so that they can make better use of their own assets. In many countries, however, it is difficult for the poor to have their assets recognized and documented by the authorities so that they can for example be used as collateral for loans. Moreover the process involves substantial costs in terms of bribes and time.

This poses a challenge for us as development partners. We need to have an open dialogue with governments on how we can assist them in improving the institutional system and the legislation and in changing the rules that keep the poor marginalized. In this regard, ICT can play an important, supporting role.

The Human Development Report 2001 has broadened and deepened our understanding of how ICT can assist in poverty reduction. The report is an important document for governments, donors, NGOs and all who want to contribute to this end. It gives us better insight into the possibilities and the limitations of both the technologies themselves and the environments in which they are put to work.

And we want to contribute. From our own experience we know how dependent both the private and the public sector as well as NGOs have become on the global information flow and how indispensable mobile phones, satellite tv and portable computers are in putting us in touch with it.

Developing countries should also have the opportunity to participate in the global village and to keep abreast of technological developments. To some extent they already do. Today there is hardly a single developing country without its websites, information services and private ICT enterprises.

The people in this sector are young, highly skilled and enthusiastic – just like those we find in Norway. But there are fewer of them and they are hampered by limited bandwidth, insufficient infrastructure and political constraints. Many of them work in countries where the regimes have weak popular support and feel threatened by the free flow of information. Under such conditions the Internet and other media often carry important information to the outside world and bring in news and vital messages. In this way ICT also serves as a tool for democratic development.

Developing countries are much in need of foreign private investment to establish the necessary ICT infrastructure so that they can avoid being marginalized technologically. Governments, however, need assistance to come to terms with the fact that although free information may often challenge their policies and sometimes even topple them, it is indispensable to the development of prosperous and democratic societies.

We will help our development partners to meet these challenges.

Given that aid resources are limited and that ICT is a profitable sector, we believe that the use of development assistance funding in this field should be focussed largely on the contribution ICT can make to satisfying basic human needs. The main question then is: What comparative advantages does ICT have in this regard?

The evidence shows that apart from opening up market opportunities, ICT has been especially effective in telemedicine and distance learning. We need to build on this and to overcome the obstacles created by the cost of the necessary PC equipment, malfunctioning and inadequate telecom and power lines, lack of support personnel and poor operating skills. These entail investment and costs that must be covered on a regular basis. In rural Africa, where even printed textbooks, skilled teachers and personnel with medical skills are not available, the prospects do not look bright.

So what can be done? One answer is to build on solutions that may perhaps look second best but that may after all prove to be optimal. What people, even poor people in the third world do have access to are radios, perhaps with a tape recorder, and sometimes a TV and a telephone which can also give them access to taped messages and text tv. The potential of these media, however low they may rank in the hierarchy of ICT equipment, therefore needs to be explored. Information hubs such as local or regional hospitals and education centres could be given incentives to transform the information they receive digitally to fit the local low-tech media scene.

The future will bring us more affordable technology. Investment in wireless networks will soon be cheaper than the alternative. In Japan mass production has turned cell-phones into virtual handheld information terminals. With better sound, storage capacity and printout facilities, they could indeed become tools for getting useful information to even more information kiosks and centres in even more remote areas and at an even lower cost than today.

But even low cost can be too high cost for poor people. In the poorest countries governments and donors need to finance the communications infrastructure and provide seed money and loans for information networks, centres and kiosks. But because of different and even incompatible standards and a plethora of donors pushing conflicting technologies and systems, it is very important that governments are properly advised by independent consultants so they are able to think the issues carefully through, to provide a good framework for the development of ICT-based solutions and to tell donors exactly what their needs are in this area.

The Norwegian ICT assistance strategy is presented in the NORAD document "Bridging the Digital Divide". It stresses the need for partner governments to work out their own strategies for the ICT sector. It expresses the view that such strategies should give priority to the use of ICT for solving fundamental development and poverty issues. It also holds that rules and regulations need to be developed to provide incentives to establish ICT enterprises and help them to thrive. In addition there is an obvious need to coordinate donors’ assistance to prevent the use of incompatible standards. This is something that we as donors cannot require governments to do. We can make it clear, however, that these are the conditions for our support to their ICT sector plans.

The pilot studies that NORAD is conducting in Sri Lanka and Tanzania are based on the governments’ plans and strategies and place the responsibility for ICT development where it belongs – with the governments.

This was one of the topics I was asked to comment on at this meeting. In my view new technologies can help to fight poverty and differences. And I believe they do, that although much more can and should be done, progress has been made. But if we are to obtain the full benefit of this technology, governments must show a willingness to use ICT as a means of reducing their fundamental poverty problems.

I have not addressed the other topic so explicitly – whether new technology increases the gap between the rich and the poor. To my knowledge there is little evidence to support such an assertion. But as I said earlier, ICT can be used for good as well as for bad purposes, and it is up to us to see that it is used for good. The choice is ours.

And let there be no doubt that this government definitely wants to make ICT work to improve the lot of the poor.