Africa, the instigator of the world’s first information technology summit, wanted rich countries to put their money where their mouths are to develop its nascent technology, but its delegates were leaving the three-day meeting on Friday with only vague promises.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade had pushed for the creation of a special fund to close the digital divide, but the final document contained a compromise “Digital Solidarity Agenda”.
On Thursday, Wade made light of what was essentially a failure, telling reporters: “Africa’s objective of digital solidarity has largely been achieved.”
But it will be difficult to move beyond expressions of solidarity to actual cash — especially since observers say it was the well-off Western countries that refused to create the fund in the first place.
Negotiators will now revisit the idea of a fund before the second stage of the summit in Tunisia in November 2005.
The European Union, Canada and Japan will study the usefulness of such a fund by the end of next year.
“We took stock of the European proposals to improve the existing mechanisms” of funding, Wade said, adding that the proposals actually complemented the idea of the solidarity fund.
But as the experts go back to more talks, poor nations in desperate need of telephone lines, computers as well as cheap and easy access to the internet will largely continue to go begging.
Only half a percent of the population of the West African state of Burkina Faso has a telephone line, for instance — contrast that with Germany or the United States, where well more than two-thirds of the population are online or have mobile phones.
Mamadou Diallo Iam from Mali was far less optimistic than the Senegalese leader on the outcome of the talks.
“In reality, negotiators have found a tenuous compromise between two irreconcilable positions,” said the telecommunications expert and delegate heading up the African group during the talks.
But he said at least the rich nations were “ready to create our fund”.
The ambitious goal at this summit — to connect half of the world’s six billion people to telephones and the internet within 12 years — is so far just a pipe dream.
As the gathering wrapped up, India’s Minister for Information Technology and Communications, Arun Shourie, hoped the international community would soon put lofty declarations behind it and get down to the real work.
“My plea is the next time this conference meets in Tunis we should not be spending time drafting the next declaration but we should be organised from now so that we can celebrate actual accomplishments,” he said. — Sapa-AFP
WSIS special report