Question: Why should we care?
While our minds generally refer to the continent Africa as a unified whole, it is anything but whole. Information technologies, as the article points out, offers a way for the world to help the countries of Africa cross this divide and lead to perhaps a unifed voice of countries we could rightly call: Africa. I found the article invigorating. Traditional landline phones were never a good idea for a developing third-word countries nor is the automobile as a means of mass transit viable. Instead of repeating the so-called civilized countries mistakes, African countries could surpass our own boondoggles.
As we mount offensives on healthcare concerns, stabilizing economies, creating democratic or socialist or representative societies within African countries, the "digital divide" could be a subset of issues addressed to each of these. No longer would we have to wait for crucial medical data to travel weeks if not months to be processed, analyzed and solutions found. Working to decrease the digital divide in these African countries we could be equipping a whole region, nation, village, or the continent with the powerful ability to share vital information and connect people who may never have been connected before in their lifetime. This power: the access to and the sharing of information is the foundational element of success for today and the future. Humanity started it's travel from the African continent this way and it is fitting we return the favor our birth mother. Additionally, with the internet becoming another engine of commerce this could enable poor African countries to leap on the world stage into the era of information technology without having to go through pointless stages like industrialization.
While these are loose thoughts, what if different countries in Africa could report changing weather conditions to scores of well-endowed meteorological research institutions around the world? Could major patterns of world weather be detected? Could it be if we bridge this gap we could prevent another tsunami of genocide or drought or terrorism? Internet access may not seem vital, implemented correctly it could be an incalculable link to unifying the various disparate African countries: is it so hard to believe that the next great technology could come from a person living in some remote village in Kenya; that connecting this person to the "outside world" could be the resource they need to move into the global economy -before the global economy consumes them; this could likely happen somewhere on the African continent as it could come from a small rural US town.
