G U EST CO LU M N
The digital war on poverty ………JEFFREY D SACHS
THE digital divide is beginning to close. The flow of digital information through mobile phones, text messaging, and the Internet is now reaching the worlds masses, even in the poorest countries, bringing with it a revolution in economics, politics, and society. Extreme poverty is almost synonymous with extreme isolation, especially rural isolation. But mobile phones and wireless Internet end isolation, and will therefore prove to be the most transformative technology of economic development of our time.
The digital divide is ending not through a burst of civic responsibility, but mainly through market forces. Mobile phone technology is so powerful, and costs so little per unit of data transmission, that it has proved possible to sell mobile phone access to the poor. There are now more than 3.3 billion subscribers in the world, roughly one for every two people on the planet.