Annotation

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential to profoundly change global trade, finance and production. By making businesses more competitive and economies more productive, and most of all by empowering people with knowledge, ICTs can support faster economic growth and thus strengtnen the material basis for development. Our challenge is to ensure that this potential is used to generate real gains in the global struggle against poverty, desease and ignorance - and their offspring, fear, intolerance and war. The Report highlights the extend to which developing countries are striving to close the gap that separates the "information haves and have-nots". It also describes the enormous challenges the world still faces in key areas such as increasing access to the Internet and strengthening the security of the online environment. Most inportant, it shows that when there is awareness, political will and stakeholder involvement in national "e-strategies", progress in the use of ICTs for development is already an exciting reality.