How can information technology be best applied to address problems and provide opportunities for inhabitants of the world’s poorest countries?
While celebratinG the emerging markets of Asia, India, and Latin America, let’s spare a thought for the world’s “bottom billion.” These are the inhabitants of the Fourth World that sits beneath the Third World; dozens of countries that, in the words of economist Paul Collier “are falling behind, and often falling apart.” 2
As informatics professionals, why should we care about these countries? And how might IT best be used to help them?
The bottom billion—a population equivalent to that of the U.S. and Europe combined—lives overwhelmingly in sub-Saharan Africa or Central Asia. Life expectancy in these regions is just 50 years. One-in-seven children die before the age of five. They missed the globalization boat that sailed with many other developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s. While those other countries have grown steadily richer, the Fourth World of the bottom billion was actually poorer in 2000 than it was in 1970.2 These countries are not emerging markets, they are fading markets: the whole
of sub-Saharan Africa has an economy the size of Belgium’s.
Should we be concerned?
Simple ethics says we should: developing an e-business solution to squeeze out a few extra ounces of profit or timesaving for the world’s privileged population living in the global North pales in ethical importance compared to applying new technology to the mega-problems of the bottom billion. And
self-interest says we should: the bottom billion—countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, and North Korea—are key sources of global instability and risk including drugs, piracy, and terror.
Not surprisingly, the bottom-billion nations have been among the least digital. But that is changing. Official figures may indicate an average of only three Internet users per hundred population6 but that greatly underestimates the true reach. Information technology in the Fourth World is a communal, not individual, resource. As a result, many times more are casual users; and many times more again have indirect access to Internet-based data and applications through friends and relations. Internet connectivity is also growing fast: by 42% per annum in the bottom billion, compared to 18% in Europe.
Beyond the Internet, there is an even greater bottom-billion phenomenon: the cellphone. Ten years ago, Manhattan had more phone connections than all of Africa. Today, thanks to the cellphone, Africa has more phone connections than the U.S. and Canada combined. Approximately one-fifth of
22 communicAtionS of the Acm | APriL 2009 | voL. 52 | no. 4
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