Assignment 3: Bridging Africa's digital divide

I think that the plan of having countries in AFrica accessing the Internet is a great development project. ALso, teaching the teachers in AFrica how to use the Internet would have a benefit in the educational domain since these teachers would be able to transmit the technology knowledge they were trained to into their students. However, this idea is very idealistic. however, setting such goals would be beneficial since it would motivate people and make them believe in the fact that all the AFrican countries would have access to the internet and thus to knowledge. Having access to the Internet may become a project for the United Nations Millenium goals (MDGs) set to reduce poverty by a half in the year 2015. However, other priorities enter in the agenda of the MDGs such as eradicating diseases of poverty and preventing them, have access to health care, education, gender equality, good governance, etc. THe priorities in education is to change some aspects of the local cultures, have girls going to schools, etc. However, the first step defined by the MDGs is to have a widespread schooling in the African countries and thus reduce illiteracy rates. This would be possible if only other causes of poverty are eradicated or prevented in order to ensure an economic growth or individual well being (such as AIDS, Malaria, etc which prevent prople from being interested in other human needs such as education, leisure time, etc). Nevertheless, having the project of introducing the Internet and the way to use this technologies within the shooling system in African countries is a good thing but it would take time to be efficient. I think that setting some priorities or objectives is better than having no objective, even if the implementation or the success of the projects would take time.
The case of India is different from other developing countries in the African continent. This is due to the fact that India is well known for having a great number of engineers mastering technology. therefore a project aiming at having a full national access to the Internet seems realizable at the short run. THis is due to the fact that the rate of schooling in INdia is greater than the one of poor countries in Africa. However, also India, just like other developing countries, faces a lack of communication infrastracture, especially in rural area,s which may hinder the realization of the project