Tuesday, May 30, 2006

This isn’t just a job for governments and aid agencies, he said. Private companies have a role to play too but a public/private balance will have to be found between the kind of basic infrastructure work that will never return a profit and those that will.

World Bank Group head Paul Wolfowitz Monday called for increased investment and involvement in development projects targeting poverty particularly in Africa.

“Africa’s infrastructure may have been adequate in the 1960s and 1970s but high population growth combined with rapid urbanization has lead to a severe mismatch between the need for infrastructure and what’s available,” said Wolfowitz speaking at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. He is in Tokyo to attend a two-day World Bank conference on development economics.

“By most estimates African countries need to be investing about nine percent of their GDP, or roughly US$40 billion per year, in building infrastructure and maintaining old facilities if they are to meet millennium development goals. That’s more than twice what they’ve been spending over the last decade,” he said.

His comments refer to a wide range of infrastructure types including basic water and electricity supply to more advanced services like cellular telephone and Internet connections.

In its World Development Indicators 2006 report, the bank underlined the potential that information and communication technology has in reducing poverty and helping foster growth in developing nations. It noted that companies using IT grow faster and that a survey found sales growth is 3.4 percentage points higher in companies that use email to do business with clients and suppliers.

This isn’t just a job for governments and aid agencies, he said. Private companies have a role to play too but a public/private balance will have to be found between the kind of basic infrastructure work that will never return a profit and those that will.

Some technology companies are already working on projects to bring computing and Internet access to developing nations.

Most notable is the One Child Per Laptop (OLPC) project led by Nicholas Negroponte [cq] that grew out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. OLPC hopes to begin delivering millions of low-cost laptop computers to governments from next year. The project is backed by IT giants including Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Google Inc., News Corp. and Nortel Networks Ltd.

Intel Corp. has partnered with a Mexican telecoms company to sell an affordable PC designed for first-time computer users in developing countries and last week Microsoft Corp. detailed plans to offer low-cost pay-as-you-use computers in developing nations.

Source: Computer Partner (link opens in a new window)