Digital development for a progressive networked society

Abstract

Digital development for a progressive networked society 1 | INTRODUCTION Unlike their counterparts in the industrialised world, the people of the developing world continue to lack the benefits of being part of a networked society. This is in spite of increasing connectivity enabled by the phenomenal levels of mobile device penetration and the concomitant adoption of social media in the developing world. Key among the inhibiting factors is a lack of collaboration within and between communities and institutions, as well as a growing inequality, which is also fuelled by unequal access to opportunity-enhancing information and communication technologies (ICTs). Networked co-action is also encouraged between developing countries in the form of South-South collaboration and triangular cooperation in ICT4D as articulated by Walsham (2020). While the challenges of poverty and underdevelopment that affect the developing world are due to a lack of human development and capability-enhancing policies as articulated by Sen (1999), the scourge of inequality is exacerbated by the absence of progressive policies such as social protection and progressive taxation (UNDP, 2017). As our increasingly globalised world becomes more dependent on ICTs, building a progressive networked society requires universal access to opportunity-enhancing ICTs. This is because unequal access to ICTs breeds challenges in the delivery and prioritisation of e-services such as ehealthcare, e-education, e-banking and knowledge sharing between the people who live in enclaved economies. Enclaved economies are characterised by pockets of affluence surrounded by vast expanses of poverty. In developing countries, this situation is worsened by the rural-tourban divides characterised by dual economies, that is, for the rich and for the poor and for rural and for urban, as well as for the connected and the unconnected. The average Gini coefficient of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries is about 0.32

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