Background

The first World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in Geneva, Switzerland in December 2003, brought together leaders from governments around the world to discuss and adopt strategies for creating an inclusive Information Society. One outcome of the Summit was a Plan of Action enunciating ten targets to be achieved by 2015 of which the first is: “...to connect villages with ICTs and establish community access points...”. This report describes research to measure the target.

The report is based on questionnaires sent to developing country telecommunication administrations as well as review of relevant reports issued by government statistical and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) related agencies and other sources.

Measuring Village Connectivit: challences

The report identifies the challenges faced in measuring WSIS rural connectivity target, including the standard definitions for "village" and "community access points" or determining the percentage of the population that is considered to be rural. Notwithstanding this and given the limitations of locality data, the report suggests complementing the analysis with other methods of measuring ICT access, particularly in rural areas and offers additional ways of measuring rural ICT access such as the use of mobile coverage or ICT accessibility and telephone penetration in rural households data.

The data on the report shows a wide variation among regions as well as among ICTs. Except for Sub-Saharan Africa, on average, more than half of rural households have an electrical connection. At least 50 percent of households have a radio although this percentage is certainly higher considering that in some regions, television availability is higher than radio.

In Europe and Central Asia, over 60 percent of rural homes have a mobile phone and rural homes with a mobile outnumber those with a fixed line in all regions except Middle East and North Africa. Computer and Internet availability in rural households is very low at less than ten percent in all regions except Europe and Central Asia. This attests to the importance of shared access through public facilities.

World summit on information society (wSIS) TARGETS

1. To connect villages with ICTs and establish community access points
2. To connect universities, colleges, secondary schools and primary schools with ICTs
3. To connect scientific and research centres with ICTs
4. To connect public libraries, cultural centres, museums, post offices and archives with ICTs
5. To connect health centres and hospitals with ICTs
6. To connect all local and central government departments and establish websites and email addresses
7. To adapt all primary and secondary school curricula to meet the challenges of the Information Society, taking into account national circumstances
8. To ensure that all of the world’s population have access to television and radio services
9. To encourage the development of content and to put in place technical conditions in order to facilitate the presence and use of all world languages on the Internet
10. To ensure that more than half the world’s inhabitants have access to ICTs within their reach

You can download the full report through ITU's website at http://www.itu.int/ICT or visiting the link below: