This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Administrator J. Brian Atwood
Secretary's Open Forum
"Reinventing Diplomacy and Development for the On-line World"
Washington, D.C., March 11, 1997
U.S. Agency for International Development
I am especially pleased to introduce this series at the
Secretary's Open Forum. USAID has already linked African
schoolchildren with children in American classrooms through the
Leland Initiative, named for the late Congressman Mickey
Leland, who died in a plane crash while trying to help Ethiopia
during the famine.
In Ghana, in the next twelve months, we will be linking
more than one hundred schools with U.S. schools to establish
curriculum and classroom partnerships. Some six thousand small
and medium-sized agricultural enterprises in eastern and southern
Africa will use the Internet to provide farmers assistance in
growing and marketing their crops.
As it grows, the Leland initiative will link village health
workers, teachers and others to information and experts
throughout the world.
Technology that is either now available or soon will be has
enormous potential for increasing economic opportunities,
tracking emerging diseases, locusts, marketing trends, long-term
weather conditions in order to plan better for food security and
famine prevention.
USAID has done a lot of reengineering over the past four
years, and we are definitely on-line.
Not only do we receive information on the internet, have a
prize winning web site of our own, our communications talk back
to us, although sometimes I'm not sure what they are trying to
tell us. The spell check on our computers, for instance, does not
recognize my name. I don't take this personally. It doesn't
recognize President Clinton's either, or Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright's. It doesn't even recognize the Internet's
name.
I began to wonder a little, though, when I discovered it does
recognize the name Helms, and spells it correctly.
And sometimes I wonder why, when it questions my name,
the first alternative it suggests is "outweighed." I'm not sure
whether that is a hint for me to get more exercise, or meant as
reassurance that my positions on controversial matters will
prevail.
The second alternative is equally ambiguous -- "outwit"
-- will I gain the upper hand or will I be outfoxed?
That is one of the greatest things about telecommunications
technology, it gives you so many new things to think about.
This is an exciting time to reflect on communications
technology and its potential for solving development problems.
In 1994, Vice President Gore posed the challenge to the
participants of the World Telecommunication Development
Conference in Buenos Aires to work together to build the Global
Information Infrastructure.
Just last month the World Trade Organization "Basic
Agreement on Telecommunications Services" was signed by 70
nations. They agreed to liberalize their telecommunications
sectors, and create open, competitive markets.
Here in the United States, the 1996 Telecommunications Act
is bringing significant deregulation that should provide greater
choice, increased competition and lower costs. Internet usage
has exploded so fast one service was shut down briefly by the
backup. Grandparents who never used computers are getting
them to communicate with their grandchildren, and internet
e:mail makes both distance-working and distance-learning
available to a host of new users.
The old Soviet Union used to see copying machines as
enemies of the state -- which in a way they were -- enemies of an
oppressive system that sought to suppress free speech and free
press and punish all opposition. The use of faxes by the
Tianamen Square demonstrators showed the world how
telecommunications can challenge authoritarian regimes.
Will the potential benefits of telecommunications advances
be fulfilled for people in developing countries?
Policy and regulatory reforms will be necessary. As costs
for technology come down, privatization of inefficient national
telephone service and the need for policy and regulatory reform
could become the major remaining barrier to widespread use.
USAID provides help with policy reforms and privatization.
In Zambia, the USAID Southern Africa Regional
Telecommunications Restructuring Program is assisting in the
privatization of the Zambian telephone company.
In one of the first telecommunications privatizations in
Africa, Zambia plans to sell a controlling interest to a foreign
company which will be able to provide the quality of service
Zambia needs. Hand-in hand with the privatization comes the
need for adequate regulations and USAID is working to
strengthen Zambia's telecommunications authority. We are also
providing assistance in Swaziland in cooperation with the
International Finance Corporation, which is helping to privatize
the telephone company.
Policy reforms initiated over the past year in nine countries
across Africa have established the principles of cost-based
tariffing for Internet access. This will mean that a month of
Internet service will cost no more than a three-minute
international telephone call -- one fifth of the current price.
Establishment of a competitive retail market has already
lowered costs and improved the quality of service in Uganda and
Ghana.
Half the people in the world today do not have phones, but
that is about to change. Over the next few years, the low-orbiting earth satellite system and solar-powered telephones will
reach the most remote corners of the earth.
These new technologies will join Fax machines, solar-powered radios and internet e:mail communications to provide
unprecedented communications that can be used to transform the
lives of people. They could make it possible for more people to
earn a living and enjoy amenities where they are, relieving some
of the pressures on the growing mega-cities in the developing
world, and help provide economies that are more balanced.
Long before these new technologies, the number of
telephone lines in the developing world had doubled in the late
1980s. Growth rates in telephone penetration have not been
increasing in Sub-Saharan Africa, however. Demand runs well
above the availability of new lines. The new technology may
provide alternative solutions, as well as significantly widening the
geographical range of telephone communication.
The Internet continues to grow at a phenomenal rate and
over the past few years most countries have established
connections to it, but only a small number of people in many
developing countries currently have access to it. As
connections and applications multiply, a key ingredient will be
making sure people have the skills they need to use the
technology -- and to extract the information they need. The
communications revolution will then truly become a knowledge
revolution.
Towards this end, the United States is sponsoring the Global
Knowledge '97 in late June (25-27), in partnership with the
World Bank and others.
Decision-makers from government, international
organizations, and the private sector will come together to
consider the vital role this new access to knowledge and
information can play in economic and social progress.
These applications -- enabling new modes of education,
expanding delivery of health care, fueling economic growth --
make telecommunications an important key to overcoming
barriers of time and distance, lack of roads and other services that
have held back the people in developing countries.
In closing, let me offer you several challenges -- for
governments, donors, international organizations, and the private
sector -- to bring the global communications revolution to those
who traditionally have been left out:
Together we must provide people around the world the
know-how they will need to build, operate, and make
use of the Global Information Infrastructure.
We must encourage, and provide technical help, to
extend the benefits of policy and regulatory reforms
which will enable the private sector to build the needed
infrastructure.
And, working closely with potential users, we must
continue to develop innovative applications that take
advantage of this infrastructure's ability to expand
services and opportunities -- and to expand people's
horizons.
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
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Last Updated on: July 18, 2001
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