Africa: How Mobile Phones Increased the Digital Divide

26 February 2014

When new technologies begin to go mainstream many assume this leads to a narrowing of the digital divide. The obvious example is the mobile phone. But this common belief may not hold true, according to Martin Hilbert, coordinator of the Information Society Programme at the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

He told a SciDev.Net meeting on big data this week that the immediate effect of mobile phones was in fact to widen the digital divide, as the developed nations bought into them first, initially leaving developing nations in their wake (though they are now catching up).

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