Information and Communication Technologies and the Global Digital Divide: Technology Transfer, Development, and Least Developing Countries

This article examines the global digital divide-and discusses conditions and circumstances that have contributed to its creation. An important issue this article explores is whether there is a convergence, absolute convergence, divergence, or relative divergence in the application and diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) between developed countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs), and if so, which of these will continue. A second issue addressed by this article involves the basic conditions required in a country to facilitate technology transfer, application, and diffusion of ICTs. This article draws on several highly respectable data sources and an extensive body of literature to provide a fairly clear picture of how the ICT revolution is shaping up globally. For a number of reasons, mostly related to data availability, data timeliness, and data accuracy, the article does not pretend to be a full assessment of the ICT global situation between countries.