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     Middle East and North African digital divides

This page considers digital divides in the Middle East and North Africa.

It covers -

• background
• measures - some key statistics of development and connectivity
• Israel
• the petro-states
• the other states

     background

Digital divides in the Middle East and North Africa are as diverse as those regions.

For an overview we recommend Michael Dahan's 2000 paper Internet Usage in the Middle East: Some Political & Social Implications and the 2002 report by the United Nations Economic & Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which claimed that "the divide between the Arab and advanced world is staggering", with only "1% of the 280 million people in the Arab world" online.

The report blames poor infrastructure, the difficulty of learning about ICT in some states and fear about modernisation. The social context of ICT uptake was highlighted in comments that

• the 'Arab world' averages 18 computers per 1,000 people
• fewer than one in 20 Arab university students pursue scientific disciplines, with no Arab country investing over 0.2% of its GNP on scientific research (a benchmark is US investment of 2%)
• only 370 industrial patents were issued to people in Arab countries between 1980 and 2000 (compared to 16,000 in South Korea).

The ITU 2002 telecommunications snapshot (PDF) for the region highlights infrastructure disparities -

Divides within and across the states illustrate the significance of cultural and social factors, in contrast to the usual concentration on infrastructure. Although some states have access to substantial wealth for rollout of infrastructure and subsidisation of connectivity they appear to have failed to embrace personal computing and implement broadband.

Caution is desirable in considering 'grand theory' from Samuel Huntingdon, Edward Said and Benjamin Barber (or Mctheory renditions from the likes of Thomas Fiedman). However, digital divides in the region are a reflection of society at large, with the interaction of

• substantial disparities in literacy levels (by gender, age, income and location)
• differentials between rural and city dwellers (income, infrastructure, educational opportunities, cultural expectations)
• attitudes about the reception and generation of secular and religious texts
• supervision, of varying degrees of effectiveness and overtness, by government agencies and delegates
• views about the net as a space for personal freedom ("no purdah in cyberspace"?) or political dissent (from the digital intifada to local human rights watches)
• government anxieties about the net (and more broadly telecommunications) as something that cannot be readily controlled
• broader social ambivalence about the net as an embodiment of modernity - at once an engine of international politics, a tool for the muezzin and a channel of corruption (religious heterodoxy, human rights, erotica, disrespect for elders ...)

Works of particular value include Khalil Rinnawi's 2001 The Internet and the Arab World as a Virtual Public Sphere (PDF), Gary Bunt's Virtually Islamic: Computer Mediated Commmunication and Cyber Islamic Environments (Cardiff: Uni of Wales Press 2000) and Islam in the Digital Age: E-jihad, Online Fatwas & Cyber Islamic Environments (London: Pluto Press 2003).

     measures

As of 2004 population (m) and GDP (US$bn purchasing power parity) for selected states in North Africa and the Middle East was -

state Algeria Bahrain Egypt Eritrea Iran Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Mauritania Morocco Oman Palestine Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Turkey UAE Yemen

Population 32.0 0.67 76.0 4.40 69.0 6.20 5.60 2.25 3.70 5.60 3.00 32.2 2.90 3.60 0.84 25.8 18.0 10.0 68.9 2.52 20.0

GDP 196 11.2 295 3.3 478 121 23 41.4 17.8 35 5.2 128 36.7 1.70 17.5 287 58.0 68.2 458 57.7 15.0

Australia's GDP (PPP) was US$571 billion.

An ITU report for 2003 identifies landlines and aggregate subscribers (landline and mobile) -

state	lines per 100 people	total subscribers (m)
Algeria Bahrain Egypt Eritrea Iran Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Mauritania Morocco Oman Palestine Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Turkey UAE Yemen	6.93 26.76 12.7 0.92 22.3 45.3 11.3 19.8 19.8 13.6 1.18 4.05 9.22 8.73 28.9 15.5 12.3 11.7 27.7 28.1 2.78	2.20 0.18 8.73 0.38 14.5 3.00 0.62 0.49 0.68 0.75 0.03 1.30 0.23 0.32 0.18 3.50 2.10 1.16 46.8 1.13 0.54

and internet hosts (per 10,000 inhabitants) and personal computers (per 100 inhabitants) -

state Algeria Bahrain Egypt Eritrea Iran Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Mauritania Morocco Oman Palestine Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Turkey UAE Yemen

hosts 0.27 19.2 0.49 2.52 0.76 644 5.7 11 21.5 0.12 0.09 1.18 2.79 .. 3.4 7 0.01 0.27 52.6 139 0.07

PCs 0.77 15.9 2.19 0.29 9.05 24.3 3.75 12.0 8.05 2.34 1.08 1.99 3.74 3.6 17.8 13.7 2 4.0 4.46 12 0.74

The Transparency International 2004 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked selected Middle Eastern and North African states as follows (with New Zealand, Sweden, Australia and Canada at 2, 6, 9 and 12 respectively) -

state Israel Oman UAE Bahrain Jordan Qatar Tunisia Kuwait Saudi Arabia Syria Egypt Morocco Turkey Iran Algeria Lebanon Eritrea Libya Palestine Yemen Iraq

rank 26 29 29 34 37 38 39 44 71 71 77 77 77 87 97 97 102 108 108 112 129

The UNDP report for 2004 suggested that life expectancy at birth and adult literacy (%, ages 15 plus) was -

state Algeria Bahrain Egypt Eritrea Iran Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Mauritania Morocco Oman Palestine Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Turkey UAE Yemen

expectancy 69 72 68 52 72 79 70 76 73 72 52 69 72 72 72 72 71 72 70 74 56

literacy 68 88 55 56 77 95 90 82 86 81 41 50 74 90 84 77 82 73 86 77 49

In practice some of those figures are likely to be overestimates by around 10 to 20%.

     Israel

Israel, as so often, stands out as from its neighbours, with -

• an advanced telecommunications infrastructure
• access to that infrastructure at affordable prices
• substantial personal and corporate uptake of computers
• high literacy levels
• government encouragement of use of ICT generally and the web in particular
• positive community attitudes regarding messaging and electronic publishing
• little evidence of gender divides in ICT across the population at large
• adoption of email for linking a global diaspora
• acceptance of teleworking and other terchnologies for engaging with international markets.

The government claimed that as of early 2004 around 50% of the population had an internet connection at home, with over 65% through work or home.

The Education Ministry's ICT In Schools strategy achieved a ratio of one computer for every 10 children in primary/secondary schools, increased to one computer for every five children. Computer labs in schools are often open past regular school hours and there has been support for internet access through community centers to midnight.

For Israel see The Global Diffusion of the Internet Project: The State of Israel (PDF), complemented by the 1999 study The Global Diffusion of the Internet Project: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (PDF) and An Update: The Internet in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (PDF).

     other states

Peter Wolcott & Seymour Goodman's 2000 report on The Internet in Turkey & Pakistan: A Comparative Analysis (PDF) updates the report on The Diffusion of the Internet in the Republic of Turkey (PDF).

For governance in Turkey see in particular Yaman Akdeniz's 2003 Internet Governance: Towards the modernization of policy making process in Turkey (PDF), Internet Governance & Freedom in Turkey (PDF) and 2004 report (PDF).

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