Mr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman of the ICC Commission on E-Business, Information Technologies and Telecoms, presented two documents in a couple of working sessions during the 34th ICC conference held this week in Denver, Colorado. The conference is entitled “Trade, Technology, Partnership - the Business of Building a Better World”.
The first session was called “Digital Worlds — is e-business just a click away for developing countries?”. The second had the title “Technological Trends –What’s been achieved”.
Abu-Ghazaleh stated: “We are facing a digital divide that may seem severe, especially when we compare advanced nations to developing ones. This is the largest obstacle we face and the largest mountain to climb in a series of them.”
He added: “There is no shortage of challenges: telecom policy (privatization and liberalization issues), the need for enabling legislation, questions about enforceability of online contracts, customs and tariff issues, security and consumer confidence, adequacy of the court system and administration of justice in general. In fact, many of the barriers to e-business are either causes and/or effects of the nation’s status as ‘developing’ in the first place. Information and communication technologies may help societies to leap frog over some stages of development, or help to speed up development but they cannot instantly transform society, because the Internet and e-commerce are dependent on society to thrive.”
He further elaborated stating: “Getting the most from living in the Information Age, including e-business, requires broad participation of society. In order to achieve this we need broad and sustained efforts at education and capacity building to develop the human resources necessary to build an information society in which e-business will naturally evolve, adapt and prosper.”
Abu-Ghazaleh stated that there is a mammoth task ahead that may not be a click away, but maybe it is 4 or 5 clicks away, declaring “The good news is that the big wheels of the world are all moving to make it happen. Virtually all the global development organizations have embraced the theme of ICTs as an integral part of development efforts, and the overcoming of the digital divide and digital opportunities as primary goals.”
He emphasized that “as the voice of the international business community, ICC is cooperating with the UN ICT Task Force and with the initiatives of other major development organizations.”
Abu-Ghazaleh went on to say: “Development of e-business in developing countries is a win-win proposition for both developed and developing countries. Aside from altruistic and moral imperatives, there is a good business rationale for assisting the developing countries to create a prosperous information society in which e-business will naturally take root. In this context we might ask, not is it a click away, but what more can the international business community do to speed up the development process.”