Jorge Gallardo Rius wrote: >Hi all, > I was hoping to see more comments on this note >trying to establish a link between the digital divide >and debt forgiving in developing nations, but >apparently there isn't much interest. > > Sorry, Jorge, I'm actually quite interested but have been travelling. On the surface, I think the debt forgiving can be good for the involved developing nations. Whether it is or not is up to the nations themselves; it can be room to grow or room to get into debt again. It's not an optimistic or cynical view - it's realistic.
I haven't been following this, and I don't know if the involved countries had to sign onto anything either. That's a factor that I'm always concerned about. If this debt forgiving is free and clear of conditions, then I would have to say that it has greater potential for assisting the forgiven nations. But if there is - and it happens - the details of the agreements would have to be shared. Whether such agreements are there or not, I do not know. > I live in one of those countries whose debt was >written off, but not in Africa, instead in Central >America. I'm referring to Honduras. > Honduras has a very interesting Poverty Reduction >Strategy (PRS). The highest committee that decides >project financing in the land is the Presidential >Social Cabinet. Right below it, in an advisory role, >is the PRS Consulting Committee (CC-PRS). This >Committee is now sending up projects and prioritizing >them so that funds get put into those actions. > For this second semester, the country will have >about 32 million US$ for social projects dealing with >Poverty Reduction. For next year, the country will >have about 10 times as much. > I was recently in a meeting where 34 project >profiles were sent up to the Social Cabinet for the >first 32M but none dealt with the digital divide. And >judging by what I'm seeing, I don't think any will >have anything to do in the 650M for next year. > Honduras has a rural telecenter project but >apparently there has been no correlation between >poverty reduction and bridging the digital divide. > Frankly, I thank "Montee" for bringing up the topic. > I think that bridging the digital divide could help >out very much in poverty reduction and now there are >funds available. > I'm not sure that just because debts have been forgiven that funds are now available. Every country has it's own priorities. I believe that bridging the digital divide should be *a* priority, but if people need to eat or have shelter that is certainly more important than people having a Flickr account, podcasting ability and gmail so that they can store all the emails they wish. Maybe others are silent because of similar concerns, I cannot say. But what I can say is that this will really take time to evaluate. What I'm also interested in is how this is going to affect funding being piped into these countries. With debt relieved, and the possibility of more self-sufficiency of these nations, will funding now go to other countries which may now need it more? -- Taran Rampersad Presently in: Georgetown, Guyana [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/Taran "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
