The Digital Road From Poverty

Bjorn Lomborg’s January contribution to Project Syndicate discusses the role broadband could play in alleviating poverty. 

In a new analysis, Emmanuelle Auriol and Alexia Lee González Fanfalone of the Toulouse School of Economics suggest that broadband could be one of the best investments for the future. Clearly, the rapid rollout of broadband services has transformed the lives of people in the industrialized world; there is every reason to expect that developing countries could benefit at least as much.

Access to market information, for example, can ensure that farmers selling their surplus crops are not cheated by unscrupulous traders, and that fishermen can land their catch at the port offering the best price. A McKinsey report estimates that bringing mobile broadband in the developing world to the levels of the industrial world could add $400 billion annually to global GDP and create more than ten million jobs."

Click here to read the entire article on Project Syndicate