Despite progress and development in ICT sector in the last 10
years, only 8% of population (2,400,000 people) has access to Internet in
Afghanistan. Although Internet price has dropped from $5000/mb/month in 2002 to
$67 in 2014, the number of Internet users has been increasing very slowly. This
indicates that Afghanistan lags far behind other countries in the region in
terms of digital divide. Digital divide is very wide among the population.
Source: MCIT |
Income level, cultural differences, literacy, and gender are
among main factors of digital divide in the country.
Income: with $1100
GNI per capita and 36% of the population living under poverty line, 35%
unemployment rate, Afghanistan has a very weak and unstable economy.
Only a small number of people can afford to pay for Internet
and other required tools, computer and smart phone. For example, 3G services
are available to 75% of population, only 3,00,000 people out of 20 million
mobile users have subscribed for 3G services.
Cultural/religion: for
some strict religious people using Internet is something not supported by
religion as they think it will attract people towards religiously forbidden
practices. Even in some provinces, in remote areas, people are reluctant and
refrain seeing TV, thinking is not allowed by religion because it broadcasts
music or dancing and women without Hijab. All these refer to how different
people interpret the religion differently.
Literacy: Only 28%
of the population can read and write. This means 78% of the population cannot
read and write and it is a very wide gap in terms of digital divide.
Gender: Traditionally women has rarely control
and decision making authority over family economy. A vast majority of women are
housewife and are not employed so they have no purchasing power to buy smart
phone and computers. In addition literacy rate among women is 12%. With this
situation the divide is very obvious among men and women. The situation is
changing rapidly among school age girls as they compose 46% of pupils across
the country.
Do these numbers include both mobile and desktop ICT? I wonder if you might see a shift toward mobile (cheaper) and therefore more people going online through their cellphones?
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ReplyDeleteYes, it does include both. You are right, mobile internet users are growing fast after mobile companies started to provide 3G services. Currently, Only 380,000 Out of 21.7 million mobile subscribers use mobile internet (3G).
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