Our world is steadily becoming a more connected one thanks to the internet. Many great successes and improvements have been brought about by it, yet there are still many developing countries that have no access to the internet. This needs to change. The main goal of bringing internet to third world countries is to bridge the digital divide. This is a socioeconomic issue that outlines the gap in access to technologies such as phones, computers, the internet and much more. At first this may seem like a simple gap of luxuries that are gained from being a first world country, but these issues are also prevalent in such countries. With the benefits in communication, education, quality of life, economic prosperity and much more, the idea that any country could not have access to the internet seems irresponsible. Bringing the internet to these countries is not a small task but it is doable. To accomplish this task we must help people understand why the internet is an invaluable resource that everyone can benefit from, understand feasible methods for spreading the internet, provide a background to help in accessing what the internet can provide, and understand and make compromises with any problems that people from such countries might find.

Before explaining why people should get behind the idea of bringing internet to third world countries, it is important to understand what benefits warrant the reason. The first being education. The human race has come a long way and collected an incomprehensible amount of knowledge. A surprisingly large amount of this is available on the internet in a very accessible form. From online video school resources such as Kahn Academy, to massive archives of encyclopedias, and everything in between, the only limit in terms of education is the person on the other end. As stated by the New York Times, in 2012, a 15-year-old named Battushig Myanganbayar aced a circuits and electronics course designed for sophomores at MIT(1). Battushig took this online course in english which was his second language. His performance proved him to have the skill of some of MIT’s top students. It was a huge step for online schooling and an even bigger one for worldwide education. If this one child could prove to be so successful, what could others with this opportunity do. The benefits, however, do not only exist in higher education. Where the internet in developing countries truly shines is in early education. One of the major issues in developing countries is illiteracy. According to UNESCO, approximately one billion people on earth are illiterate. People in developing countries make up ninety eight percent of that. In the least developed countries, the amount of illiterate people can reach up to forty nine percent(2). This means that in certain places around the world, one in every two people cannot read or write. For somebody to lack these integral skills would prove to be a major hindrance in their life. There are many online resources that provide basic education for free. These resources can exist in something as simple as a smartphone app. If a kid from a developing country simply had access to language learning games and exercises, that percentage could be reduced drastically. In a study carried out by Edinburgh University in Scotland, they discovered that children have immense potential to learn a language from birth until the age of five.(3) If this window of potential is tapped into, the average child could quite feasibly learn even two languages with ease. The resources already exist, all that is left is to provide access to those who need it. 

The second major benefit that the internet brings is massive economic potential and growth. It is plainly obvious that the internet has unimaginable potential for success and growth. A crowning example of this is the world renowned Silicon Valley in California. Silicon Valley’s “birth” is said to be around the 1970s. In only forty years, the general net worth of companies in that area exceeds hundreds of billions of dollars. While developing countries don’t have the same infrastructure that Silicon Valley has, it bodes well for the potential of the internet. Looking at success of Silicon Valley is only a small portion of the story. Where the internet truly shined is in small business and work in developing countries. In developing countries such as South Africa and Nigeria, around ninety percent of people already have phones. The inclusion of this tool in their daily life has already cause leaps and bounds in terms of economic prosperity. Before having the communicational benefits of cell phones, many farmers and fishermen would only collect what they required to live on themselves and little more. This was due to the idea that the loss of product not bought in market would be too much. Once phones were introduced fishermen and farmers could wait until they received order over the phone for their product. This allowed them to sell much more of their product and do it for cheaper. In one year, these countries experienced a 2.2 percent growth in gross domestic product. While that may seem like a small change, the economically successful first world country Germany experienced a growth of only 1.2 percent in 2016. The growth made solely by cell phones and not including natural average growth was almost double that of a first world country. If something as simple as a cell phone was able to cause that much of a growth, what could the internet accomplish. This noted success was simply due to the introduction of better communication. If the internet was involved, communication would become even better and a method for easily penetrating the world market would become available to the public. Citizens of these countries would have the opportunity to put the fruits of their trades on the world market. Websites such as etsy provide a platform like this and the possible revenue it could provide to those willing to learn could be life changing. The internet has already proven itself in terms of education and technology has shown what it can do in terms of the economy. Very little exists to show that the internet would achieve anything less than success in terms of progress in developing countries.

The third major benefit of the internet is its ability to give anybody a voice. It is a time tested fact that those with weaker economic backgrounds are more often than not marginalized and taken advantage of. Being put in this situation of weakness, their voices are suppressed to the point of non-existence. This lack of a voice prevents them showing the world the problems they face and receiving the support they deserve. As stated in the book, The Internet of Elsewhere, “The Net has the potential to give everyone a voice. However, it's not available to everyone, and that freedom must be asserted and sometimes fought for to keep.” A great example of the way the internet can empower people is the clampdown of the Egyptian government back in 2011. During that time, the people of Egypt used the internet to voice their concerns of what was happening in their country to the world. The showed the injustices that took place day in and day out to the world. In doing so, they were able to earn the support of millions around the world in their quest to right the wrongs of those in power. When the government decided to take down the internet to prevent further resistance from their people, the internet showed its true power. All of those who had used the internet to voice their concerns and find help took to the streets. A mass collection of dissatisfied people used their numbers and connections made through the internet to align a movement that would go down in history. This specific event is so important as it shows how much the internet can do. A single person can be silenced quite easily, but the power of thousands of voices can be unstoppable. The internet provides the platform to achieve a goal such as this.

With the great benefits that the internet brings with it, the main blockade that prevents the internet’s dissemination into developing countries is an actual plan to bring the required infrastructure and access to these countries. While the internet is an extremely useful and arguably “magical” resource, it doesn’t come for free. The biggest factor in what denotes a country as developing is their GDP, which is quite low in comparison to first world countries, and the internet is expensive. For an internet service provider to run a few hundred miles of cable can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and most companies aren’t willing to take the risk in spending the possible billions of dollars it could cost to bring a connection to a developing country. This doesn’t mean that it is impossible, there just needs to be people to come up with better and more feasible plans. This has already happened. Facebook, for example, has proposed to create low power consumption drones that can patrol a general area and supply a satellite connection to the internet. Google has also proposed affordable options such as satellite blimps that could send 3g signals up to a mile and have even stated their determination on the topic. “Google Inc. is deep into a multipronged effort to build and help run wireless networks in emerging markets as part of a plan to connect a billion or more new people to the Internet.” Not only would this achieve the goal of bringing internet to third world countries, but it would also synergise well with the rapidly growing accessibility of mobile phones across the world. The support of this movement by such large companies shows that this concept is not only doable, but likely profitable as well. A great way to sum this concept of massive companies profiting from this expansion is well stated by Tim Worstall, “I know we're not supposed to celebrate greed as being good these days but my own personal view is that Google can make absolutely as much money as it wants if the byproduct is those hundreds of millions moving up out of absolute poverty.” If the support of superpowers such as Facebook and Google wasn’t enough, there are a plethora of existing non-profit foundations that exist to provide internet and devices to access it to impoverished people in third world countries all around the world. One such organization is APC (Association for Progressive Communications). This is a grassroots organization with the simple goal of raising money to bring internet access to communities in third world countries and to teach the people of those areas how to use the technology they’ve been given. Although it is a small organization with less than a hundred active members, it has made a difference in communities from over 40 developing countries. This goes to show what a small group of determined people can achieve and how much more a large group has the capability of doing. The possibility to make a change already exists, all that is left is for people to take the initiative to make a difference.

Now that it is understood that the internet is a useful resource that can help every section of life in third world countries and the actual process of bringing the infrastructure to access the internet is difficult but entirely conceivable, it is important to realize that use of the internet is not a natural skill. Many statistics have shown use of the internet is exceedingly low in comparison to the population of the country it is in. A great example of this is Kenya, through recent movements, enough internet infrastructure has been put into place to provide internet to around two thirds of the population yet less than half actually access it. These statistics have been used to push the idea that people in third world countries have no need for the internet, but this is simply not the case. Through research carried out by PEW Research, only around thirty five percent of people in developing countries with some form of access to the internet can afford a computer to leverage such infrastructure and even fewer have the knowledge necessary to use use such technology. As stated by Aleph Molinari, “the one laptop per child model is unsustainable… just imagine the carbon footprint of 4.3 billion laptops, that is how much would be required to supply everyone without internet access a computer to reach it.” Aleph Molinari gave a Ted Talk on the matter of providing physical access to the internet and the education to truly access the information. He is the CEO of his company RIA which holds the goal of providing internet access and training to entire communities through the concept of shared workstations. With the small startup funds and staff that he began the company with, he was able to provide 140,000 people from ages thirteen to eighty three with the access and training to use the internet in a matter of a few years. 35,000 of those users even graduated from online courses they had been set to take by RIA. This admirable success was a massive step forward in the fight to bridge the digital divide as it showed how much could be done to better the lives of so many with so little. 

With every great movement, there will always be a crux that can hold it back from success. In the case of the expansion of the internet, it is simply the rejection of the internet by the people of a country. With all of the benefits that the internet could bring to a people, it is hard to believe that anyone could reject the idea, yet the majority of people in developing countries believe the internet is bad for morality. In a survey of more than 30,000 people in thirty two developing nations like India, China and Uganda, an average of forty two percent of people said that the internet was a bad influence over morality while only twenty nine percent said it was good. At first this may seem like an obvious yet trivial issue. Websites such as twitter, facebook and many other social media websites do often use foul language and adult references. This seems like something a simple child filter could fix, but the problem runs much deeper than that. The United States being the heavy contributor to the internet that it is also imbue the internet with much of its beliefs and morals. The pinnacle of which is freedom of speech. This concept scares many countries. They fear that such an overpowering sense of one country's set of morals could corrupt the ideals they wish their children to live by. The very concept of morality is what makes it so different from person to person and country to country. This conflict is so off putting to some that they see it necessary to fight off the expansion of the internet. With such a large issue that sits at the core of the internet, is there truly a solution. Many argue there is. Among those who vouch for the morality and expansion of the internet the average age sits below thirty years old. The solutions range from separated social media to moral based filters. These solutions carry many issues and problems that would lead some to disagree with their implementation. The solution that many believe to be the true and ultimate solution lies in the previously stated fact that the youth (people below the age of thirty) believe greatly in the moral benefits of the internet. If the vast majority of the emerging population is beginning to trust the internet and its potential, it isn’t unreasonable to believe that something as simple as time could solve most people’s doubts when it comes to the morality of the internet. The solution can be as simple as approaching resistant countries with the internet when the time is right. Nobody wishes to be told how to live their life and the act of forcing something as powerful and daunting as the internet on them would likely achieve nothing more that making them more resistant to the idea.

The internet is an explosive technology that has shown unbelievable success since its conception back in 1983. Many successes and failures have sprouted from this seemingly unstoppable force. From the benefits it shows in communication, and the economy to the power it can provide to any person willing to use it, the internet has show near limitless potential in its ability to bridge the digital divide and make the world a more connected one. Although there may be many daunting tasks such as the implementation of necessary infrastructure, to the plethora resources and training require to access the myriad of information the internet possesses, nothing has achieved nearly as much as the internet has in bringing people together and helping them succeed.
