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Rome (Agenzia Fides) - In 2010 in Sub-Saharan Africa only six people out of 100 used the internet. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the the Movement Fighting World Hunger (MFWH) has installed 10 satellite dishes, this index decreased by 0.5%. These figures are disturbing when you consider that in the Western world Internet access varies between 49% in Europe and 70% in the United States of America. The world's poorest countries such as Niger, Sierra Leone and Democratic Republic of Congo do not reach 1%. The information and technology gap represents an obstacle to social and economic development in a society like the present one, since it prevents information from circulating and thus, there are less opportunities for these people to grow in terms of global access to education and awareness of their rights. Fides was told by the MFWH – the organisation that has been fighting the digital divide for a decade via specific projects – that it is not just simply access to technology, but also the special ways of help and support such as tele-medicine and distance learning. MFWH, in order to broaden the radius of their work, founded “internet4dev” to provide their expertise and services to those in all the entities involved in the development sector by providing an affordable and efficient internet service through the satellite technology. (AP) (19/2/2011 Agenzia Fides)
