Global Policy Forum

By Geoff Kitney

When Federal Government ministers today are presented with a plan to give Australia a leading role in extending the reach of the Internet age to the world's poor, they will get a passionate plea for help from someone with a unique insight into the problem.

Dr Mamphela Ramphele, recently appointed managing director of the World Bank, has first-hand experience of poverty, dispossession and political powerlessness. She is a child of apartheid-divided South Africa, veteran of the black conscience movement, former lover of its murdered leader Steve Biko (and mother of his son) and one-time political prisoner, banned and banished for seven years by the white government.

Dr Ramphele makes no apologies for the fact that she speaks bluntly and with feeling. She goes to Canberra with a strong message for the Howard Government about what she believes it could do to take the lead in helping bridge the growing divide between the information technology rich developed world and the technology dispossessed developing world. She wants the Australian Government to direct a small portion of its large Budget surplus to fund a World Bank-sponsored scheme, involving Australian companies and academic institutions, to harness the power of information technology to "leapfrog" the world's poor over inept and corrupt local governments to a place in the modern world. Dr Ramphele will put formally to the Treasurer, Mr Costello, and the Foreign Minister, Mr Downer, an idea floated recently by the Australian-born president of the World Bank, Mr James Wolfensohn, for a feasibility study into using the Internet to deliver health, education and community building to developing nations.

"This project is Australia-specific," Dr Ramphele said. "We are looking to Australia as a major player in the Southern Hemisphere to address the poverty challenges and the information and digital divide challenges in the Southern Hemisphere. "This issue goes to the heart of what it means to be a member of the global community. "You have a comparative advantage which must be examined and used to give Australia a lift in terms of becoming a more serious global player than it has been so far." She said the proposal would see the World Bank, the Australian Government, major corporations such as Telstra with technological skills, the banks with finance and academic institutions providing content for Internet sites working in partnership to build capabilities in poor communities.

"We are not talking about Australia giving in the form of charity to the developing world," she said. "We are talking about Australia making its global voice heard through this engagement. "Your country does not sit comfortably when you have got instability not so far to the north of you. That instability will continue to be there until we have got a higher level of human development and respect for human rights."

Dr Ramphele is a strong advocate of the World Bank's role and a critic of those who see the bank as part of some sort of globalisation conspiracy. "I am in this business because I truly believe there are exciting opportunities for us as humanity to rise to and to really make this world better," she added. "I've seen it happen in my own country. You have to be an optimist to survive the dark hours of apartheid and still believe that you will see a better day."

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