Bridging the digital divide means bridging the basics

I found this post on the Global Voices Online website, outlining a few products introduced to Africa in order to start bridging the technological divide. Have a look at the post and brows through the links.

Even though these products seem like great ideas and could theoretically bridge the technological divide, this issue must also be looked at from a more social and cultural context, and not purely from material (technological) point of view.

In my view, literacy is the largest divide which needs to be tackled. The use of information technology is based on the English language, without which we can hardly work a computer.

Either operating system have to adapt to the various languages and this is close to impossible, especially in Africa with its extreme amount of diversity, or the English language has to be pushed into these social contexts. This raises a multitude of ethical, political and practical problems, which I do not want to address in this post, but the bottom line is, that bridging the technological divide is not as easy as introducing a new device and making it physically accessible; that accessibility has to then be practically used by citizens who understand how to use these devices and for what purposes to use them.

Have a further look at this link and watch this spot, I get the feeling that I will be discussing this issue again.