Document # UNCTAD/SDTE/ECB/2003/1

According to statistics charted in this paper, the global number of Internet users continued to grow in 2002, reaching 591 million people at year's end. The annual rate of growth, however, slowed from 27.3% to 20%. This trend was visible in all regions except Oceania, where the rate of growth of the Internet population increased from 10.8% to 14.9%. These figures also indicate that developing countries continue to experience faster growth in the number of Internet users, partly because of their demographic patterns (younger populations and faster overall population growth). At the end of 2002, developing countries had 32% of the world's Internet users, up from 28% in 2001. If current trends continue, UNCTAD concludes, Internet users in developing countries could constitute 50% of the world total in the next 5 years.

Slightly less than 10% of the world's population had access to the Internet by the end of 2002. Yet, while in developed countries about one-third of the population uses the Internet, in the developing world the corresponding figure is 8 times lower. Wide differences persist within each group of countries. Countries with comparable income levels, such as Nigeria and Togo, may show Internet penetration rates that vary by as much as a factor of 25. Colombia and Mexico, on the other hand, have identical Internet penetration rates but vastly different per-capita incomes. UNCTAD found similar contrasts in every region of the world.

This paper provides data on women's participation in Internet use for selected countries. In general, these data indicate no relationship between a country's level of economic development and women's share in the total number of Internet users. Hong Kong and China rank among the 5 most egalitarian countries, which have achieved virtually equal participation. And 3 developed countries (France, Italy, and Germany) rank among those with the lowest score. However, the report stresses, the results of the exercise would probably have been much less encouraging if the sample had included a larger number of developing countries, particularly from Africa and the Middle East, where women tend to represent less than the 35% of the total Internet user population.

One set of data provided here indicates that the total number of hosts around the world increased by 16.48% between January 2002 and January 2003 (Internet Software Consortium 2003). This is less than the 34% increase that the same survey detected the previous year, but points to the Internet's continued growth. North America and Europe account for as much as 89% of all the Internet hosts in the world. This report points to vast differences in the concentration of Internet hosts relative to populations. While in 2002 the number of Internet users per 10,000 people was 53 times larger in North America than in Africa, in the same year the proportion between the numbers of Internet hosts per 10,000 people living in those regions was 984 to 1. In other words, UNCAD claims, the relatively few people who use the Internet in developing countries compete among themselves for access to a proportionally smaller number of computers connected to the Internet, and they have access to little locally hosted Internet content.

This paper also offers detailed comparisons of different sources of trend information, such as ITU data as opposed to Internet Software Consortium data and Environmental Resource Inventory (ERI) data as opposed to Natural Resource Inventory (NRI).

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To access the full report, visit the UNCTAD site. The 228-page report may be downloaded as a whole or chapter-by-chapter it is available in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish.

UNCTAD site; and "Global Digital Opportunities: National Strategies of "ICT for Development", by Frederick S. Tipson and Claudia Frittelli, The Markle Foundation.