WHY DOES THE DIGITAL DIVIDE EXIST?
Developing countries in the Middle East face the same problems as other developing countries around the world: low levels of education and literacy, poor technology infrastructures, and a wide gap between the disposable income of the relatively few “haves” and the more numerous “have-nots.” Use of the Internet requires a fairly complex set of skills and technology. At the very least, one must have electricity, a communications line, a terminal capable of interacting across the communications lines, and (in most cases) a reasonable fluency in English (80 percent of the material on the World Wide Web is written in English; however, a movement to replace some English-language Web pages with Arabic-language ones is gaining momentum). All of these factors contribute to the digital divide. In Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East, government opposition to ICT has been a major factor in limiting Internet access. Many Middle Eastern leaders view the Internet as a Western-based age
