The advent of the information age in the mid-twentieth century promised to flatten the whole world in such manner that no physicality could claim ‘invisibility’ due to the limiting barriers of space and time.

And true to that promise, the internet opened up the planet in more ways than one can name. Since its launch in the early nineties, the World Wide Web has significantly reduced ‘distances’ amidst people and places.

Admittedly, the internet has assumed the role of a bridge-builder between some individuals and the institutions they interact with. In sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, the mobile revolution has created new possibilities in wireless telephony and data services in locations which had hitherto lacked fixed telecommunications infrastructure.

Nowadays, rural dwellers from some of the world’s remotest outposts are easily reachable through seamless mobile networks provided by service operators at a fraction of the cost which their urban counterparts were charged for utilising telephone lines just a decade ago. In addition, new technologies are constantly being rolled out to meet an ever-increasing demand for the mobile internet even as social networking gained global appeal.

From coastal China to the interior of India, a fairly huge proportion of the population of the largest urban agglomerations in these two high population countries are using the internet to achieve connectivity that is positively impacting their data-driven livelihoods and lifestyles.

Despite the plethora of benefits which the internet has created, inequality has created a new type of social grouping: the e-haves and, the e-have-nots. The separation in status between the two groups is generally called a digital divide.

Thus, a technology originally meant to reduce ‘distances’ has now greatly magnified them. However, a will always finds a way. Inclusiveness is the answer to the challenges of ‘internet injustice’. The subsequent paragraphs will show how this is achievable within the framework of the post-2015 development agenda.

The digital divide can be viewed from two angles: intra- and internationally. The former mainly entails gaps in access to information and communication technologies between members of a common socialisation due to income inequalities. The term ‘access’ used herein refers to opportunity for use, i.e. right to entry.

In this case, uneven growth in varied geopolitical settings has led to marked variances in socioeconomic mobility betwixt rural citizens and their urban contemporaries. This situation certainly applies to many postcolonial societies where administrative coupled with agglomerative forces favour towns over farms as the dominant recipient of investable reserves.

Yet this kind of gaps is not limited to poor countries. A 2013 survey on the percentage of individuals using the internet by the International Telecommunication Union reveals that there are still huge pockets of underserved populations in the United States which was estimated at almost 20%―60 million people approximately.

Minorities such as new immigrants, refugees, the unemployed, the elderly and the disabled majorly account for the fraction of the unconnected. It follows, therefore, that affordability rather than availability and; secondly, content rather than context play the greater role in determining the level of access to the internet in some advanced economies.

On the other hand, the latter i.e. digital divide seen from an international aspect mostly explains a gulf in the use of information and communication technologies amongst countries due to developmental disparities. The term ‘use’ used herein refers to exploitation for gain, i.e. a means to an end.

While advanced nations are deploying currently available technical resources in the emerging global knowledge economy for space-based applications and other high-tech purposes such as telesurgery, precision agriculture, cloud computing and e-government, the least developed countries are still struggling with the teething troubles arising from their nascent embracement of the essentialities of the electronic epoch.

The corollary to this complex concept is that access does not necessarily translate to use. A country may experience limitations in providing access to a considerable proportion of its population yet may still be able to use the internet for beneficial purposes than another country having greater access.

This rationalises why an economic powerhouse like Italy with a nominal gross domestic product of almost 2 trillion US dollars still has roughly half of its citizens who are non-internet users whereas Malaysia despite its status as a newly industrialising country has attained over 65% connectivity, one of the highest in the Asia-Pacific region.

Nonetheless, Italy has been able to capitalise on its intensive information infrastructure for cutting-edge scientific and technological breakthroughs as evidenced by its successful outer space programmes than has Malaysia.

There is no denial of the fact that the relative unevenness in the quality of life enjoyed by people within and between societies unfairly concentrates the benefits of the internet on a select few to the detriment of the overwhelming majority, thereby reinforcing already existing social imbalances.

As always, the consequences of ‘internet injustice’ do not occur in a vacuum: it affects real persons―mostly households at the base of the pyramid who are economically marginalised. Accordingly, it is critically necessary that measures be proposed to objectively outline the identities and interests of these disadvantaged populations before solutions are proffered.

In view of this, it is pertinent to state that solutions which would adequately address these multifarious challenges must be responsive to change because demographics and technologies are always in flux.

Hence the subsequent bridging of the gaps in the current digital society is consequent upon the articulation of doable proposals that initiate a mutually beneficial interplay between the divergent elements of today’s fast-evolving internet society.

Firstly, consumers, producers and regulators are the backbone of any industrial establishment. Hence the impact that they make cannot be overemphasised. Consumers include users and non-users (since non-users are potential users) while producers are basically operators and manufacturers.

In the light of this classification, these players should be considered as equal partners in the pursuit of equitable access and use for all. The tendency to designate regulators as entities with inviolable powers for decision-making is not only reproachable, but also, unsustainable.

Legal frameworks should unequivocally spell out the rights and responsibilities of all stakeholders, and; such laws should not empower one player more than it does the rest. Iteratively, stakeholders should be entitled and enabled to play their assigned roles without interference.

This is achievable through the creation of a peer review mechanism that grants any stakeholder the prerogative to assess the performance of another stakeholder. Moreover, incentives should be established for any stakeholder who makes public the bad practices of its peers. This will gradually lead to a symbiotic relationship that will eventually guarantee an open cyber ecosystem at all levels.

Secondly, greater collaboration must be encouraged between operators and manufacturers. Both producers are the source of extensive market research that has generated invaluable information on individual and corporate consumption in the past. Ideally, the sharing of information between these important players will help in identifying patterns and trends which can be used to forecast the needs of the next billion of internet users.

This data can be channelled toward the preparation of recommendations which the relevant agencies of the public sector can then work upon. Policies and programmes that liberalises the market while ensuring free competition are strategically sustainable for reducing digital gaps as typified by the Nigerian case study.

Prior to the liberalisation of the Nigerian telecommunications sector in 2001, teledensity for fixed lines was put at a dismal 0.71. Upon deregulation of the sector, that country’s regulatory body―the Nigerian Telecommunication Commission―granted GSM licences to both public and private companies and extended the framework of these licences to include fixed telephony, VSAT and internet five years later.

The result was phenomenal. By February of 2016, teledensity had surged to a record 106.15. Although the mobile revolution has had a significant impact on access to the internet in Africa, it is still at the early stage.

In Nigeria and Zimbabwe, internet browsing on the mobile platform accounted for almost two-thirds of web-based traffic in 2012, essentially putting these two countries in the number 1 and 2 spots of global mobile internet browsing respectively.

These results show that liberalisation which dismantles monopolism by replacing it with competition does work. The future of the internet is indeed mobile. Moreover, the contrast in the characteristics of communities (rural and urban) and countries (developed and developing) suggests that dissimilar geographies require well-tailored approaches for universal access and productive use.

The methods and materials that worked in North America may not yield favourable outcomes when adopted for use in West Africa. Therefore, innovative solutions that will adequately address digital gaps must take into account the differences in identities and interests of people and places.

Not all rural areas are the same and need the same level of service. The key to achieving success when transferring technologies from one market to another is ‘adaptability.’

Additionally, governments and their regulatory regimes should partner with the private sector to develop domestic variants of foreign technologies that are suitable for use under developing country conditions such as erratic electricity supply and extreme environmental situations.

This will stimulate the growth of a domestic industry that will develop home-grown talent for the production of local content. Again, additional tools that solve other indigenous challenges should be incorporated into the development of these hybrid technologies.

The introduction of hardy feature phones with torchlight capabilities by Nokia into the Nigerian market boosted demand for mobile telephony among low-income earners.

The marginal benefits which the lighting feature of the device afforded users contributed to their widespread popularity. What is more, access rights should be championed by civil society as a human rights priority. Programmes for creating awareness on access and use should be carefully constructed to inform the government and citizenry that the current digital divide, like gender inequality, is a violation of the fundamental rights of people.

Given that Africa is a relatively youthful continent with more than half of its entire population aged 35 or younger, the present leadership of our political authorities must encourage greater youth participation in the decision-making processes of cyber-related issues for the purpose of inclusion.

Another area where attention should be directed is that of sustainable structures. These are solid infrastructure and similar investments that engender an enabling environment for universal access with the ultimate goal of incubating an evolving ecosystem for the productive use of the internet.

Installations such as the ground-breaking Square Kilometre Array fall under this categorisation. The SKA is a multilateral project that is building radio telescopes across international borders. It is being developed in phases by a global consortium of countries and corporations towards a better understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe.

With central stations in South Africa and Australia, the SKA venture will also operate outstations in 8 partner African countries. The implication of this synergy is reassuringly overarching.

Hopefully, the project will greatly build the structural and functional capacities of many African countries. It will achieve this by replacing out-dated information and communication technologies with new innovative ones especially those which favour an increase in internet traffic within Africa and beyond. SKA telescopes will be used to generate big data that will be processed and stored in super-servers.

Again, the enormous scale of the venture is already generating discussions within the international scientific community. In fact, the developers have started educational programmes that assist students and academics to gain core competencies in SKA-related fields.

Furthermore, the project will encourage intellectual exchange among the countries of the global South and the global North. The consequence of this synergy includes but is not limited to the diffusion of ideas and innovations which can be leveraged upon to resolve the overwhelming negative intricacies of the digital divide.

The overriding thrust of this essay is the push for an encompassing approach to solving the challenges of digital gaps through sustainable solutions that are capable of dissolving the gulf between the e-haves and the e-have-nots so much that in the shortest possible time both divergent groupings can coalesce into a singular entity, the e-have-mores.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Kolawole Talabi is a Nigerian researcher and journalist. He writes about the environment, science, culture and development.