g worse for the poorest countries.

During the ILO Symposium on Multimedia Convergence held in January 1997, Wilfred
Kiboro, Managing Director and Chief Executive of Nation Printers and Publishers
Ltd., Kenya, stated:

"Information technology needs to be brought to affordable levels. I have a dream
that perhaps in our lifetime in Africa, we will see villagers being able to
access [the] Internet from their rural villages where today there is no water
and no electricity. We hope they will be able to watch Sky News on their
portable televisions, but maybe this is just a dream."

For the media particularly, there is an abyss between the 'info-rich' and the
'info-poor'. In many African countries, the circulation of newspapers is very
low compared to the population figures, and each copy is read by at least twenty
people. According to Wilfred Kiboro, who noticed in his company a drop in the
newspapers' price thanks to multimedia convergence, distribution costs could
drop with the use of a printing system by satellite which could do away with the
need for transporting newspapers by truck throughout the country.

Nevertheless, multimedia convergence in particular and the globalization of the
economy in general has put the developing countries in a position of inferiority
because the printing and radio-television broadcasting means are in the hands of
a few main western groups. Cultural problems exist alongside economic problems.
Paradoxically, information relating to Africa and broadcast for Africans doesn't
come from the African continent, but is broadcast by westerners who transmit
their own vision of Africa, without any real perception of its economic and
social situation.

Some developing countries - such as Mauritania - rely on the Web to regain
prestige, as explained by Emmanuel Genty and Jean-Pierre Turquoi in the daily
French newspaper Le Monde of March 30, 1998. Mauritania presented its Government
Official Site at the headquarters of the World Bank during the Days of the
Consultative Group for Mauritania (Journees du Groupe consultatif pour la
Mauritanie) on March 25-27, 1998. This event took place following the media
focus on the continued existence of slavery in this country, despite the fact
that it has been officially abolished for years. The website is intended to be
the country's shop window for tourists and foreign investors. On the other hand,
the use of the Internet inside the country is heavily regulated by