Overcoming the Digital Divide in Developing Countries An Examination of Ghana's Strategies to Promote Universal Access to Information Communication Technologies (ICTs)

The emergence of information communication technologies (ICTs) in developing countries has been hailed as a major step toward a solution to the problem of the underdevelopment of many of them. Obstacles such as corruption, delays in service delivery, lack of public sector accountability, and so on can many believe be overcome with ICT: particularly, the Internet and cell or mobile phones. Consequently, governments in these countries continue to expend a lot of their meager resources on ensuring the effective development and use of ICTs. In spite of this, a major problem that these countries face is what has been described as the digital divide. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to examine the government's attempt to address this problem including how the problem has been defined, the steps that are being taken to heal it, the implied challenges, if any, facing the government, and how it can address these challenges.