CTO/05
2026 2026
FEATURE ARTICLE
CONNECTING THE COMMONWEALTH TO THE INTERNET: WHY THE RIGHT VISION NEEDS A HARDER LOOK AT MEANINGFUL CONNECTIVITY
BY: PROFESSOR H SAMA NWANA MANAGING PARTNER CENERVA,
BY SHAWN GARCIA The previous familiar figure is 2.6 billion people offline, a number the ITU and its Broadband Commission reported steadily across 2023 and 2024. The current ITU number is 2.2 billion people offline. The ITU reports that the drop of 400 million reflects a mix of genuine connectivity gains — particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia — and a revised measurement methodology that shifted from infrastructure proxies to actual usage surveys. So, the ITU argues the drop is partly real progress and partly better counting. These figures are troubling enough on their own. They represent roughly a third of humanity with no internet access at all, and around 1.8 billion of those people live in rural areas. In a recent edition of The InfoSphere, Leonard Obonyo and Dineil Ignatius set out the CTO's vision with admirable clarity. Connectivity, Collaboration and Partnership (CCP), they argued, are the three pillars of inclusive digital transformation across the Commonwealth, and the goal is a future in which no citizen is left behind. The vision is sound and the pillars are the right ones. This follow-up takes up where that piece ended, with the question it left open: if the vision is correct and the commitment is real, why is progress stalling? The honest answer is that we have been measuring the problem too generously, and we have underestimated how hard the work ahead actually is. THE NUMBER NOT USING THE INTERNET ‘MEANINGFULLY’ IS BIGGER THAN WE ADMIT
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker