December 10, 2018
Mexico Wants Internet Access for All. Getting Everyone Online Could Reduce Poverty, Too
contributor:The Conversation
The Internet has been a right in Mexico since the nation’sConstitutionwas amended in 2013 to guarantee universal online access. Yet just 47 percent of households therereported having Internet in 2016, the most recent data available.
To get more citizens online, the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto has investednearly US$1 billionin its “墨西哥Conectado” initiative since 2013, adding broadband connections to libraries, schools, hospitals and other public facilities nationwide, particularly in poor and rural areas.
Ensuring that all Mexicans have access to the Internet would do more than just making good on the Constitution’s unfulfilled promise – it would also give the country’s economy a boost, myresearchshows.
Internet Access Helps People Escape Poverty
Forty-three percent of Mexicans lived in poverty in 2016, according to the most recent data from theMexican Institute of Statistics and Geography. That’s down just three percentage points from 2010. Poverty rates have changed relatively little in Mexico over the past20 years, despite ambitiousanti-poverty programsofferingcash assistance, food, health care and educational opportunities to the poorest families. With its digital inclusion strategy, Mexico hopes to nudge social mobility upward. That’s because Internet access and poverty reduction are strongly connected, as mystudy of 92 developing countries, including Mexico, confirms.
The Internet is now all butessentialto economic mobility in a digital world. Studentsstudy and learn online. Unemployed people need the Internet to find and apply for jobs. Factory workers use it toorganizefor betterlabor rights. Online training sessions teach corporate employees new skills, helping them get promoted or change fields.Online resourcescan help farmers plan for weather changes.
Internet access makes iteasier to move up in lifeforother reasons, too. Social media connects people to others outside their immediate circle, for example, and gives them information about their rights as citizens. Acknowledging the link betweentechnology and poverty reduction, the United Nations made one of itsglobal development goals for 2030to “significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet.”
Digital Divide Between Rich and Poor
In the United States, about95 percent of peoplehaveaccess to the Internet. Rates are similar in Germany, Sweden, Argentina and other wealthy countries. Yet billions of people worldwide – the vast majority of thempoor, many of them in印度和中国– still lack Internet access. Last year was the first timethat more than half the global populationhad access to the Internet, according to Internet World Statistics.
In Mexico,63 percentare considered Internet users. The roughly 50 million people who remain offline are also generally the country’spoorest residents.
In Baja California Sur, one ofMexico’s richest states, for example, 75 percent of households had Internet connections in 2016. But just 13 percent of households in Chiapas, a southern state wherethree-quarters of the people live in poverty, were connected to the Internet. In neighboring Oaxaca state, where poverty is also very high, only 20 percent of households are online.
Mexico’s government understands that the digital divide between rich and poor is a problem for the country’ssocial and economic development. In 2013 it became the first country in the world to make Internet access a constitutional right with government deemed provider of access. Recent court rulings inFranceandCosta Ricahave determined that the government cannot restrict Internet access. But Mexico is unique in holding its government responsible for providing that service, as it would water service or public education. Two independent regulatory bodies, the Federal Economic Competition Commission and the Federal Telecommunications Institute, were created to enforce the 2013 law.
Getting Mexico Online
A reform that broke up business magnate Carlos Slim’s communications monopoly in 2013 aided in this effort byreducing prices for data plans on mobile phonesandwireless connections at home. This helped more lower- and middle-class Mexicans get online.
But Internet penetration is still scarce in the country’s poor rural south. To help those communities, the government has created some7,200computing hubsoffering free Internet access and instructors to help visitors with basic skills like navigating the web, making resumes and the like. The focus on computer literacy acknowledges that first-time Internet users and older Mexicans may need hands-on help tobenefit from the economic opportunities available online.
In heavily indigenous parts of Mexico, the teachers’ challenge is greater. I interviewed staff and visitors at a publiccomputer learning centerin the Oaxacan mountain village of Tlahuitoltepec, where locals speakMixe. This Mesoamerican language is used by some 100,000 people across the Mexican states ofOaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco and Veracruz, yet there are few websites in Mixe and it is not among the languages Google translates. Instructors in such places struggle simply finding enough indigneous-language content online to make surfing the web rewarding and fun.
Anestimated 35 percentof Oaxaca residents speak indigenous languages. The proportionis similar in neighboring Chiapas. For many of the Mexicans who live in the areas with lowest Internet penetration, then, Spanish is asecond language. Others don’t speak it at all. Myfindingssuggests that language remains a barrier to the country’sdigital inclusionstrategy.
Getting Students Online
Mexico also has work to do when it comes to students. Since 2013,over 5,000 rural public schools have gotten Internet connectionsand710,000 tablets were distributed to classroomsas part of the government’s Mexico Conectado program.Studentsare also big users of the new government-funded computing hubs. Even so, onlyhalf of all Mexican public elementary schoolshave Internet connections, according to a recentgovernment report.
Getting all citizens online in this sprawling developing country, as Mexico’s government is constitutionally required to do, will be a massive challenge. But my research indicates that bridging the digital divide will pay off economically in the long run. Giving the poorest Mexicans Internet access provides them more opportunity to move out of poverty. And that’s good for the entire country.
About the Author
Jack J. Barry is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Connecticut.
This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
