According to latest estimates, there are
about 240 million people worldwide
with access to 1.5 billion Web
pages on the Internet. Most of the users are in
North America and Europe, while the Middle
East, some areas of the Far East and Africa
bring up the rear with the least access to the Web.
Michel Kilsy, managing director and chief
IT consultant of Internet Facilities, notes that
the world is facing two basic truths: “First, the
Internet is truly a global phenomenon and, second,
that phenomenon has hardly touched
our region.” The Middle East in general
needs to look to other models to increase
Internet penetration and connectivity, including
higher bandwidth and embracing wireless
communications brought in by outside
investors. “All around us, in ways and forms
that we have been too sluggish to fully appreciate,
new digitally based economic arrangements
are changing how people work together
and alone; how they communicate and
relate; how they consume and relax.”
Some IT analysts, such as Dialog’s
Jacques Hakimian, are more upbeat about
this country’s e-prospects and estimate that
Internet data traffic between Lebanon and the
rest of the world, already among the highest
in the region, may soon have annual growth
rates in excess of 100% and continue such
growth rates for years to come. “The rise of
the Internet changes many things about how
‘information works’ are distributed,” says
Hakimian. “The Internet should become a
great economic engine for Lebanon, just as it
has become for the USA.”
The case in point is the unheralded growth
in the business-to-consumer (B2C) market. For
instance, where previously there were not enough
artists in
any one place
for the record
stores to carry their
music, now, via the Internet
and the plethora of music sites, artists
can reach audiences anywhere.
The two facets of the digital economy,
ecommerce and the information revolution
that is the driving force behind ecommerce,
are growing and changing at breathtaking
speed. “The ecommerce wave is having
a major impact on the world economy,
thereby fundamentally altering the way we
produce, consume and communicate, and
that is why Lebanon must use its collective
will to embrace and keep abreast of the
new technology,” says Hakimian.
Research shows that the Lebanese
Internet industry, estimated at $20 million
in 1999, could exceed $50 million by
2003 with the expected 140% rise in users.
“We are currently at 85,000 users,” says
Hakimian. “Our potential is of the order of
400,000. And that increase will drive commerce
on the Internet.”
But while the benefits that can arise from full
participation in the information economy are not
limited to the world’s developed nations, for
much of the world, ecommerce and the
movement to a digital economy in general are
constrained by a lack of critical infrastructure.
Hakimian believes that, ultimately, any success
in Lebanese ecommerce will largely
depend on an effective partnership between the
private and public sectors, with the private sector
in the lead.
Furthermore, economies, whether virtual
or traditional brick and mortar, have also
always been a function of geopolitical variables.
And across the region, there is hope that
the new crop of leaders, from Jordan’s King
Abdullah to Morocco’s King Mohammed to
Syria’s Bashar Assad, will bring social,
political and economic change. A new cadre
of young, western-educated Arab leaders
whose focus on economic and democratic
reforms could mark a historic departure from
the ideological leadership of their fathers and
usher in a new era in the Middle East.
As patron of the Syrian Computer
Society, Bashar Assad has worked to
spread computer use in his country. He
wants to move Syria from a Middle East
backwater, where Internet access is available
only to the elite and cell phones operate
in only a few urban centers, to the fast
lane of the information highway.
“The economy is the most important thing
on his agenda,” says Riad Abbas, professor
of light electronics and IT systems at the
University of Damascus. “To him, the
Internet is not so much a value in and of itself,
but rather that computerization is the basis for
economic progress.” Syria, notes Abbas,
will now be looking at ways to make the transition
from an agricultural economy to an
economy based on high-tech.
Certainly compared to Syria, Lebanon with
its cheaper connection fees and “Internet for
all” philosophy represents something of a
cyber heaven. But in relation to the West’s
sophisticated B2B Net-tools and its embrace
of e-consumerism, Lebanon is still the poorhouse
in the global village. In this era of
change, time and regional stability will tell if
Lebanon can rise from virtual purgatory.
