It may seem odd that DigitalDivide.org has identified Indonesia as the best staging ground for the innovations needed to close the Digital Divide on a worldwide basis. After all, the fourth largest country has been excluded from the surge in technology-fueled growth that has transformed Northeast Asia, South Asia and most of the rest of Southeast Asia.
But it is precisely because Indonesia has been a digital laggard that it has the greatest potential now to leapfrog into the ranks of digital innovators. Plus consider these factors:
- As the world’s fourth largest nation (235 million inhabitants) it can operate in large economies of scale.
- It is has progressive business-friendly government.
- It is democratic, and a more open society that most realize, thus making it a ripe candidate for creative open-source solutions that can be realized once normal Indonesians gain access to broadband.
- It is as the outset of its mobile phone revolution, allowing it to copy best practices from India and other nations which have worked out how to turn cell phones into a pathway to high-speed internet. The multinational corporations in IT, telco and finance sectors have the incentives, ability and willingness to transfer these best-practices into Indonesia.
- It has the greatest potential of market growth than any other Southeast Asian countries by far. Indonesian growth for 2008 is predicted at 6 ½%, that’s as high as you can find anywhere in Southeast Asia.
- It is open to foreign investment, but only if foreign investors support Indonesia’s own needs.
- It is has a far more pervasive, wily and creative developer community than most realize.
- Because Indonesia is the major source of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in Southeast Asia by intergovernmental investors, these investors can help generate the subsidies and public-private partnerships needed to induce commercial providers to serve the poor.
- The Indonesian government has paid its debts to the IMF, created reforms (such as giving independence to its central bank) for financial transparency, and in other way is able to reduce risks that once caused investors to flee from Indonesia.
- Indonesia has Investor Group Against Digital Divide (IGADD), a coalition of stakeholder organizations that has the ability to aggregate the talents of its business community, its academic institutions, its cooperative movement, et al, all on behalf of a sustainable business model for “meaningful broadband”. The most important thing about IGADD is the crucial role of its co-chaiman, Ilham Habibie, the son of a respected technology-minded former Indonesian president. I’ll write a blog about Ilham tomorrow.
The stakeholder group which will be our focus in this effort is the investor community – private and public investors from within Indonesia itself as well as those based outside the country. They form IGADD, chaired by a prominent business leader, Dr. Ilham A. Habibie. IGADD serves as a counterpart to the National ICT Center, composed of Indonesia’s government ministries concerned with the spread of technology. Combining public-policy innovation with innovations drawn from corporate research laboratories around the world, this initiative holds great promise for benefiting Indonesia.
And it will generate the innovations needed in other forgotten places in Asia, the middle East Africa and Latin American which have so far stumbled in their efforts to close Digital Divide.
IGADD 