Representatives from the Arab countries will meet in Dubai to attempt to bridge the widening Internet & Technology gap between the Middle East and the rest of the world.
| Be careful what you wish for. |
 Dubai will host the region's second annual Government Technology (GT) Summit and Exhibition on November 19th. A total of 11 Arab countries, including all the Gulf states, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria and Yemen will take part in the gathering, and focus on challenging issues in technology facing the governments in the Arab world.
| The internet is information. Islam doesn't thrive on information. It thrives on the Koran. |
The Middle East ranks 6 out of the 7 regions of the world in terms of the population of Internet users, according to a recent Internet World Statistics report, lagging behind Africa, and scraping in ahead of Australia in last place.
| They're referring to numbers of users there, not to percentage of population. Australia has fewer people than the Arab world. |
| People in the U.S. below the poverty line have a higher internet use than people in the Middle East. |
The question is, will the attending decision-makers be capable of leading their respective countries out of the current bleak state for the Middle East?
| Do they, in fact, want to? |
Officials in communications, commerce, education, finance, health, infrastructure and public works are expected to attend - but will they rise above the bureaucracy and status quo to generate a shift towards economies that are driven efficiently by electronic business?
Back in the early 70s more than one IT system was developed around the fact that executives wouldn't touch a keyboard. Then a few began to realize that their competitors with info savvy CEOs were wiping their clocks and suddenly MBA spreadsheets were all the rage.
In the Arab world, tho, you've got a lot of high status and wannabe-high status males who won't even answer the phone themselves. At least they didn't 20 yrs ago. I guess their kids/grandkids with web enabled cell phones and pr0n downloading skills might make the transition, but somehow I'm doubtful. |
Penetration Problems
 In terms of the percentage of Internet users in each region's population, the Middle East also ranks 6th with 10.8% population penetration. North America ranks highest in population penetration at 69.5%, and Africa is last (7th) with 3.5%.
Lebanon has 700,000 registered Internet users as of one year ago, or 15.4% penetration. The UAE's 1,400,000 users, or 35.1% penetration is the highest among Arab countries. Israel's 3,700,000 users, or 51.1% penetration is the highest in the Middle East. At the bottom of the barrel are Iraq, Yemen, and Syria. With the continuing state of chaos in Iraq, only 36,000 internet users are reported, tallying up to a miserable 0.1% population penetration. Only 1% of Yemen's population has access to the Internet, as do only 5.6% of Syria's population. Use of communication and information technology in the Arab region still lags behind that of landlines and mobiles. |