African leaders voiced support on Monday for a plan asking wealthy nations to tax their cities' investment in technology to buy mobile phones and computers for poor nations.
The tax would feed a Digital Solidarity Fund, a United Nations-sponsored plan to use high-tech tools such as satellite telephones or the Internet to promote economic development in areas that lack even the most basic infrastructure.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said the digital divide — the gap between information technology availability in poor countries and rich — aggravated polarization between the wealthy North and developing nations of the South.
"It is imperative that international measures be taken," Bouteflika told a conference in Geneva.
The rich Swiss city was first to adopt the plan, putting a one percent levy on the profit made by the city's technology suppliers.
The United Nations hopes that widening access within the developing world to information technology will help eradicate poverty and build stable democracies. Poor nations back the view.
"The only way to fill in the digital divide is to empower the South with information technology equipment, telephones, fax machines, the Internet and to ensure training on how to use them," said Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade.
The "digital" tax would be adopted voluntarily, with conference officials saying several were considering following Geneva's example.
The fund was launched in 2003 in Geneva on the sidelines of a U.N. conference on spreading access to the Internet and wireless communication. It has already accumulated between four and five million euros ($6.72 million).
Once more detailed guidelines are in place on how to use the fund, 60 percent of its expected revenue would go to the world's 49 least developed countries, 30 percent to developing countries and 10 percent to projects in rich nations.
