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Preface - E-COMMERCE FOR DEVELOPMENT: PROSPECTS AND POLICY ISSUES
| Guest post by: OECD Development Centre |
Article Overview: The OECD has been a pioneer in addressing the challenges and opportunities of electronic commerce and the digital economy in the industrialised countries. It is natural then that the Development Centre should assess the scope for e-commerce in developing countries. But like the sailors in the strait of Messina, the research should avoid at once the scylla of technological pessimism — seeing an inevitably widening “digital divide” between industrialised and developing countries — and the charybdis of exaggerated claims about the Internet’s potential to resolve a host of development problems that have heretofore proved intractable.
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Free Download - BIBLIOGRAPHY - E-COMMERCE FOR DEVELOPMENT: PROSPECTS AND POLICY ISSUES By OECD Development Centre |
Preface - E-COMMERCE FOR DEVELOPMENT: PROSPECTS AND POLICY ISSUES
The OECD has been a pioneer in addressing the challenges and opportunities of
electronic commerce and the digital economy in the industrialised countries. It is natural
then that the Development Centre should assess the scope for e-commerce in developing
countries. But like the sailors in the strait of Messina, the research should avoid at once
the scylla of technological pessimism — seeing an inevitably widening “digital divide”
between industrialised and developing countries — and the charybdis of exaggerated
claims about the Internet’s potential to resolve a host of development problems that have
heretofore proved intractable.
The novelty of the Internet means that there is little historical evidence on which to
venture projections of future trends, even in the OECD countries. As industry watchers
claim, a year is very long in Internet time. E-commerce is evolving rapidly, with the corporate
landscape being continuously transformed by start-ups, acquisitions, and failures, and
with new technologies coming to market almost daily.
An analysis of its potential in developing countries has to be guided by a realistic
assessment of: i) the prospects and timeframe for improving Internet access and affordability
in low-income countries (no Internet, no e-commerce); and ii) the major sources of current
and likely future demand for e-commerce transactions and web-based services in
developing countries.
The obstacles facing developing country entrepreneurs, whether in penetrating world
markets or in expanding and diversifying sales in their domestic markets, include limited
information about market opportunities, limited access to financing, and limited capacity
to satisfy the quality, cost and logistical requirements of overseas customers. How can the
Internet and e-commerce be used to lower if not remove these barriers?
One of the key barriers identified here is the limited trust potential customers may have in
on-line developing country enterprises. The paper also points to some of the initiatives,
private and public, aimed at strengthening trust. Above all, it demonstrates the need for
sector-by-sector research on the scope for small entrepreneurs in poor countries to tap
into this new reservoir of technologies for their own benefit and that of their communities.
This paper, on which the authors based their article in the Financial Times on the day
of the Okinawa summit of the G-7, represents an early contribution to a major Development
Centre research project on e-commerce for development, under the heading “Globalising
Technologies and Domestic Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries”.
Jorge Braga de Macedo
President
OECD Development Centre
September 2000
OECD DEVELOPMENT CENTRE
Working Paper No. 164
E-COMMERCE FOR DEVELOPMENT: PROSPECTS AND POLICY ISSUES
by
Andrea Goldstein and David O’Connor
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