Introduction

"What do I think of Western Civilization? I think it would be a very good idea."

-Mohandas K. Ghandi

A developing country is one that has the potential for economic strength, but lacks skills, capital or technical equipment to immediately exploit its own resources. People of these nations may have poor healthcare, limited education and inadequate nutrition. The developing nations are those at the low- and low-to-medium end of the United Nations Development Index (UNDP, 2002).

Some developing countries are in a post-colonial state of development, or dependencies that are gradually distancing themselves from governing nation-states. The poorest nations are the ones that did not benefit from 19^th century globalization (colonization) because they had no resources to be exploited.

The most important aspect of globalization for a developing country is the sustainable management of its own socio-cultural and natural resources. The growth of the Internet as an influence in globalization runs the risk of replacing the diverse cultural resources of individual countries with a few dominating languages and cultures.

Developing countries frequently encounter three different barriers to development: political, technological and social. Development aid requires political will to go ahead and to actually be delivered as intended. However, the spread of technologies such as the Internet and the World Wide Web make information easier to obtain and can span national boundaries. The general populace can be empowered and to an extent, many political problems sidestepped. The deployment of technology can be for monetary gain, or more importantly as highlighted at the recent IT 2002 Summit in Kathmandu (Rao, 2002), can be deployed to solve social problems.

The emphasis on growing social capital rather than monetary-oriented capitalism raises further problems. Investors may be more reluctant to provide funding for projects where they see no direct financial return. Although the developing world represents a large proportion of the world's population, it is not economically strong enough to provide a lucrative market to be exploited.

In the developed world, we have perhaps become used to the constant, rapid change in technology, particularly Information Technology (IT). If the developing world were starting behind the developed nations, how would it ever catch up? The answer lies in the ability to bypass incremental steps on the technology curve - what has been termed here the leapfrog effect. Developing nations can use this effect to their advantage to keep pace with advancements in technology without necessarily incurring the economic impact of incremental change.