Bridging the digital divide in the G20: Skills for the new age

Krish Chetty, Urvashi Aneja, Vidisha Mishra, Nozibele Gcora and Jaya Josie

Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), 2018, vol. 12, No 2018-24, 20 pages

Abstract: The digital divide in general, and between women and men in particular, is a manifestation of exclusion, poverty and inequality, and is likely to continue because of the effects of unemployment, poorly functioning digital skilling programmes and socio-cultural norms in some economies, and further depriving women equal access to digital services. Digital skills provide the poor a catalyst to break out of the cycle of poverty and empower themselves. This paper proposes a three-pronged digital skills strategy that will be required for developing countries to break out of the digital divide trap: (1) Monitor the evolving set of digital skills required for employment, (2) incorporate a holistic digital skills development strategy into national education programmes, and (3) contextualize skilling programs within prevailing socio-cultural norms that will shape the uptake and impact of digital skilling programs.

Keywords: digital skills; digital divide; digitalization; information literacy; computer literacy; media literacy; communication literacy; technology literacy; socio-cultural norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 F63 F66 F68 I24 I25 J20 J22 J23 J24 O15 O19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2018-24
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/177900/1/1019792825.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifweej:201824

DOI: 10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2018-24

Access Statistics for this article

Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020) is currently edited by Dennis J. Snower

More articles in Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020) from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().