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This is about the inequitable global power and how it dynamics the confronting global knowledge production in nowadays.

Underlying this notion of global knowledge production inequities is how developed countries "The Global North" dominate modern knowledge systems. This hegemonic control of global knowledge, driven by increased globalization, places pressure on virtually all societies to adopt global values and services. While this development does have positive implications (e.g. better understanding of modern health practices, nutrition, environmental protection, governance systems, etc), on the negative side, the imposition of cultural forms from the developing world could be considered a form of political and economic domination. This leads to the increasing homogenization of cultures and a threat to local knowledge, and the exacerbation of local differences and inequalities through uneven access to such knowledge and the means for it's application. The production of knowledge implicates and is implicated in power relations, as those with superior technology cannot only generate but also store, monopolize and disseminate information to safeguard their interests. Foucault (1972) suggests that the relationship between power and knowledge has its origin in the ownership of the means of material production and technical expertise. According to Said (1978), Western powers in a colonial and post-colonial context, using agents in developing countries, have been able to develop elaborate cultural and political institutions where knowledge production exists with supporting mechanisms that dominate and suppress African communities. In a critical examination of development policies and programs in Africa, Okolie (2003) considers these to be shaped by knowledge and assumptions about knowledge production that are primarily Euro-American centered, and are consequently "exclusionary and often contemptuous of other ways of knowing" (Okolie, 2003). The establishment of the continent's universities and research centers was primarily driven by Western powers, and the African elites who h

The paper is divided into two main sections. The first explores the central concepts of the ResIST project: the knowledge economy; inequalities; and science and technology policies. The second provides illustrations of the treatment of inequalities in S&T-related policies at three levels: national, European, and global.

"The results further showed that 64.8% of households in South Africa had no access to the Internet. Of those households that had access to the Internet, 16.3% accessed it via cellphone, 8.6% from home, 5.6% from elsewhere and 4.7% from work."

It's unfortunate that South Africa is still plagued by inequality. While it is good that some are accessing the web via mobile, ideally more efforts would be done to create infrastructure to serve entire communities.

one solution to help inequality problem?

Good crowd-funding project that tries to help solve the digital divide problem by providing infrastructure to those who lack the money to purchase a computer. In addition to providing the physical infrastructure of the computer to allow those without one to catch up to society, perhaps another solution to conquer the digital divide is to educate those who have just received computers how to use the internet to look for information, consume, produce and distribute the information.

Honestly I think public libraries need WAY more computers.