Charles Kenny has some provocative things to say about the likely utility of computers for developing countries as well. Quite a bit of it is freely available online through his blog, and he writes quite clearly, so this might be a good place for a skeptical African to start: http://charleskenny.blogs.com/weblog/icts/index.html He's put out a book recently as well - Overselling the Web?: Development And the Internet --- David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone) Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm