The meeting was convened to examine the theme, Driving Economic and Social Development with the Internet. Access to the web is limited. Some 450 million people worldwide are connected to computers. By contrast, only 14 percent of the global telephone users have Internet access. This is due to poor computer skills, illiteracy, and disabilities in a world where access is mainly visual and costly.

For these reasons, the digital divide with people at the bottom of the social pyramid in any country cannot be easily be bridged using the present computer-based technological ICT set up.