Information Society Watch

2004, Sana Gul, Information for Development

The author contends that language barriers are a large restriction to ICT access in the country, given the fact that only 20 percent of literate Pakistani citizens speak English, the lingua franca of the Internet. Despite a reasonable ICT infrastructure in place in Pakistan, the number of total Internet users is merely 5 million, which comes around to 3.4 per cent of the population. Even if the problem of enabling ICTs in the local language is addressed, the hurdle of making locally relevant content will remain, with the high costs of local content development standing in the way of equitable dissemination. Another especially relevant factor in Pakistan is the social taboo against women using internet cafes, which makes access even more difficult. The author emphasises that all localisation initiatives should be guarded by a backbone of strong localisation policy. Unless the public agencies do not create a demand for local language applications, no sound initiative for ICT development can come up.

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