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October 25, 2003
Telephone Tax.
Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade has
proposed a global tax on international calls, personal computers and software packages. Revenue would fund a "digital solidarity" fund to help Africa catch up with the IT revolution.
"It is paradoxical and ironic that the continent which invented writing . . . [is] excluded from universal knowledge," the President commented.
His tax, he argued, would be a painless one. Daily Summit is not so sure - shrieks of pain can be expected from IT lobbies should the proposal ever be put seriously on the table once the summit gets going in Geneva next month...
