In 2023, a third of the world’s population remained without access to the Internet even though the number of people connected has never been higher, according to the latest UN statistics published on Tuesday.
Since the last census of the International Telecommunications Union in 2022, around 100 million additional people have managed to access the web but there are still 2.6 billion to be deprived of it.
Sixty-seven percent of the world’s population, or 5.4 billion people, is now online.
“This progression of connectivity is another step taken in the right direction,” said ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, quoted in a press release.
But for her, this is still not going fast enough and “sustained efforts are necessary to achieve universal and effective connectivity by 2030”.
“We will not relent until we live in a world where effective connectivity is a concrete reality for all of us, regardless of where we live,” she insisted.
Logically, it is in low-income countries that the growth in connections is strongest, with an increase in the number of Internet users of some 17% over the past year, explains the IUT. She adds a caveat: “Less than a third of the population is connected to the Internet in these countries. »
The latest global estimates confirm that the double-digit increase in Internet connectivity observed in 2020, when it was stimulated by the COVID-19 pandemic and its procession of confinements and long periods of teleworking, was very brief, underlines the ‘IUT.
Two main obstacles are holding back progress: populations that are still not connected are also the hardest to reach and there are difficulties in moving from simple access to regular and easy access.
Other obstacles are often underestimated such as connection speeds that are too slow, prices that are too high for equipment and subscriptions, lack of digital culture or even cultural and language barriers, but also gender discrimination and sometimes simple lack of access to electricity.