Gates is right, but the reasoning is a bit more complicated: Starting with "connectivity" is basically "putting the cart in front of the ox". There's this utop

Gates is right, but the reasoning is a bit more complicated: Starting with "connectivity" is basically "putting the cart in front of the ox". There's this utopical view that once you give them internet access smart African children will start freelancing and provide for their families, but it doesn't work this way: once you give him internet access, the African child with an IQ of top 0.001% will just learn there are better places in the world to be and live and he will find a way to leave his country and pursue a better life for himself, leaving his family and all the other around him behind in the same state of poverty. By putting connectivity first you'll basically end up building a better brain-drain, which might be exactly what some of the new generation billionaires want, but this is not socially responsive philanthropy! Smart people are empowered by connectivity, indeed, but they don't use this empowerment to pull the others around them up, not at the risk of pulling themselves down in the process. You need a social and economical infrastructure, with the basic healthcare and poverty problems solved, so the smart people empowered by connectivity can "pull up" the rest of the society without the risk of pulling themselves back down into misery! I agree that "connectivity is a social good in itself", but I think that you don't need to do anything in particular to get people "connected". Once you solve the basic health and poverty problems of a community, they will get themselves connected in no time, without any direct outside effort - lots of small local companies will spring to provide cheap services and the big companies are already building cheaper and wider infrastructure as we speak.