Tech Roundup: Latin America’s digital divide

You’re reading The Brazilian Report’s weekly tech roundup, a digest of the most important news on technology and innovation in Brazil. This week’s topics: the digital divide in Latin America, AliExpress pushes for Singles’ Day in Brazil, and “algo-trading” takes hold in the country. 

Rural population hit worst by Latin America’s digital divide

Seventy-seven million Latin Americans living in rural areas have no access to adequate internet connections, according to a new study by Microsoft, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB). This translates into 63 percent of the entire population living outside of urban regions — a sign of inequality that is set to deepen even further as the economy becomes increasingly digitalized after Covid-19. 

• When Brazil is excluded from the sample — due to the size of its population — the situation becomes even worse. Seventy-five percent of inhabitants of rural areas do not have access to a basic internet connection.
• Jamaica, El Salvador, Belize, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras, Venezuela, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Guiana comprise a cluster of poor connections, as between 71 percent and 89 percent of the rural population in those countries are unable to access standard quality connections.

Gender gap. The report also shows that women in rural areas have less access to the internet than men, as they often do not have their own source of income. In countries such as Bolivia and Peru, men own more cellphones and access the internet more often. 

Challenges. The troubling situation of rural areas is explained by difficulties to reach remote regions, high costs of internet access — a broadband connection can cost as much as 14 percent of poorer families’ monthly income — the lack of digital know-how within the population, as well as the absence of data to design public policies that comprise the different realities of countries in the region.   

How to get Brazil connected? Though Brazil appears in the report as one of the countries with the smallest gap in internet access, recent studies by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicate that there is still room for improvement....