How did the Developing World See ISAD?

Probably rather naïvely.

There was a concerted effort by the South African delegation to develop a South African position paper. The other developing countries did not organize themselves to the same extent although Egypt has subsequently come forward as a keen participant in a ``Cape to Cairo'' alliance.

The South African position paper was the work of the fledgling National Information Technology Forum (NITF) [9] and the Department of Arts Culture Science and Technology (DACST) supervised the process. This position paper [10] was a very ambitious document that set out the South African position in five major areas which roughly corresponded to the sessions at the conference, namely the two ministerial sessions and the workshops on Infrastructure, Applications and Human Resources:

1. Using the global information society to meet the needs of the developing world;
2. Creating the South African information society: forging co-operation between societal sectors in a global way;
3. Developing a South African information infrastructure for the information society in a global context;
4. Designing and providing applications to serve the diverse needs of the developing world;
5. People empowerment: investing in human resources, education and training for the global information society.

Two parallel fora for Business and Civil Society preceded the conference. The Civil Society forum was an innovation of the ISAD organizers. The Business Forum consisted of a series of formal presentations on particular topics followed by formal responses and general discussion among the hundred and fifty or so attendees. The 90-100 attendees at the Civil Society Forum engaged in structured discussions on five selected topics. There was also a conference exhibit for the duration.