From allAfrica.com: The African Technology Policy Studies Network Annual Conference and Workshop 2002, held in Abuja, Nigeria last week, raised the importance of bridging the digital divide that Africa faces at both regional and global levels. Different speakers raised the issue and suggested possible measures that African nations must adopt to bridge this gap. According to the findings of one paper, "Internet Diffusion and Digital Inequality in Sub-Saharan African across-country Analysis," the 6.31 million Africans online are equivalent to only 1% of the total Netizens of the world. Professor Gabriel O. Ajayi of the National Information Technology Development Agency, named Africa as the most affected by the digital divide. He appealed to the government to respond to this issue and suggested the development of institutional and infrastructure capacity and global human resources as tools for eradicating the divide. The Nigerian Minister for Science and Technology Professor Turner T. Isoun, offered this challenge to all African countries. He stressed the need for Information Communication Technology development as the key to have any presence in the networked global economy. He called for institutional restructuring and that science and technology held most of the solutions to global problems.