The Internet as an information conduit in developing countries: an investigation of World Wide Web usability among small and medium textile enterprises in Botswana

The Internet has been called the technology of the century because it is expected to reduce the development gap between developing countries and developed ones. This article examines the validity of that assertion. The researcher examines Internet use at two levels. The first level is the macrolevel of issues of Internet connectivity in developing countries and the second level is the microlevel of the usability of the World Wide Web (WWW) for information management in a developing country, Botswana. The two research methodologies of content analysis and case study were used for this study. The findings of this study are that entrepreneurs found a Website easy to use, but while there is a need for macropolicy to create national and global environments for using the Internet sustainable connection should not be universal, but should rather be based on the information management needs of a target population. Inherent infrastructural and socio-technical challenges should then be tackled as part of the effort to create a sustainable Internet usage.