We're in the middle of upgrading our network connectivity here at Headshift and very soon we'll all enjoy a 24Mbps connection right to our desktop or wifi. This will help us do more stuff, faster and begin to sate our online multi-tasking fetish.

But among all the empty packaging and frenzied installations comes this BBC news report on the Senegalese president's call on the richer nations to do more to help developing countries buy technology hardware. The UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, at which President Wade made his call, is discussing ways of bridging the digital divide which exists globally, and seeks to encourage governments - not just the private sector - to address this urgently.

Whilst many of our clients are justly concerned about extending access to the applications we help them build, and promote social inclusion, the kind of digital divide issues highlighted by the Tunis Summit are true life or death situations. From healthcare information for HIV/AIDS patients through to weather data for agriculture, the potentially positive effect of timely access to information in the developing world is nothing short of dramatic.

But this is not just about some abstract sense of social justice. The global business case for increasing the developing world's access to IT is, on the face of it, compelling. From the West's viewpoint, this is about helping to create a marketplace for its products and services, demand for which would obviously increase exponentially given these markets' potential. From the developing countries' viewpoint, such demand would encourage tech firms to invest in local production, distribution and support, expand the service sector, and encourage the growth of homegrown entrepreneurial businesses to exploit this new availability.

Increasing access to wealth creation opportunities figures high on the agenda of most developing countries' agenda - regardless of the reservations many of us may hold on the social and environmental effects of globalisation. So why are Western governments so slow in responding?

President Wade spearheaded efforts for a so-called Digital Solidarity Fund in 2003 at the first stage of WSIS in Geneva [...] The fund was eventually set up and has been up and running for four months. But it is entirely voluntary and so far has only raised 7m euros (£4.7m). Only nine of its 22 members are countries and just one of these, France, is outside of Africa.

Investing public funding in initiatives of this kind, which enable local development to take place whilst equally benefiting both donors and recipients, requires a longer-term vision than most political administrations can afford. Still, this approach - and the economic and social benefits it can bring - seems to me to make much more sense than spending billions in military technologies, 'homeland security', border controls, or the 'war on drugs'.

The problem then, presumably, is that the globally equalising effect of greater access to IT and online technologies is perceived as a threat - rather than a trading opportunity - by those governments whose economies thrive on protectionism despite their overtly free-market rhetoric.

Among all the technology debris this afternoon, the realisation that our business could not exist without easy access to hardware, software and connectivity may be an obvious thought - but one which in some small way bring us closer to those who struggle for digital equality in other parts of the world.