RIYADH, 2 May 2007 -- The Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC) will adopt a long-term initiative that aims to increase the size of local web content, revealed CITC spokesman Sultan Al-Malek.

Al-Malek, speaking to Arab News, emphasized that the initiative, entitled "Developing Arab Digital Content," is intended to encourage local online content by intensifying the amount of information in Arabic on the Internet and assisting users, particularly researchers, to find information they are seeking.

"The initiative includes a study regarding content weakness and making suggestions to improve the online economy of any sector related to web content. This will protect the language, spread Arab culture and increase users who don't know English," he added.

However, the size of web content developed in the Arab world is still negligible compared to the astronomical number of web pages developed in the rest of the world.

According to a new study by yajoob.com, Arabic web pages constitute 0.1 percent of total web pages, which are estimated to be 40 million against 40 billion in all other languages. This is in spite of the fact that Arabic speakers represent five percent of the world's population. This humble Arabic presence is very far from matching the rate of Arabic speakers, who make up 1.78 percent of the world's total Internet users.

Moreover, the study does not expect the Arab world-based content to significantly increase its share in total content developed around the world in the near future. The study said that in the last two years (2005-2006), 114,000,000 and 189,000,000 web pages were developed in both English and Arabic in the GCC countries and the Levant respectively.

A comparison between Arabic web pages established in 2005 and 2006 showed an annual increase of 55 percent, while English web pages produced during the period represented an annual increase of 63 percent. The share of Arabic pages constituted 28 percent and 31 percent respectively from the total web pages produced during the period.

"There is a digital informational gap between the Arab world and the modern world," said Fahd Al-Sedairy, executive manager MITSCO, an international technical solutions company, who is also behind the new search engine yajoob.

Al-Sedairy warned of the digital gap, which could hamper economic and social development in the Middle East by reducing learning abilities and also creating isolation in knowledge, which would result in global ignorance of Arab culture. Hind Al-Otaiby, a computer science professor at King Saud University, attributed the lack of Arabic digital content to the absence of scientific, educational and literary productivity in the Arab region.

She also blamed the publishing sectors, which seldom distribute through the Internet, saying that Arab scientists, researchers and writers tend not to publish their studies and writings online.

Al-Sedairy, on the other hand, attributes the lack of Arab content to a lack of financial support. "We have intensive productivity in all fields, yet it's split around," he said.

"In our region, we don't have organizations or companies that can index Arabic content. This thing in particular needs human resources as well as more financial support from Arab governments," he said.

The Kingdom spends over 60 percent of its total information technology expenses on devices rather than improving online content. According to the latest figures forwarded by CITC, the number of Internet users in the Kingdom has reached 3.7 million, or 20 percent of the population. The figure could go up if the size of local web content is increased, especially since half of the Saudi population is less than 18 years of age with a great potential to deal with technology.

By Najah Alosaimi

© Arab News 2007