Assessing the Impacts of Establishing an Internet Café in the Context of a Developing Nation

Looking at developing countries, it is obvious that most of them fall behind the rest of the world in terms of development due to several reasons such as poverty, illiteracy and poor economic conditions in general. In terms of information and communication technology evolution which has been transforming the world since the early 1980s, the developing world lags behind on this front too. Citizens of developing nations can not afford to buy their own personal computers, and if they did, they can not buy additional peripherals and tools required to capitalize on the advantages that information technology can bring to individuals, organizations and the society at large. Moreover, the information and communication technology infrastructure on the ground does not enable developing countries to realize the benefits that could also be obtained through the Internet and the World Wide Web within the newly emerging digital economy. This paper reports the findings of a market study 1 that covers the perception of the Internet in general and Internet cafes in specific to the local community in Egypt. The study focused on two major research issues; the assessment of the perception of the community of the usefulness of Internet cafes in information and communication technology awareness and diffusion and the feasibility of establishing an Internet Cafe from an investment perspective in the context of the marketplace in Egypt.