Iria

KANATLARCI, Macedonia - Thirteen-year-old Nustreta Mimovic's hand trembled as she placed it over the computer mouse. Slowly she dragged the mouse and watched the screen as her fellow students looked on.

"I'd love to know how to use it, but I don't have a computer," she said, giving up the controls to another pupil.

Nustreta's unfamiliarity with technology is common in Macedonia, a poor republic where it is estimated that as little as 4 percent of its two million citizens have regular access to computers and the Internet.

Within a year, if the government has its way, those figures could be turned around with the creation of a wireless Internet network covering the entire country.

Supporters said the network, which already has been installed in some schools, will deliver more than just a means of mass communication. They hope it will provide opportunities to ordinary people, students and businesspeople in communities like Kanatlarci, one of hundreds of remote villages.

Government officials have said they believe affordable access to the Internet could help transform a moribund economy, but that is proving difficult to achieve.
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Read More / Source: International Herald Tribune