Connecting Prosperity
Updated: 2 days ago
By Dr. Metin Oktay, Chairman, The Global Council on Media and Communication, Salvator Mundi Global. Analysis, 9 September 2026.
Media, Communication and the New Architecture of Global Economic Development
In an interconnected world, access to information is no longer enough. The next challenge is ensuring that communication creates opportunity, trust and shared economic value across nations.
Globalisation is usually described through trade, investment, migration and technology. Beneath all four lies another infrastructure that makes them possible: communication.
The capacity to exchange information rapidly and credibly now connects producers to consumers, governments to citizens, investors to opportunities, researchers to knowledge, and local enterprises to international markets. Media and communication are therefore not merely observers of globalisation. Increasingly, they are among the systems through which globalisation itself operates.
That transformation has created extraordinary opportunities. It has also revealed substantial differences between countries. The United States, China and Russia have developed distinctive communication and digital ecosystems. Emerging economies are finding new routes into the global information economy, while many developing and least-developed countries still face limitations in connectivity, affordability, skills and infrastructure.
The lesson is not that every nation should follow one communications model. National histories, institutions and development priorities differ. The more useful question is what these different experiences can teach us about turning communication into a source of inclusive development, international cooperation and shared prosperity.
Communication as economic infrastructure
During the industrial age, development depended visibly on roads, ports, power stations, factories, financial systems and education. These remain indispensable. The information age has added another layer of infrastructure on top of them.
The scale of that layer is now measurable in trade data. According to the World Trade Organization, global exports of digitally delivered services reached US$4.64 trillion in 2024, growing 8.3 per cent in a single year and accounting for 14.5 per cent of world exports of goods and services, up from 12.2 per cent in 2020. Digitally delivered computer services alone accounted for 21.2 per cent of that total, up from 15.6 per cent in 2019.
Communication capacity is no longer a supporting condition of international commerce; a substantial and rising share of international commerce now travels through it.
Access to that capacity, however, remains unequal. The International Telecommunication Union estimates that approximately six billion people, about three-quarters of humanity, were online in 2025, up from 5.8 billion a year earlier. Some 2.2 billion remained offline, and 96 per cent of them live in low- and middle-income countries.
The more revealing figures concern quality rather than presence. ITU data show that 94 per cent of people in high-income economies used the Internet in 2025, compared with 23 per cent in low-income economies. Fifth-generation mobile networks reached 55 per cent of the world's population, but covered 84 per cent of people in high-income countries against 4 per cent in low-income countries. A typical user in a high-income country now generates nearly eight times more mobile data than a user in a low-income country.
The ITU's own framing of this pattern is direct: levels of Internet use remain closely tied to levels of economic development. A connection that is too expensive, too slow, or unsupported by skills does not create the same economic opportunity as affordable high-speed connectivity combined with digital literacy, reliable electricity, financial access, cloud services and entrepreneurial capability. Affordability illustrates the point: the median price of a data-only mobile broadband basket fell globally in 2025, yet the service remains unaffordable in around 60 per cent of low- and middle-income countries.
The development question is evolving from “Who is connected?” to “What can people and societies do with that connection?”
The United States: innovation, scale and global reach
The United States illustrates the economic potential of combining communication, entrepreneurship, finance, technology and creative industries.
For decades, American film, television, music, publishing and advertising carried cultural products around the world. Digitalisation added a more consequential dimension. American companies became leaders in search, cloud computing, operating systems, digital advertising, streaming, social communication and artificial intelligence.
The resulting concentration is considerable. World Bank analysis found that 87 per cent of global cloud computing exports originated in the United States in 2023, and that the country has roughly 200 times more servers per capita than a typical middle-income country and some 20,000 times more than a typical low-income country. Platforms connect businesses and consumers across borders; cloud systems allow firms to operate internationally without constructing their own physical computing infrastructure; digital advertising enables small enterprises to reach narrowly defined audiences; and creative industries distribute cultural products globally almost instantaneously.
The American experience demonstrates the importance of innovation ecosystems: universities, venture capital, research institutions, entrepreneurs, skilled immigration, competitive markets, and global communication networks reinforcing one another. It also offers a broader lesson. Communication infrastructure becomes most economically powerful when people and businesses are able not merely to receive information, but to create products, knowledge, services and intellectual property from it.
China: infrastructure, scale and digital integration
China offers a different but equally significant development experience.
Over several decades, the country has invested heavily in telecommunications, digital infrastructure, manufacturing capability and technological development, alongside major domestic ecosystems in e-commerce, mobile payments, social communication, logistics and digital services.
The measured result is substantial. China's National Bureau of Statistics reported that the value added of the core industries of the digital economy reached 14.09 trillion yuan in 2024, equivalent to 10.5 per cent of gross domestic product, up from 9.9 per cent in 2023. Figures published in 2026 by the Cyberspace Administration of China indicate that the core industries held above 10.5 per cent of GDP in 2025, with digital industry revenue of 39.6 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.8 per cent year on year.
China's experience demonstrates how communication technology can be integrated with broader industrial strategy rather than treated as an isolated sector. Digital payments expand commercial participation. E-commerce connects producers in smaller cities with national markets. Logistics networks connect digital demand with physical delivery. Telecommunications infrastructure supports manufacturing, services and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.
The country is also an exceptional example of a middle-income economy participating in frontier innovation rather than only adopting it. World Bank data indicate that China accounts for roughly 13 per cent of notable AI models worldwide, a share no other middle-income country approaches. The larger lesson is that communication policy becomes more powerful when telecommunications, education, logistics, finance, manufacturing, digital services and research are treated as parts of the same development architecture.
Russia: technological capability and digital sovereignty
Russia provides another distinctive experience. Its scientific, engineering and mathematical traditions have supported substantial technological capability, and the country has developed domestic digital services and platforms alongside its telecommunications infrastructure. Connectivity is high by global standards. ITU indicators compiled in the World Bank's development data put Internet use in the Russian Federation at 94 per cent of the population in 2024, level with the average for high-income economies and twenty percentage points above the global figure.
Russia's emphasis on digital sovereignty highlights an increasingly important question for many countries: how much technological and informational capability should exist domestically, and how much should depend upon global systems?
This is not exclusively a Russian question. Governments across the international system are weighing data security, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, platform regulation and strategic technological dependence.
At the same time, the economic value of communication has always depended upon connection. Scientific research benefits from international collaboration. Businesses benefit from access to international markets. Innovation benefits from the movement of knowledge and talent. The Russian experience therefore highlights a balance that will matter well beyond one country: strengthening national technological resilience while preserving the channels of international exchange through which knowledge, commerce and innovation circulate.
Emerging economies: the possibility of leapfrogging
Some of the most dynamic opportunities are appearing in emerging economies.
Countries do not necessarily need to reproduce every stage of technological development followed by today's advanced economies. Mobile communications have already demonstrated the possibility of leapfrogging fixed infrastructure. Digital payments can extend financial services without constructing extensive traditional banking networks. Online education can distribute knowledge beyond major cities. Digital marketplaces can connect small enterprises directly with consumers.
Adoption data suggest this is already underway in artificial intelligence. World Bank research found that more than 40 per cent of global ChatGPT traffic in mid-2025 originated in middle-income countries, led by Brazil, India, Indonesia and Viet Nam. Vacancies requiring generative AI skills rose ninefold between 2021 and 2024, and one in five of those roles was located in a middle-income country. Technology and technology-enabled roles now account for ten of the fifteen fastest-growing occupations globally.
This suggests that the future digital economy need not simply reproduce the economic geography of the twentieth century. With appropriate investment in connectivity, education, computing capacity and locally relevant data, emerging economies can become producers, and not merely users, of new technologies.
Developing countries: from access to capability
The challenge is more fundamental in many low-income and least-developed economies. Connectivity has expanded dramatically, but access remains deeply unequal: ITU estimates that 34 per cent of people in least developed countries were online in 2025, and 38 per cent in landlocked developing countries.
The disparity extends well beyond Internet access. Affordability, electricity, network quality, devices, digital skills, payment systems and locally relevant content all determine whether connectivity becomes economically meaningful. ITU data indicate that while most Internet users have acquired basic skills, more advanced capabilities such as online safety, problem-solving and digital content creation are developing far more slowly.
Artificial intelligence makes the question more urgent. The World Bank's Digital Progress and Trends Report 2025 identifies four foundations for meaningful AI participation, which it describes as the four Cs: connectivity, compute, context and competency.
Connectivity means reliable and affordable access. Compute means access to the processing infrastructure required to participate in increasingly sophisticated digital economies. Context means ensuring that technology reflects local languages, cultures, economic conditions and social needs. Competency means equipping people with the skills to use technology productively and safely.
The economic objective should therefore not simply be to connect developing societies to systems created elsewhere. It should be to give people the capacity to create value within those systems, and eventually to create systems, services and knowledge of their own.
The difference between access and participation
This distinction may become one of the defining development questions of the coming decades.
A person can use a global digital platform without his or her country capturing a significant share of the economic value generated by that activity. A nation can import software without developing a software industry. It can consume streaming content without developing internationally competitive creative industries. It can use artificial intelligence without possessing sufficient computing capacity, research capability or local-language data to shape how that technology develops.
True digital inclusion must mean more than consumption. It means participation in value creation.
For governments, that requires investment in education, entrepreneurship, telecommunications, research, creative industries and digital public infrastructure. For international institutions and businesses, it means recognising that sustainable globalisation should broaden the number of societies able to create technological and cultural value, not merely the number able to consume it.
Trust: the condition that makes participation possible
There is a further dimension that cannot be measured in bandwidth, computing power, or investment. Communication depends upon trust.
Markets require reliable information. Investors need confidence in institutions and disclosures. Citizens need credible public information. Businesses need predictable rules. Societies need media capable of distinguishing evidence from speculation, and information from manipulation. As argued in these pages earlier this year, when information becomes abundant, the scarce resource is confidence in its meaning; and as artificial intelligence makes the production and distribution of information faster and cheaper, credibility is likely to become more valuable rather than less.
The relevance here is economic. Trust is not the destination of the development argument so much as its precondition. Capability without credibility does not convert into investment, market access or institutional cooperation. Trust does not require every country to possess identical institutions or identical media systems, but globalisation does require sufficient confidence for people, businesses and governments to cooperate across institutional and cultural boundaries.
That principle corresponds closely with Salvator Mundi Global's stated commitments to human-centred ethics, transparent decision-making, responsible leadership, accountable systems, global collaboration and sustainable impact.
Artificial intelligence and the next communication divide
Artificial intelligence is likely to intensify both the opportunities and the inequalities created by earlier digital technologies.
According to the World Bank, high-income economies accounted for 87 per cent of notable AI models, 86 per cent of AI start-ups and 91 per cent of venture-capital funding in the sector, despite representing 17 per cent of the global population. They also host 77 per cent of global co-location data-centre capacity as of June 2025, against 18 per cent in upper-middle-income countries, 5 per cent in lower-middle-income countries and less than 0.1 per cent in low-income countries. Venture-capital investment in AI training data is similarly concentrated, led by the United States at 56 per cent, followed by China at 17 per cent and the European Union at 15 per cent.
The same research identifies genuine openings for developing countries. Open-source systems, localised applications and “small AI” models capable of running on ordinary devices may allow countries to adapt artificial intelligence to agriculture, education, healthcare and small-business needs without reproducing the enormous infrastructure of the world's leading AI economies.
The objective need not be for every country to build the world's largest model. It should be for every society to possess sufficient infrastructure, knowledge and institutional capacity to use artificial intelligence in ways that advance human development. That distinction transforms AI from a technological competition into a development question.
From connectivity to shared prosperity
The experiences of the United States, China, Russia, emerging economies and developing countries demonstrate that there is no single path towards a communications-driven economy.
The United States demonstrates the power of innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurship and global reach. China demonstrates the impact of large-scale infrastructure, digital integration and the connection between communications technology and industrial development. Russia highlights the growing importance of technological resilience and digital sovereignty, together with the enduring value of international exchange. Emerging economies demonstrate the possibility of leapfrogging older development pathways. Developing countries remind the international community that access without affordability, skills and productive capability remains incomplete.
These are not competing lessons. Together they describe the architecture of the global communications challenge.
The next chapter of globalisation should not be measured simply by how many people are connected, how much data crosses borders, or how rapidly information travels. Its success should be measured by whether communication expands human capability, strengthens trust, enables meaningful participation, and allows societies at every level of development to create rather than merely consume economic value.
The task before governments, businesses, media institutions and international organisations is therefore larger than closing a digital divide. It is to build a global communication environment in which technological progress and human development reinforce one another.
Communication is no longer simply the means by which globalisation is described. Increasingly, it is the infrastructure through which globalisation itself is built.
References
Cyberspace Administration of China (2026) National Informatization Development Report (2025). Beijing: Cyberspace Administration of China.
International Telecommunication Union (2025) Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures 2025. Geneva: ITU. Available at: https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/facts-figures-2025/
International Telecommunication Union (2025) 'Global number of Internet users increases, but disparities deepen key digital divides', press release, 17 November. Geneva: ITU. Available at: https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2025-11-17-Facts-and-Figures.aspx
National Bureau of Statistics of China (2025) Value Added of China's Core Industries of the Digital Economy Takes Up 10.5% of GDP in 2024. Beijing: NBS. Available at: https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202512/t20251231_1962222.html
Salvator Mundi Global (2026) About. Available at: https://www.salvatormunditimes.com/about
World Bank (2025) Digital Progress and Trends Report 2025: Strengthening AI Foundations. Washington, DC: World Bank. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/dptr2025-ai-foundations
World Bank (2025) Strengthening AI Foundations: Emerging Opportunities for Developing Countries, factsheet, 21 November. Washington, DC: World Bank. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/factsheet/2025/11/21/strengthening-ai-foundations-emerging-opportunities-for-developing-countries
World Bank (2025) World Development Indicators: Individuals using the Internet (% of population), drawing on the ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Database. Washington, DC: World Bank. Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS
World Trade Organization (2025) Global Trade Outlook and Statistics, April 2025. Geneva: WTO. Available at: https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/trade_outlook25_e.pdf
World Trade Organization (2024) Global Trade Outlook and Statistics, April 2024. Geneva: WTO. Available at: https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/trade_outlook24_e.pdf
Note on sourcing: connectivity, 5G coverage, affordability and digital-skills figures are drawn from ITU's Facts and Figures 2025, published 17 November 2025; ITU revised its 2024 offline estimate from 2.6 billion to 2.3 billion, and the 2025 figures used here reflect that revision. Chinese digital-economy figures for 2024 are National Bureau of Statistics accounting under the Statistical Classification of Digital Economy and Its Core Industries (2021); the 2025 figures are from the Cyberspace Administration of China and are not directly comparable to the NBS series. AI concentration, data-centre, cloud-export and GenAI adoption figures are from the World Bank's Digital Progress and Trends Report 2025. Digitally delivered services figures are taken from the WTO's Global Trade Outlook and Statistics, April 2025.
About the Author
Dr. Metin Oktay
Chairman of the Global Council on Media and Communication, Salvator Mundi Global
Founder of M3TIN Records and Chairman of M&H Logistics, an international freight forwarding company. His career spans media relations and the entertainment sector, built on senior executive positions in aerospace, energy and mining.
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