By Andrei Laptenok: Belarus does not live by bread alone, and it isn’t just agriculture that is making the news these days. This week, Belarus has received several testimonies to the fact that it is on the road to digital society.
At the end of the week, it was announced that Google, the world’s IT giant, was buying a Belarusian company, one of the Hi-Tech Park residents. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Also this week, a high assessment of the development of the national IT industry was given in the reports of the international company Ernst & Young and the International Telecommunication Union.
It looks like an amazing coincidence, but at about the time when Google bought its first company, Belarus began to rise quickly in the ratings of the development of information and computer technologies. Over the past 15 years, it has become one of the world leaders in the sphere. According to the ITU’s Measuring the Information Society Report, Belarus has risen by 26 positions since 2002. No other country has shown such dynamics during the same period.
