Three cheers for the World Bank’s decision to adopt video conferencing to connect more people for their development debates, as Anver Versi reported in his editorial ‘The World Bank is Listening’ (Editorial, African Business, May 2010 issue). The adoption of new technologies to replace the need to travel to conferences is surely highly desirable – it saves time, expenditure and cuts carbon emissions.

Many companies and organisations are coming to realise this. Recent statistics have shown that the worldwide market for video-conferencing technology grew by 16.7% last year. The travel chaos caused by the Iceland volcano has given the trend a further boost, demonstrating to many that it is simply not necessary to expend huge amounts of air miles to debate and collaborate together.