As far as possible, GDN should serve all these categories. The best way to share knowledge, ideas and research is through communicating with groups or individuals that have similar interests to those cherished by oneself. Admittedly, research can be too wide a concept and one can very easily lose direction if they engaged in too many researches at the same time. Hence the need to select individuals and groups with shared interests and problems. That is what networking is all about, at least in part.
Information exchange can result in many benefits for the participants in any network.
Countries in the South, for example, can have access to hi-tech info from the North. If such info is used optimally, it can result in capacity building in the South, where human resources can be trained from the North via inter-communicative media and teleconferencing. The University of Botswana is a young institution but compared with others in the region, it is better resourced, with an advanced IT component. Plans are underway to enable its different campuses to communicate through teleconferencing. The services currently provided by GDN can, in many developing countries, go a long way in achieving lofty goals, some of which may not have been initially envisaged.