In a world wide environment, where potential data providers and users are not of the same culture and do not speak the same language, this problem is even more accurate. The necessary standardisation of data format is stated by all international agencies, but also within countries, e.g. between regions or administrations. The cost of listing a lot of data sources is also much lower if a single title or name is used, but a catalogue of data sources is more useful if more description are given. But information technology, and in addition the generalisation of metadata standards, can also help to reduce the size of the paradox, as we shall see later. Information communication today and tomorrow Figure 3 shows the structure of information interchanges today on the Internet, with a view to the future.
Standardisation seems to be one of the crucial points to solve today.
Communication through the World Wide Computer Network. The cost for telephone lines are however too high for mainly African users, and already cut them from the digital information sources. We will treat here the two last priorities, which are more directly linked to technological progresses. For the short and medium term, standardisation is crucial in this way. The implicit use of key languages for communication, such as English for this paper, is necessary today because of the costs of edition of papers in different languages, and the cost of translations in several languages.