Empirical evidence has shown that Universal Access and Service (UAS) to Information Communication Technology (ICT) cannot only be determined by access to a computer or network. There are several other determinants that interplay with that. These include mental access, skills access and usage access. All of which, if not carefully acknowledged, can cause digital divide. Barriers that occur in accessing such services are what are known as the digital divide. Such digital divide can also be a result of differences in age, education, employment status, gender and ethnicity. The challenge in UAS therefore is not that the complexity of the digital divide has not been highlighted enough or discussed at length, it is the fact that having been highlighted and debated upon, the policies have failed to harmonise all the research findings and include them in global, regional and national policies so that successful UAS projects could be implemented. What is more, much of the discourse and interventions on digital divide, while being seriously concerned with ICT development at the local ‘underserved’ level, have resulted into high level discussions of the ‘elite’, taking a top bottom strategy, and have failed to accommodate the critical contribution of the local beneficiaries, creating a further policy divide between the elite and the rural masses. Studies have also shown that there is a strong linkage between economic growth of a nation and bridging the digital divide. Therefore, for countries like Malawi, identified as Least Developed Countries, promotion of UAS, especially in rural areas, should be simultaneously tackled with strategies aimed at improving national economic growth, in alignment with Millennium Development Goal 1, which aims at eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, so that the rural masses can have disposable income to invest in UAS. Unless the predominant strategy for achieving UAS becomes economic growth, UAS for underserved areas will remain a challenge. All other challenges observed like mental access, skills access, usage access, education employment status, the elite/poor divide, are largely prevalent due to poverty status, so that once you address the root cause of poverty, you begin to narrow the digital divide for the rural masses. This national economic growth however, should not only be reflected at macro level, but micro too, at the very fabric of grassroots, where extreme poverty and hunger prevail
