African Development: ICT Adoption Must Be Prioritized

Photo: ajmedwards.deviantart.com

By Rommy Imah

In spite of obvious successes recorded in the adoption of ICTs in the continent, Africa has continued to be labelled a consumer continent. Indicators such as ICT access, use, skills, mobile cellular subscriptions and basic literacy rates, households with a computer, Internet users, fixed and mobile broadband Internet subscriptions and basic literacy rates show that African countries are far from adopting ICTs.

It is a global truism that ICTs are capable of acting as catalysts for effective and efficient management and administration of both public and private sector organisations in developing regions like Africa. ICTs are capable of remarkably improving the living standards of inhabitants of developing regions like Africa. In addition, it is capable of improving agricultural productivity, education, healthcare and research programmes.

To buttress Africa’s deplorable state of ICT penetration, Information Economy Report of 2012 identified low access to venture capital, piracy, poor ICT infrastructure and inadequate protection of intellectual property rights as the major setbacks to ICT development and service expansion in developing

regions such as Africa.

Yet, the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked African countries as the worst performing in global ICT index. The Networked Readiness Index, calculated by the WEF and a global business school, INSEAD, ranked 144 economies based on their capacity to exploit the opportunities offered by the digital age.

WEF said in the report that it determines this capacity on the quality of the regulatory, business and innovation environments, the degree of preparedness, the usage of ICTs, as well as societal and economic impacts of ICTs. The assessment is based on a range of indicators from Internet access and adult literacy to mobile phone subscriptions and the availability of venture capital.

Good and effective leaders are those who understand not only the problems of their countries, but also how to go about solving such problems despite sabotage from within and outside their area of jurisdiction. Unfortunately, this has not been the case with African leaders. It is no doubt therefore that the only thing that can permanently save the continent of Africa now is by starting a revolution in science and technology.

It is high time Africa stopped relying on the West and indeed the Asian Tigers for all their technological needs. For a continent that boasts of the very technologically irrepressible Philip Emeagwali, it will be a shame for the continent to continue to rely on the West and the Asian giants for her technological needs.

Take the issue of broadband for instance, in spite of the number of submarine cables that have berthed on the shores of Africa, access to broadband has remained a big challenge in the continent giving credence to the widely held belief that Africa’s low broadband penetration limits the ability of its nations to harness the economic growth that often accompanies the spread of Internet access thus resulting to high cost of Internet access in the continent, obviously the highest in the world.

While multiple undersea cables have landed on the African continent, providing the potential for high-speed connectivity, much of the population remains unable to access this, which is slowing business growth.

The vast majority of Sub-Saharan Africa is falling behind the rest of the world in terms of broadband connectivity because of limited supply and very high prices yet, broadband is not just a consequence of economic growth, but a driver because research has equally demonstrated that a 10% increase in broadband penetration yields economic growth of 1.38%, nearly twice the impact of the same increase in fixed line telephony.

African leaders should as a matter of urgent importance, effect the deployment of ICT infrastructure as the fastest means of embracing the knowledge economy, which is where the developed economies are already moving to.

ICTs open up a huge range of potential in the business environment, delivering integrated solutions that actively enable the modern business. Previously disparate tools such as voice, mobility, video, broadcasting and data have merged to deliver powerful enterprise solutions that enable organisations to compete on a global scale, all driven by connectivity. African leaders should encourage these.

I share the thinking that from basic infrastructure across countries, fixed line and mobile carrier networks to last mile access, along with data centres to support services and carrier-neutral hubs for the switching of traffic, there is much work to be done in bringing Africa up to speed and enabling the next frontier for growth.

Bringing cost effective bandwidth within reach of the business and consumers in Africa is vital for stimulating economies, and improving service delivery across a range of industry and governmental sectors including education and healthcare.

Bridging the digital divide in Africa has never been more important because Africa is ripe for ICT solutions.