Digital Pulse - Ch 2 - Sec 1 - The Chicken, the Egg, and African Telecommunications

Summary

This article reviews the effects that telecommunications and Internet advancement are having on the society and economy of Eastern Africa. The author's primary focus is on connectivity and issues relating to communications infrastructure as opposed to questions of socially determined access. The article examines the current situation primarily through a market-oriented lens.

Key Points

The author begins the introduction that the true emergence of a an African telecommunications market has just recently begun to take place as governments relinquish their control over what has traditionally been a vital internal source of revenue. The history of African telecoms is based on the initial infrastructure developed during colonialism followed by a period of stagnation during the 1960's to 1980's that saw little advancement. This stagnation resulted in a terribly inadequate system with the lowest teledensity of any continent. Thus when the Internet arrived in the mid-90's, Africa was wholly unprepared to access its new opportunities.

Barnaby does, however, believe that the Internet does have a vital role to play in advancing African development, as the emergence of the global information economy is unavoidable. If some efforts are not focused on bringing Africa into this economy, it will surely be left behind and end up further marginalized than it already is. Barnaby sees five major areas where ICT development holds the most potential. These include:

• Academia – ICTs improve opportunities for African scholars to advance their own work and access the wealth of information (especially e-journals) available throughout the web.
• Health and Medical Information – Telemedicine and other innovations have proven effective at delivering services over wide areas and ICT based communications have the potential to inform poor populations about a variety of pressing health issues.
• Balanced Media Environment – ICT based publishing and broadcast media could help to shift the balance from Western produced media content to more regional information and entertainment sources. News about Africa is often filtered through Western lenses before Africans receive it.
• Economic Development – ICTs can make major contributions to the functioning and competitiveness of African entrepreneurs and contribute to African efforts to become producers of knowledge rather than producers of goods.
• Foster Democracy – Access to information is central to efforts to challenge and check governments and political forces and Barnaby points to studies that have causally linked interconnectivity and democracy.

Shifting to prescriptions, Barnaby argues that for Africa to truly embrace the information economy, the following areas must receive immediate attention, revealing his chicken and egg question: while education should probably precede infrastructure investment, how can the people become educated without the important tools necessary for such education. Literacy and computer literacy both need encouragement along with efforts to improve pedagogical techniques that will utilize ICTs. However, investments in the emerging markets of Africa (e.g. cellphones) are more likely to generate rapid returns on investment that will generate the resources for improved education efforts. Barnaby concludes by arguing that despite the difficulty that the continent faces in leapfrogging into the information economy, the prospects for improving the lives of Africans make such efforts worthwhile. The changes that are embracing the entire globe also affect Africa and it would be perilous for the continent if it does not heed these winds of change and embrace ICTs.

Source: Barnaby Richards, “The Chicken, the Egg, and African Telecommunications” (University of Colorado ay Boulder) May 2001.