Towards an African e-Index: Household and individual ICT access and usage across 10 African countries
2005
edited by Alison Gillwald
researchICTafrica.net
Global economic and social change. Over the past decade, there has been an increasing commentary on the economic, political, and social potential of information communication technologies (ICTs) under the right political and economic conditions. The development of the harmonised, globally interconnected communications infrastructure that is transforming economy and society is highly uneven, and the benefits of instant communication and information-sharing between geographically remote areas at steadily declining costs to the user that characterise it, are far from the experience of
most Africans.
Despite the improvements in access to voice telephony made possible by mobile phones over the last half a decade, most of the people on the continent
continue not to own any type of phone and many more have no regular access to communications. The remarkable gains made towards universal access through the introduction of mobile telephony, and more particularly competition, masks the fact that Africa continues to lag global averages on major ICT indicators. Indeed, since 2003 there has been a growing gap between those countries with access to communications services and those countries without. In terms of a range of ICT indicators, African countries, including South Africa, score lower than the global average, and although progress was made throughout the period, the gaps between African and other developed countries and emerging economies persist; indeed, they have intensified over the last decade, indicative of a growing digital divide (Sciadas 2005).
Keywords: African e-Index
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