How ready is Africa to join the knowledge economy?

by David Sutcliffe 22/06/2017

Increasing connectivity has sparked many hopes for the democratisation of knowledge production in sub-Saharan Africa.

by David Sutcliffe 22/06/2017

Changes in the ways knowledge is created and used are driving economic and social development worldwide. Ugandan school by Brian Wolfe (Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0).

“In times past, we searched for gold, precious stones, minerals, and ore. Today, it is knowledge that makes us rich and access to information is all-powerful in enabling individual and collective success.” Lesotho Ministry of Communications, Science and Technology, 2005. Changes in the ways knowledge is created and used—and how this is enabled by new information technologies—are driving economic and social development worldwide. Discussions of the “knowledge economy” see knowledge both as an economic output in itself, and as an input that strengthens economic processes; with developing countries tending to be described as planning or embarking on a journey of transformation into knowledge economies to bring about economic gain. Indeed, increasing connectivity has sparked many hopes for the democratisation of knowledge production in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the centrality of digital connectivity to the knowledge economy, there are few studies of the geographies of digital knowledge and information. In their article “Engagement in the Knowledge Economy: Regional Patterns of Content Creation with a Focus on Sub-Saharan Africa”, published in Information Technologies & International Development, Sanna Ojanperä, Mark Graham, Ralph K. Straumann, Stefano De Sabbata, and Matthew Zook investigate the patterns of knowledge creation in the region. They examine three key metrics: spatial distributions of academic articles (i.e. traditional knowledge production), collaborative software development, and Internet domain registrations (i.e. digitally mediated knowledge production). Contrary to expectations, they find distribution patterns of digital content (measured by collaborative coding and domain registrations) to be more geographically uneven than those of academic articles: despite the hopes for the democratising power of the information revolution. This suggests that the factors often framed as catalysts for a knowledge economy do not relate to these three metrics uniformly. Connectivity is an important enabler of digital content creation, but it seems to be only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition; wealth, innovation capacity, and public spending on education are also important factors. While the growth in telecommunications might be…

Development, Interviews

Has Internet policy had any effect on Internet penetration in Sub-Saharan Africa?

by David Sutcliffe 10/05/2017

It is important for policymakers to ask how policy can bridge economic inequality. But does policy actually have an effect on these differences? And if so, which specific policy variables?

by David Sutcliffe 10/05/2017

The last decade has seen a rapid growth of Internet access across Africa, although it has not been evenly distributed. Cameroonian Cybercafe by SarahTz (Flickr CC BY 2.0).

There is a consensus among researchers that ICT is an engine for growth, and it’s also considered by the OECD to be a part of fundamental infrastructure, like electricity and roads. The last decade has seen a rapid growth of Internet access across Africa, although it has not been evenly distributed. Some African countries have an Internet penetration of over 50 percent (such as the Seychelles and South Africa) whereas some resemble digital deserts, not even reaching two percent. Even more surprisingly, countries that are seemingly comparable in terms of economic development often show considerable differences in terms of Internet access (e.g., Kenya and Ghana). Being excluded from the Internet economy has negative economic and social implications; it is therefore important for policymakers to ask how policy can bridge this inequality. But does policy actually have an effect on these differences? And if so, which specific policy variables? In their Policy & Internet article “Crossing the Digital Desert in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does Policy Matter?”, Robert Wentrup, Xiangxuan Xu, H. Richard Nakamura, and Patrik Ström address the dearth of research assessing the interplay between policy and Internet penetration by identifying Internet penetration-related policy variables and institutional constructs in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is a first attempt to investigate whether Internet policy variables have any effect on Internet penetration in Sub-Saharan Africa, and to shed light on them. Based on a literature review and the available data, they examine four variables: (i) free flow of information (e.g. level of censorship); (ii) market concentration (i.e. whether or not internet provision is monopolistic); (iii) the activity level of the Universal Service Fund (a public policy promoted by some governments and international telecom organizations to address digital inclusion); and (iv) total tax on computer equipment, including import tariffs on personal computers. The results show that only the activity level of the USF and low total tax on computer equipment are significantly positively related to Internet penetration…

Development

Why we shouldn’t believe the hype about the Internet “creating” development

by David Sutcliffe 30/03/2017

Despite the vigour of such claims, there is actually a lack of academic consensus about the impacts of digital connectivity on economic development.

by David Sutcliffe 30/03/2017

It’s about time. However, despite enthusiasm, there is a lack of academic consensus about the impacts of digital connectivity on economic development. Image: Nicolas Friederici.

Vast sums of money have been invested in projects to connect the world’s remaining four billion people, with these ambitious schemes often presenting digital connectivity as a means to achieve a range of social and economic developmental goals. This is especially the case for Africa, where Internet penetration rates remain relatively low, while the need for effective development strategies continues to be pressing. Development has always grappled with why some people and places have more than others, but much of that conversation is lost within contemporary discourses of ICTs and development. As states and organisations rush to develop policies and plans, build drones and balloons, and lay fibre-optic cables, much is said about the power of ICTs to positively transform the world’s most underprivileged people and places. Despite the vigour of such claims, there is actually a lack of academic consensus about the impacts of digital connectivity on economic development. In their new article, Nicolas Friederici, Sanna Ojanperä and Mark Graham review claims made by African governments and large international institutions about the impacts of connectivity, showing that the evidence base to support them is thin. It is indeed possible that contemporary grand visions of connectivity are truly reflective of a promising future, but it is equally possible that many of them are hugely overblown. The current evidence base is mixed and inconclusive. More worryingly, visions of rapid ICT-driven development might not only fail to achieve their goals—they could actively undermine development efforts in a world of scarce resources. We should therefore refuse to believe it is self-evident that ICTs will automatically bring about development, and should do more to ask the organisations and entities who produce these grand visions to justify their claims. Read the full article: Friederici, N., Ojanperä, S., and Graham, M. (2017) The Impact of Connectivity in Africa: Grand Visions and the Mirage of Inclusive Digital Development. Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 79(2),…

Development

New Report: Risks and Rewards of Online Gig Work at the Global Margins

by Mark Graham 20/03/2017

The report poses questions for all stakeholders regarding how to improve the conditions and livelihoods of online gig workers.

by Mark Graham 20/03/2017

The cartogram depicts countries as circles sized according to dollar inflow during March 2013 on a major online labour platform. The shading of the inner circle indicates the median hourly rate published by digital workers in that country. See the report for details.

The growth of online gig work—paid work allocated and delivered by way of internet platforms without a contract for long-term employment—has been welcomed by economic development experts, and the world’s largest global development network is promoting its potential to aid human development. There are hopes that online gig work, and the platforms that support it, might catalyse new, sustainable employment opportunities by addressing a mismatch in the supply and demand of labour globally. Some of the world’s largest gig work platforms have also framed their business models as a revolution in labour markets, suggesting that they can help lift people out of poverty. Similarly, many policymakers expect that regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia can capitalise on this digitally mediated work opportunity as youth-to-adult unemployment rates hit historic peaks. More broadly, it has been suggested that online gig work will have structural benefits on the global economy, such as raising labour force participation and improving productivity. Against this background, a new report by Mark Graham, Vili Lehdonvirta, Alex Wood, Helena Barnard, Isis Hjorth, and David Peter Simon, “The Risks and Rewards of Online Gig Work At The Global Margins” [PDF] highlights the risks alongside the rewards of online gig work. It draws on interviews and surveys, together with transaction data from one of the world’s largest online gig work platforms, to reveal the complex and sometimes problematic reality of this “new world of work”. While there are significant rewards to online gig work, there are also significant risks. Discrimination, low pay rates, overwork, and insecurity all need to be tackled head-on. The report encourages online gig work platforms to further develop their service, policymakers to revisit regulation, and labour activists to examine organising tactics if online gig work is to truly live up to its potential for human development, and become a sustainable situation for many more workers. The final section of the report poses questions for all stakeholders…

Development

What Impact is the Gig Economy Having on Development and Worker Livelihoods?

by Mark Graham 20/03/2017

Reflecting on some of the key benefits and costs associated with these new digital regimes of work.

by Mark Graham 20/03/2017

There are imbalances in the relationship between supply and demand of digital work, with the vast majority of buyers located in high-income countries (pictured). See full article for details.

As David Harvey famously noted, workers are unavoidably place-based because “labour-power has to go home every night.” But the widespread use of the Internet has changed much of that. The confluence of rapidly spreading digital connectivity, skilled but under-employed workers, the existence of international markets for labour, and the ongoing search for new outsourcing destinations, has resulted in organisational, technological, and spatial fixes for virtual production networks of services and money. Clients, bosses, workers, and users of the end-products of work can all now be located in different corners of the planet. A new article by Mark Graham, Isis Hjorth and Vili Lehdonvirta, “Digital labour and development: impacts of global digital labour platforms and the gig economy on worker livelihoods”, published in Transfer, discusses the implications of the spatial unfixing of work for workers in some of the world’s economic margins, and reflects on some of the key benefits and costs associated with these new digital regimes of work. Drawing on a multi-year study with digital workers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-east Asia, it highlights four key concerns for workers: bargaining power, economic inclusion, intermediated value chains, and upgrading. As ever more policy-makers, governments and organisations turn to the gig economy and digital labour as an economic development strategy to bring jobs to places that need them, it is important to understand how this might influence the livelihoods of workers. The authors show that although there are important and tangible benefits for a range of workers, there are also a range of risks and costs that could negatively affect the livelihoods of digital workers. They conclude with a discussion of four broad strategies – certification schemes, organising digital workers, regulatory strategies and democratic control of online labour platforms—that could improve conditions and livelihoods for digital workers. We caught up with the authors to explore the implications of the study: Ed.: Shouldn’t increased digitisation of work also increase transparency (i.e. tracking,…

Development, Tools

Current alternatives won’t light up Britain’s broadband blackspots

by Anne-marie Oostveen 19/08/2015

Satellites, microwaves, radio towers – how many more options must be tried before the government just shells out for fibre to the home?

by Anne-marie Oostveen 19/08/2015

Reposted from The Conversation. Despite the British government’s boasts of the steady roll-out of superfast broadband to more than four out of five homes and businesses, you needn’t be a statistician to realise that this means one out of five are still unconnected. In fact, the recent story about a farmer who was so incensed by his slow broadband that he built his own 4G mast in a field to replace it shows that for much of the country, little has improved. The government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme claims that it will provide internet access of at least 24 Mbps (megabits per second) to 95% of the country by 2017 through fibre to the cabinet, where fast fibre optic networks connect BT’s exchanges to street cabinets dotted around towns and villages. The final connection to the home comes via traditional (slower) copper cables. Those in rural communities are understandably sceptical of the government’s “huge achievement”, arguing that only a fraction of the properties included in the government’s running total can achieve reasonable broadband speeds, as signals drop off quickly with distance from BT’s street cabinets. Millions of people are still struggling to achieve even basic broadband, and not necessarily just in the remote countryside, but in urban areas such as Redditch, Lancaster and even Pimlico in central London. Four problems to solve This cabinet is a problem, not a solution. mikecattell, CC BY Our research found four recurring problems: connection speeds, latency, contention ratios, and reliability. Getting high-speed ADSL broadband delivered over existing copper cables is not possible in many areas, as the distance from the exchange or the street cabinet is so far that the broadband signal degrades and speeds drop. Minimum speed requirements are rising as the volume of data we use increases, so such slow connections will become more and more frustrating. But speed is not the only limiting factor. Network delay, known as latency, can be as frustrating as it forces the user to wait for…

Development, Economics

A promised ‘right’ to fast internet rings hollow for millions stuck with 20th-century speeds

by Bianca Reisdorf 24/03/2015

Tell those living in the countryside about the government’s promised “right to fast internet” and they’ll show you 10 years of similar, unmet promises.

by Bianca Reisdorf 24/03/2015

All geared up but no internet connection. Anne-Marie Oostveen, Author provided

Reposted from The Conversation. In response to the government’s recent declarations that internet speeds of 100Mb/s should be available to “nearly all homes” in the UK, a great many might suggest that this is easier said than done. It would not be the first such bold claim, yet internet connections in many rural areas still languish at 20th-century speeds. The government’s digital communications infrastructure strategy contains the intention of giving customers the “right” to a broadband connection of at least 5Mb/s in their homes. There’s no clear indication of any timeline for introduction, nor what is meant by “nearly all homes” and “affordable prices”. But in any case, bumping the minimum speed to 5Mb/s is hardly adequate to keep up with today’s online society. It’s less than the maximum possible ADSL1 speed of 8Mb/s that was common in the mid-2000s, far less than the 24Mb/s maximum speed of ADSL2+ that followed, and far, far less than the 30-60Mb/s speeds typical of fibre optic or cable broadband connections available today. In fact a large number of rural homes still are not able to access even the previously promised 2Mb/s minimum of the Digital Britain report in 2009. Serious implications As part of our study of rural broadband access we interviewed 27 people from rural areas in England and Wales about the quality of their internet connection and their daily experiences with slow and unreliable internet. Only three had download speeds of up to 6Mb/s, while most had connections that barely reached 1Mb/s. Even those who reported the faster speeds were still unable to carry out basic online tasks in a reasonable amount of time. For example using Google Maps, watching online videos, or opening several pages at once would require several minutes of buffering and waiting. Having several devices share the connection at a time wasn’t even an option. So the pledge for a “right” to 5Mb/s made by the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, is as meaningless as…

Development

Examining the data-driven value chains that are changing Rwanda’s tea sector

by Chris Foster 16/02/2015

What role is new Internet connectivity playing in changing these sectors—which are often seen as slow to adopt new technologies?

by Chris Foster 16/02/2015

Behind the material movement that takes tea from the slopes of Rwanda’s ‘thousand hills’ to a box on a shelf in Tesco, is a growing set of less visible digital data flows. Image by pasunejen.

Production of export commodity goods like tea, coffee and chocolate is an important contributor to economies in Africa. Producers sell their goods into international markets, with the final products being sold in supermarkets, here in the UK and throughout the world. So what role is new Internet connectivity playing in changing these sectors—which are often seen as slow to adopt new technologies? As part of our work examining the impacts of growing Internet connectivity and new digital ICTs in East Africa we explored uses of the Internet and ICTs in the tea sector in Rwanda. Tea is a sector with well-established practices and relations in the region, so we were curious if ICT might be changing it. Of course, one cannot ignore the movements of material goods when you research the tea sector. Tea is Rwanda’s main export by value, and in 2012 it moved over 21,000 tonnes of tea, accruing around $56m in value. During our fieldwork we interviewed cooperatives in remote offices surrounded by tea plantations in the temperate Southern highlands, tea processors in noisy tea factories heavy with the overpowering smell of fermenting tea leaves, and tea buyers and sellers surrounded by corridors piled high with sacks of tea. But behind the material movement that takes tea from the slopes of Rwanda’s ‘thousand hills’ to a box on a shelf in Tesco, is a growing set of less visible digital data flows. Whilst the adoption of digital technologies is not comprehensive in the Rwandan tea sector (with, for example, very low Internet use among tea growers), we did find growing use of the Internet and ICTs. More importantly, where they were present, digital flows of information (such as tea-batch tracking, logistics and sales prices) were increasingly important to the ability of firms to improve production and ultimately to increase their profit share from tea. We have termed this a ‘data-driven value chain’ to highlight that these new…

Development

Why haven’t digital platforms transformed firms in developing countries? The Rwandan tourism sector explored

by Chris Foster 10/02/2015

Have Rwandan firms been able to access online platforms? What impact has access to these platforms had on firms?

by Chris Foster 10/02/2015

Tourism is becoming an increasingly important contributor to Rwanda’s economy. Image of Homo sapiens and Gorilla beringei beringei meeting in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park by Andries3.

One of the great hopes for new Internet connectivity in the developing world is that it will allow those in developing countries who offer products and services to link to and profit from global customers. With the landing of undersea Internet infrastructure in East Africa, there have been hopes that as firms begin to use the Internet more extensively that improved links to markets will positively impact them. Central to enabling new customer transactions is the emergence of platforms—digital services, websites and online exchanges—that allow more direct customer-producer interactions to occur. As part of our work exploring the impacts of growing internet connectivity and digital ICTs in East Africa, we wanted to explore how digital platforms were affecting Rwandan firms. Have Rwandan firms been able to access online platforms? What impact has access to these platforms had on firms? Tourism is becoming an increasingly important contributor to Rwanda’s economy, with 3.1% direct contribution to GDP, and representing 7% of employment. Tourism is typically focused on affluent international tourists who come to explore the wildlife of the country, most notably as the most accessible location to see the mountain gorilla. Rwandan policy makers see tourism as a potential area for expansion, and new connectivity could be one key driver in making the country more accessible to customers. Tourist service providers in Rwanda have a very high Internet adoption, and even the smallest hotel or tour agency is likely to have at least one mobile Internet-connected laptop. Many of the global platforms also have a presence in the region: online travel agents such as Expedia and Hotels.com work with Rwandan hotels, common social media used by tourists such as TripAdvisor and Facebook are also well-known, and firms have been encouraged by the government to integrate into payment platforms like Visa. So, in the case of Rwandan tourism, Internet connectivity, Internet access and sector-wide platforms are certainly available for tourism firms. During our…

Development, Economics

Broadband may be East Africa’s 21st century railway to the world

by Mark Graham 17/11/2014

The excitement over the potentially transformative effects of the internet in low-income countries is nowhere more evident than in East Africa.

by Mark Graham 17/11/2014

Connecting 21st-century Africa takes more than just railways and roads. Steve Song, CC BY-NC-SA

Reposted from The Conversation. The excitement over the potentially transformative effects of the internet in low-income countries is nowhere more evident than in East Africa—the last major populated region of the world to gain a wired connection to the internet. Before 2009, there wasn’t a single fibre-optic cable connecting the region to the rest of the world. After hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, cables were laid to connect the region to the global network. Prices for internet access went down, speeds went up, and the number of internet users in the region skyrocketed. Politicians, journalists and academics all argued that better connectivity would lead to a blossoming of economic, social, and political activity—and a lot of influential people in the region made grand statements. For instance, former Kenyan president Mwai Kibai stated: I am gratified to be with you today at an event of truly historic proportions. The landing of this fibre-optic undersea cable project in Mombasa is one of the landmark projects in Kenya’s national development story. Indeed some have compared this to the completion of the Kenya-Uganda railway more than a century ago. This comparison is not far-fetched, because while the economies of the last century were driven by railway connections, the economies of today are largely driven by internet. The president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, also spoke about the revolutionary potentials of these changes in connectivity. He claimed: In Africa, we have missed both the agricultural and industrial revolutions and in Rwanda we are determined to take full advantage of the digital revolution. This revolution is summed up by the fact that it no longer is of utmost importance where you are but rather what you can do – this is of great benefit to traditionally marginalised regions and geographically isolated populations. As many who have studied politics have long since noted, proclamations like these can have an important impact: they frame how scarce resources can be…