Determinants of a digital divide in Sub-Saharan Africa : a spatial econometric analysis of cell phone coverage

Most discussions of the digital divide treat it as a"North-South"issue, but the conventional dichotomy doesn't applyto cell phones in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although almost all Sub-Saharan countries are poor by international standards, they exhibit great disparities in coverage by cell telephone systems. Buys, Dasgupta, Thomas and Wheeler investigate the determinants of these disparities with a spatially-disaggregated model that employs locational information for cell-phone towers across over 990,000 4.6-km grid squares in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using probit techniques, a probability model with adjustments for spatial autocorrelation has been estimated that relates the likelihood of cell-tower location within a grid square to potential market size (proximate population); installation and maintenance cost factors related to accessibility (elevation, slope, distance from a main road, distance from the nearest large city); and national competition policy. Probit estimates indicate strong, significant results for the supply-demand variables, and very strong results for the competition policy index. Simulations based on the econometric results suggest that a generalized improvement in competition policy to a level that currently characterizes the best-performing states in Sub-Saharan Africa could lead to huge improvements in cell-phone area coverage for many states currently with poor policy performance, and an overall coverage increase of nearly 100 percent.E-Business,ICT Policy and Strategies,Population Policies,Technology Industry,Geographical Information Systems

Digital entrepreneurship in a resource-scarce context: A focus on entrepreneurial digital competencies

Purpose – Thepurpose of this paper is to criticallyexplorehow context asan antecedent to entrepreneurial digital competencies (EDCs) influences digital entrepreneurship in a resource-scarce environment. Design/methodology/approach – The data comprises semi-structured interviews with 16 digital entrepreneurs, as owner-managers of small digital businesses in Cameroon. Findings – The results reveal the ways in which EDCs shape the entry (or start-up) choices and post-entry strategic decisions of digital entrepreneurs in response to context-specific opportunities and challenges associated with digital entrepreneurship. Research limitations/implications – The data comes from one African country and 16 digital businesses thus the research setting limits the generalisability of the results. Practical implications – This paper highlights important implications for encouraging digital entrepreneurship by focussing on institutional, technology and local dimensions of context and measures to develop the entrepreneurial and digital competencies. This includes policy interventions to develop the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, transport and local distribution infrastructure, and training opportunities to develop the EDCs of digital entrepreneurs. Originality/value – Whereas the capabilities to adopt and use ICTs and the internet by small businesses have been examined, this is among the first theoretically sensitised study linking context, EDCs and digital entrepreneurship

Consumer Behavior as a Determinant Factor of E-Commerce Development in Cameroon

The coming of electronic commerce to Cameroon, which is an internet way of doing transactions and provision of goods and services to customers, has spruced up the way people do things in this country. Businesses and people are now entitled to get engaged into this way of doing transactions, which is becoming more and more popular among the Cameroonians recently. Many old firms and companies are now trying day after day to reach their customers through this new way of doing things. While on the other hand, there are new businesses which are fully relying on electronic commerce to be able to function and they gradually keep gaining importance into the Cameroonians daily practices. On the other hand, we were eager to find out if the Cameroonian population, all ages, gender, profession, level of education and more are interested in this new form of business that in some way or the other changes their daily practices and even beliefs. The major objective of the study was to find out how these Cameroonians react to and take this business, if they are already used to it and what needs to be improved. This study was made with a survey design in order to collect data from respondents and a random sampling procedure was used to represent the entire population. The research established that a good number of Cameroonians were adopting electronic commerce for their online transactions like buying of goods and services and an increase in the trust

Report of the first policy advisory group meeting of the regional programme "Fisheries and HIV/AIDS: Investing in sustaining solution"

The WorldFish Center and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are currently implementing a Regional Programme entitled Fisheries and HIV/AIDS in Africa: Investing in Sustainable Solutions, to strengthen the capacity in the region to develop sustainable solutions to enhance the contributions of fish and fisheries to economic and human development. In particular, the programme is building a strategic response to HIV/AIDS in the fisheries sector that will generate benefits for vulnerable groups in wider society. With financial support from the Swedish-Norwegian Regional Programme on HIV/AIDS in Africa, this programme is conducting research-for-development activities and implementing pilot interventions in selected fishing communities in eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa, namely Benin, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cameroon, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia. In all eight countries, three technical focus areas have been identified through national consultations 1) Options for reducing vulnerability along the fish marketing chain; 2) Enhancing nutrition benefits from small scale aquaculture and fisheries; 3) Institutional change to increase investment in viable support options; This report presents initial findings by the Regional Programme, a regional synthesis and policy implications of these programme findings, and policy recommendations to address HIV/AIDS in the fisheries sector in Africa, as defined by the PAG members during its first meeting in Lilongwe.Fisheries, AIDS, Public health, HIV, Nutritive value

Africa Economic Brief - Mobile Banking in Africa: Taking the Bank to the People

KEY ISSUES • Mobile telephony penetration in Africa has increased exponentially from less than 2 million subscribers in 1998 to over 400 million in 2009. • Mobile banking offers an opportunity to serve the “unbankedâ€: only 20 percent of African families have a bank account. • Mobile banking is staging a true “revolution†in access to finance. A mobile phone can serve as: a virtual bank card; a point of sale terminal; an ATM; an internet banking terminal. • Mobile banking offers more opportunities for partnerships between banks, non-bank financial institutions; mobile telephony enables MFIs and IFIs to increase access to finance, especially in rural areas for households and SMEs

Enhancing the Use of the Mobile Infrastructure in Cameroon. The Case of Bayam Sellam

The expansion and the reliability of mobile technology in Sub-Sahara Africa - as well as elsewhere - opened up diverse opportunities. For instance, the access to learning material, conduction of commercial activities, promotion of agricultural activities, enhancement of governmental transparency, support of healthcare practices, etc. To harness the existing mobile infrastructure, diverse users are looking for effective and efficient ways, for instance, the Bayam Sellam in Cameroon. Bayam Sellam refers to people engaged in trade between rural and urban markets. This work analyses the usage and development of information and communication technology in Sub-Sahara Africa in general, and the mobile technology and its constraints in particular. An efficient use of the mobile technology depends on appropriate mobile services and applications. These should produce and use local digital content, so as to enhance the use of the existing mobile infrastructure and contribute to satisfy the users' needs. As a case study, we deal with a tailored mobile commerce solution for Bayam Sellam and other related stakeholders such as the governmental department for price regulation. The arising question is how Bayam Sellam can use the mobile devices to improve their business activities and, thereby, use the mobile infrastructure more efficiently. With a questionnaire, we investigate the wishes of 250 Bayam Sellam in Ngaoundere. The aim was to develop a tailored mobile commerce solution called Bayasella for Bayam Sellam. The solution is a hybrid application based on the approach of local data storage, web technologies and frameworks (HTML5, PhoneGap, etc.). Bayasella stores product details offline, and synchronises them with the online database whenever the user wants. The online activities (up/downloading offers) shall be very short so as to minimise charges. Another key issue is: if the provided architecture can be applied to other domains. We put our attention on a combined mobile weather application that impacts the mobile technology and the Bayam Sellam business activities. For this purpose, we combine endogenous qualitative weather data - from ethnic group Tpuri - with existing quantifiable data from established weather forecasting systems, such as World Weather Online