Financing ICT and digitalisation in Africa: Current trends and key sustainability issues

Increasingly recognised as a pivotal infrastructure for inclusive economic development and social justice in Africa, information and communication technology is a fundamental component of the continent’s infrastructure budget. DFIs, such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank, have long included digital infrastructure and connectivity projects as one of the portfolios that receive financial support. Nevertheless, the investment landscape for sustainable information and communication technologies in Africa remains poorly understood. The availability of data is inconsistent, mirroring a broader knowledge problem across the entire infrastructure finance sector (see Cirolia, Pieterse & Pollio, 2022). Moreover, issues of sustainable investment are by nature of digital infrastructure much less visible and debated than in related sectors of mobility or energy. This paper is, therefore, aimed at i) highlighting the different components of infrastructure investment in information and communication technologies, ii) showing that the value chain is complex and that different investment patterns and bottlenecks need to be recognised across the sector, and iii) identifying key sustainability issues that deserve attention for digital infrastructure as much as for other types of technical systems. To do so, in this paper, four sections and a tentative list of policy implications linking sustainability concerns to the financial design of information and communication technology infrastructure are featured

Designing and Implementing an Innovative SMS-Based Alert System (RapidSMS-MCH) to Monitor Pregnancy and Reduce Maternal and Child Deaths in Rwanda

Introduction: With the continuous growth of mobile network coverage and unprecedented penetration of mobile devices in the developing world, several mHealth initiatives are being implemented in developing countries. This paper aims to describe requirements for designing and implementing a mobile phone-based communication system aiming at monitoring pregnancy and reducing bottlenecks in communication associated with maternal and newborn deaths; and document challenges and lessons learned. Methods: An SMS-based system was developed to improve maternal and child health (MCH) using RapidSMS^®, a free and open-sourced software development framework. To achieve the expected results, the RapidSMS-MCH system was customized to allow interactive communication between a community health worker (CHW)following mother-infant pairs in their community, a national centralized database, the health facility and in case of an emergency alert, the ambulance driver. The RapidSMS-MCH system was piloted in Musanze district, Nothern province of Rwanda over a 12-month period. Results: A total of 432 CHW were trained and equipped with mobile phones. A total of 35,734 SMS were sent by 432 CHW from May 2010 to April 2011. A total of 11,502 pregnancies were monitored. A total of 362 SMS alerts for urgent and life threatening events were registered. We registered a 27% increase in facility based delivery from 72% twelve months before to 92% at the end of the twelve months pilot phase. Major challenges were telephone maintenance and replacement. Disctrict heath team capacity to manage and supervise the system was strengthened by the end of pilot phase. Highly committed CHWs and effective coordination by the District health team were critical enablers. Conclusion: We successully designed and implemented a mobile phone SMS-based system to track pregnancy and maternal and child outcomes in limited resources setting. Implementation of mobile-phone systems at community level could contribute to improving emergency obstetric and neonatal care, yet it requires a well-organized community health structure in limited resource settings

The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018-2019

An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains

Embedding planning support systems in spatial planning practice:the role of drift in implementing the Spatial Development Framework methodology

Planning Support Systems (PSS) research has explored ways to improve PSS use and embeddedness. However, there is little knowledge of how unplanned changes during implementation impact outcomes. This paper answers the question, ‘How can drift influence PSS implementation and use?’ It applies the concept of drift (changes in new technology, user behaviour, and/or existing practice during ICT implementation) to explain how PSS users (GIS specialists, planners) initiate unplanned changes during implementation and use. Following a qualitative approach, we investigate a PSS implementation case study in Rwanda – the Spatial Development Framework (SDF) methodology – to establish the role of drift in PSS use and embeddedness. Our study reveals that a) user understanding and perception of PSS can initiate drift during implementation and use, and b) drift can influence outcomes of PSS use or embeddedness. This study confirms the role of drift in PSS use and embeddedness in Rwanda’s spatial planning process

South Sudan's infrastructure : a continental perspective

Newly independent South Sudan faces a challenge in making its own way in infrastructure development. Despite earning $6 billion in oil revenues since 2005, South Sudan's spending has not been proportional to its income, but rather has lagged behind North Sudan's development of infrastructure and social support. South Sudan benefitted from strong donor support during 2004-10, the interim period defined by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. It focused on reestablishing regional transport links and access to seaports as well as rehabilitating its ports, airstrips, and single rail line. South Sudan also successfully liberalized the ICT sector. Nonetheless, the new country's infrastructure remains in such a dismal state that it is difficult to pinpoint a single most pressing challenge. The transport sector accounts for half of the country's spending needs, and water and sanitation account for a further quarter of the total. But so many improvements are needed that the nation cannot realistically catch up with its neighbors within 10 years, or even longer. South Sudan's annual infrastructure funding gap is$879 million per year. Given that the country's total needs are beyond its reach in the medium term, it must adopt firm priorities for its infrastructure spending. It also must attract international and private-sector investment and look to lower-cost technologies to begin to close its funding gap. Although South Sudan loses relatively little to inefficiencies, redressing those inefficiencies will be vital to creating solid institutions to attract new investors and get the most out of their investments.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,E-Business,Infrastructure Economics,Energy Production and Transportation,Roads&Highways

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

The Efficacy of E-Governance Policy and Practice in Uganda: A Perspective Review

The Arab Spring foregrounded a new reality that a digitally disruptive and highly networked world presents a wicked governance problem for governments seeking to enact effective governance systems in an era where citizen’s unconventional digital mobilization can unseat repressive and unresponsive governments. This reinforces the need for spontaneous, contextually grounded and participatory e-governance mechanisms given their normative and transformative capacity to shift beliefs and norms of policy makers, enhance quality of policy outputs, elicit public confidence and heighten government’s legitimacy. In this paper, the authors assess the efficacy of Uganda’s e-governance policy, praxis and challenges as part of the broader e-governance discourse in the global south. The outcomes reveal that Uganda has instituted excellent legal, institutional and infrastructural e-governance mechanisms, but the conspicuous absence of political will, by an increasingly vulnerable political elite class, hampers sustainability of effective e-governance. Measures like rash and selective application of laws, introduction of new repressive laws, coercive means including violence and arbitrary arrest for dissenting opinions, increased state sponsored online and offline surveillance, internet shutdowns, network disruptions, online harassment, remote intrusion of civil society websites, and censorship, only further shrink civic space ultimately knocking both trust and legitimacy. Therefore, we propose that government prioritizes expansion of civic space to allow favourably reflexive and participatory citizen engagement as a pathway to enhanced quality of policy outputs and governance as a means to achieve its Vision 2040 by way of digital infrastructure, connectivity, legal and institutional frameworks and media freedom are dependent on political will. Keywords: e-governance, infrastructure, connectivity, institutional frameworks, political will DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/12-7-01 Publication date:October 31st 202

A Comparative Study of Dry Ports in East Africa and China

The period between 1970s and 1990s witnessed a number of global changes. Significant ones were; liberalization of trade, deregulation of many economies, and emergence of economic integrations of countries and regions. These changes in addition to innovation and advancement of ICT impacted on trade and the shipping sector. Thevolume of trade, the cargo transported by sea, and the number of shipping vessels increased thus putting pressure on existing sea ports. Dry ports were introduced as a way of accessing the hinterland and also reduce the pressure on the bottle necked, congested and inefficient sea ports. Theadoption of dry port concept began in Europe and North America, followed by Asia, South America and then Africa. This trend created the need to conduct studies about this sector. This paper therefore tries to compare historical perspectives, developing mode, and management model of the dry ports sector in China, a high income developing country, under a socialist system, with advanced shipping infrastructure, against the East African region, which is characterized with low income countries, free market policies, anda largely less developed shipping infrastructure. The paper also presents discussions on the pros and cons of both systems from which, conclusions and recommendations are drawn to support future studies and policy formulation. This paper not only serves the purpose of contributing to existing academic knowledge in respect to dry ports, but it also gives the policy makers and practitioners in the logistics and trade sectors a chance to compare the practices in the two developing regions and apply what is suitable for a particular case. Keywords: Comparative study, Dry Ports, East Africa, Chin