IT in Developing Nations-A Look at Sub-Saharan Africa

Prepared By:Samantha CagleMark Reinsch

Xilu Zhang

Report Distributed: December 4, 2006

Prepared For:IS 5800

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY…………………………………………………………. 2

OVERVIWEW OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA…………………………………… 3

TELEDENSITY…………………………………………………………………..... 4

PIRACY……………………………………………………………………………. 7

TWO CHALLENGES……………………………………………………………… 7

TELEMEDICINE…………………………………………………………………... 8

IT DEVELOPMENT IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA …………………………….. 9

THE “LEAPFROG” EFFECT……………………………………………………… 14

CASE STUDY ON RWANDARwanda Overview………………………………………………………….. 20IT in Rwanda……………………………………………………………….. 23Challenges for Rwanda……………………………………………………... 28

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………….. 28

WORKS CITED……………………………………………………………………. 30

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report examines information technology (IT) in the developing continent of Africa, in particular Sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this report is to provide information necessary for answering the question, “Can investments in IT save a developing country by bringing economic prosperity?”

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is a continent with many troubles, but it also has many possibilities for enormous economic growth. By first looking at India, one can see how a developing country can benefit from investments in IT. India followed a “hands-off” policy concerning their IT industry. This policy along with a strong push by the government for education led to an IT industry with building strength.(Arora, Athreye, 2001).

When we first started our research we were fully prepared to only be able to find negative information on the IT development in Africa, and not much information at that. Much to our surprise, we were overwhelmed with an abundance of positive information. After going through everything we decided to focus on: teledensity, piracy rates, telemedicine, “leapfrog” effect, and a case study on Rwanda.

The teledensity and piracy rates in Africa appear to be those of a continent that will never be as technically developed as developed nations. Upon close examination, however, it can be seen that there is hope. The growth of mobile telephones in Africa is the highest of all continents since 2000, and recently AOL Time-Warner, HP, and Sun Microsystems have donated 10 million towards developing IT for Sub-Saharan Africa. Piracy has been a big problem for Africa, but the BSA is working to update and enforce copyright laws (Mbarika, Meso, Musa, 2004; “BSA-IDC Study”, 2006).

The “leapfrog” effect is a plan that could potentially work for SSA. The plan has worked in South Korea and Singapore, but there are many pitfalls to the plan. It could work for SSA because other countries already have IT plans that work, and SSA countries could look at them as examples and develop their own IT plans. The problem comes in when there is not enough knowledge in SSA follow through. “Leapfrogging” is a good plan, but SSA still needs many resources before it can work (Odedra, 2006).

Our case study on Rwanda was particularly interesting because in general one does not think of Rwanda as a country that has any IT development. Many of us remember from the news a country where hundreds of millions were killed during the 1994 genocide. Rwanda is currently undergoing a lot of change including their political and educational systems. Our research shows that as long as Rwanda stays politically stable and keeps their focus on secondary education, there is a good chance that the people of Rwanda will be able to benefit from investments in IT (“Education,” 2006).

Overall, there is hope for SSA. One of the biggest factors is that education is becoming a standard for children. Even more than education, is that children are going on to secondary education and even universities. With education, SSA can develop the human capital needed to

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take advantage of IT by leapfrogging. Another factor giving SSA hope is the trend towards government motivation for progress.

Based on the conclusion that, “IT does not guarantee economic prosperity. It must be partnered with open markets, education, human rights, freedom of speech and clean government.” recommendations for SSA are (1) education should be a top priority, (2) privatization of IT sector, (3) equal access, allow open-sourcing, and (4) establish anti-piracy laws (Mougayar, 2006).

INTRODUCTION TO SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Sub-Saharan Africa expands the entire African continent south of the Sahara Desert. This portion of the continent differs from the North African nations in terms of culture, climate, and basic ways of life and, most importantly, its level of technological advancement. Its respective nations are the basis of this study.

It should be noted that South Africa (although highlighted on the map below) is excluded from our study due to its unique dualistic socioeconomic situation that resulted from apartheid, where “the indigenous White population live in a society much like Europe, whereas the majority Black population live in conditions much like that in the rest of SSA” (Okoli, Mbarika, 2003).

The following graphic lists and illustrates the Sub-Saharan countries. The North African nations are in gray.

Rwanda is wedged between the Republic of the Congo (the large yellow nation in the center of the continent) to the west and Tanzania to the east.

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MAJOR IT FACTORS FACING THE AFRICAN CONTINENT

Teledensity: The Disconnect of a Continent

The term “teledensity” refers to the level of communication capabilities in a given area. The Techweb Encyclopedia defined teledensity as “the number of landline telephones in use for every 100 individuals living within an area. A teledensity greater than 100 means there are more telephones than people. LDCs (least developed countries) may have a teledensity of less than 10” (“Teledensity”, 2006).

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), World Telecommunications Development Report, 1998, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Communications Outlook further acknowledged that the development of newer communication mediums encouraged an updated description of the term teledensity and explained that “in the 1990s, the definition of the teledensity indicator was broadened to include mobile (wireless) subscribers to the PSTN to reflect the introduction and importance of wireless access” (“Telecommunications”, 2006).

Dr. Victor Mbarika, a champion of IT research in sub-Saharan Africa, joins Peter Meso and Philip Musa in describing teledensity as the “core backbone” in encouraging the implementation of technological services. The IT scholars elaborate that “adequate communication infrastructure enables citizens to access…pools of knowledge, information, finances and markets that empower them to effectively engage in capacity building, income generation and skills-acquisition activities beneficial to the local communities to which they belong” (2004).

Teledensity: Africa vs. the World

The following graph offers a practical illustration of how Africa compares to the rest of the world with basic teledensity.

While the United States has over 70 phone lines per 100 people, Africa has less than one phone line per person. To illustrate further, while Africa is more than 3.5 times the area of the U.S.,

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Source: Mbarika, V., Meso, P., and Musa, P., “A Disconnect in Stakeholders’ Perceptions from Emerging Realities of Teledensity Growth in Africa’s Least Developed Countries" Journal of Global Information Management, Vol. 12, 3, 2004, pp. 2. 2004.

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U.S. Sweden Europe World Africa

Phone lines per 100 people

New York City alone holds more phone lines than the entire African continent (Mbarika, Meso, Musa, 2004).

This is graph illustrates Africa’s population vs. Internet usage compared to the rest of the world.

Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm, 9 November 2006.

As one can see, while Africa makes up over 10% of the world’s population, it represents less than 3% of the world’s Internet users. On the other hand, North America represents over 20% of the world’s Internet users while it only holds less than 10% of the world’s population.

Teledensity: What is Africa’s hold up?

According to Mbarika, Meso and Musa, there are four major obstacles to increasing teledensity numbers in Africa.

1. Organizational: Given the makeup of many sub-Saharan governments, the utilities and telecommunication networks are fully monopolized, offering no incentive to explore possible improvements. These governments “lack basic knowledge of key global trends in information technology” (Mbarika, Meso, Musa, 2004).

2. Financial: As sub-Saharan nations cope with weak economies, they lack the ability to develop financially. Weak currencies and the lack of banking systems inhabit these nations from purchasing any type of IT equipment, given there is no available credit.

3. Technological: Any money spent on technology has been for the governments’ use, leaving those in rural areas with few, if any, systems. Any systems that are in place have near obsolete equipment and receive little to no maintenance.

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0.00%10.00%20.00%30.00%40.00%50.00%60.00%

Africa Europe S.America

Usage % vs. Population % World Usage %World Population %

4. Geographical: The rough terrain, not to mention lack of roads, in many areas in sub-Saharan Africa creates barriers to remote areas. Therefore, the financial returns from these areas are little or nothing. Most investors have no incentive to move beyond the exploration process. Also, “government monopolies of LDCs lack a universal access policy, which explains why many rural areas do not have any form of telecommunication access” (Mbarika, Meso, Musa, 2004).

Teledensity in Africa: There is hope

Mbarika, Meso and Musa report a number of positive trends regarding the development of communications on the African continent. First, the growth rate of mobile telephone use in Africa is accelerating. Since 2000, it has been the highest of all continents. Second, by the end of 2001, 28 of Africa’s 49 LDCs had more mobile users than fixed-line users. Third, the use of cellular phones has grown at more than 82% per year since 2001. U.S. growth was 33%. Finally, the private sector has begun to put forth efforts to explore African IT development. Sun Microsystems, AOL Time-Warner, HP together “have pledged $10 million toward studies on how to use IT to better the quality of life in SSA” (Mbarika, Meso, Musa, 2004).

The following graphic illustrates the growth of Internet usage this decade. Africa easily leads the way.

Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm, viewed 9 November 2006

Piracy: The Crippling of a Continent

Software piracy is defined as the illegal or unauthorized copying or usage of computer software. While an issue is virtually all of the world’s nations, countries in Africa own some of the highest piracy rates on the planet. The chairman of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) in South

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Africa states that “software piracy remains one of the major hurdles to realizing the potential of the information economy in South Africa and on the continent” (“2006 Global”, 2006).

The BSA further reports that piracy rates in some African nations are as high as 90%, making legitimate software difficult to find. The average piracy rate for the continent is 70%, with South Africa being the lowest at 36%. Piracy rates for more African nations, as well as for many developed nations, is found in the following chart.

Source: Third Annual Global Software Piracy Study, May 2006

Efforts to fight piracy resulted in only a one percent decrease in South Africa’s piracy rate. This resulted in $1.2 billion in economic losses, as legitimate competition is eliminated with so many illegal or unauthorized copies readily available.

Two Big Challenges: What can be done?

Teledensity

Given the importance of teledensity with developing an IT network, the issue in Africa can appear hopeless. However, the positive trends in previously stated statistics have been raising interest and motivation in a number of organizations inside and outside the continent. In South Africa, for instance, 47 non-government organizations (NGOs) have petitioned the nation’s top officials to endorse a movement to implement free open source software (FOSS). FOSS allows users to modify and redistribute copies without limitations. This form of software is inexpensive and easily attainable, as it allows any user to redesign and remarket with permission. FOSS According to the Africa ICT Policy Monitor, FOSS “allows national government sovereignty

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over its ICT infrastructure in terms of security, support, development and costs.” (“South Africa,” 2006).

The African ICT Policy Monitor asserts that FOSS is favorable for African nations because it is cost-effective and it reduces dependency on foreign suppliers. These characteristics eliminate the financial barriers, such as exchange of currency and the lack of credit options.

According to the Policy Monitor, the fact that 47 organizations were responsible for the first ever government petitioning of software, citizens have good reason to be optimistic. It also argues that citizens hold the responsibility to voice a social change. In other words, “battle has certainly not been won, but the first step has been taken. The ball is now in government’s court, but civil society will remain active on the issue” (“South Africa,” 2006).

Piracy

The market for illegal software in Africa is more than staggering. With some nations home to piracy rates as high as 90%, some have argued that working to resolve the issue is futile. The BSA and the International Data Group (IDC) assert that if Africa wants to realize IT development, then its leaders and citizens absolutely must be proactive in cutting piracy rates. The organizations make recommendations:

1. Update/create copyright laws to make copying anything licensed illegal without permission. Many sub-Saharan nations do not even have copyright laws.

2. Educate citizens on copyright laws to promote understanding of how software distribution works.

3. Create enforcement mechanisms to penalize any individual or organization that uses illegal software.

4. Redirect government resources to enhance efforts to create favorable environments for IT investors. These resources would include IP address network creation, cross-border cooperation and selective training for leaders.

5. Finally, require all in the public sector to use only legitimate software. This statement sounds funny to many, but it illustrates how wide software piracy reaches (“BSA-IDC,” 2006).

Telemedicine: The Motivating Factor?

Telemedicine has become a widely adopted practice throughout the globe as technologies allow doctors to examine patient x-rays and documents from another country. This practice cuts diagnoses and treatment time as material can be instantly transported via Internet.

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Source: Mbarika, Victor. “Is Telemedicine the Panacea for Sub-Saharan Africa’s Medical Nightmare?” Communications of the ACM, July 2004, Vol. 47, No. 7, pp. 21-24.

As Africa counts less than ten doctors per 100,000 people and lacks numerous specialists and resources for treatment, researchers tout telemedicine as a major factor in motivating leaders and organizations to implement IT networks. As IT would improve healthcare, IT usage could then easily spread to other uses, encouraging the education and involvement of citizens in their society.

DEVELOPING IT IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA – A GAME OF CATCHUP

Bridging the Digital Divide

The wealth of the world is extremely unevenly distributed. 75% of the world’s population reside in developing nations – SSA makes up for 88% of this population – but this demographic only enjoys 16% of the world’s products (Musa, Meso, Mbarika, 2005). More dramatically put, one fourth of the world’s population owns 84% of the world’s goods. This privileged 25% mostly resides in the Northern part of the world (North America, Western Europe) while the Southern hemisphere (Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia) is mostly consisted of developing nations.

This disparity is further widened as developed nations continue to invest in ICT and reap the benefits from the entry into the information age while the developing nations continue to grow at a slow pace. The result is that the rich get richer and the poor grow poorer. This income gap driven by ICT development is called the digital divide, which can be more specifically defined as “the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard both to their opportunities to access ICTs and to their use of the Internet for a wide variety of activities” (Ono, 2005). As will be shown later on, there is no empirical link between ICT development and economic growth on a macroeconomic level, but on a general level, there does seem to be unanimous consent from prominent organizations and researchers that the two are interrelated. As the Secretary General of the UN, Koffi Annan puts

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it, “[ICT] helps countries improve trade efficiency and facilitates the integration of developing countries into the global economy” (Okoli, Mbarika, 2003).

It can be inferred, then, that investment in ICT may be able to lift SSA from this downward spiral and give the sub-continent hopes of economic prosperity, eventually catching up to the living conditions of developed nations. However, this task is not as simple as it sounds.

The Road the Success – More Barriers Than Aids

The table below lists the number of positive and negative factors that impact ICT development in SSA. Although it would be incorrect to generalize all the countries of SSA, one or more of these forces can be seen all the countries. The most and striking information about this table is that the negative factors significantly outnumber the positive ones.

The only two factors positively driving ICT development are world pressure and desire to improve infrastructures – neither of which actually shows substantial progress – which are overwhelmed by the twelve negative-impact forces.

Source: Musa, Phillip F., Peter Meso, and Victor Mbarika, “Toward Sustainable Adoption of Technologies for Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Precursors, Diagnostics, and Prescriptions.” Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Volume 15, 2005, pp. 592-608. Many of the negative factors are interrelated and drive each other downwards (greed and corruption leads to apathy of the government and people, e.g.). Out of the twelve, the most significant ones are: lack of basic amenities, inadequate technological infrastructure, and inadequate educational infrastructure.

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Given the poor living conditions of most people in SSA, it is difficult to imagine a technologically advanced continent. Most citizens do not have running water or electricity; less than 13% of the roads are paved, making of places inaccessible; the infant mortality rate is 103 per 1000 live births (the highest in the world); deaths resulting from malaria, typhoid, jaundice, polio, and many other diseases rare to developed nations are alarmingly common; 66% of people in the world infected with HIV/AIDS reside in SSA; and life expectancy is less than 40 years (it is in the 70s and 80s for developed nations) (Musa, Meso, Mbarika, 2005). How can the people and government of SSA care about the Internet and telephones when the citizens are just trying to survive?

On top of the meager living conditions mentioned above that prevents the local people from taking an interest in ICT, the basic technology infrastructure of SSA also hinders ICT development. As can be seen in the figure below, Africa ranks the lowest on the UN’s measure of e-readiness compared to other regions of the world.

Source: Mwangi, Wagaki. “The Social Relations of e-Government Diffusion in Developing Countries: The Case of Rwanda,” ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Vol. 151, 2006, pp. 199-208.

This means that Africa ranks the lowest in terms of web measure, telecommunications infrastructure, and human capital, as these are the UN’s three measures of E-readiness. Web measure is the “sophistication of a country’s online presence”; human capital is a combination of adult literacy rates and academic enrollment from elementary to tertiary levels; and telecommunications infrastructure mostly refers to personal computers, telephone lines, and online population (Mwangi, 2006). It is unclear what the author means exactly by “sophistication,” so we will not discuss the first measure, but discussion of the last two measures are suffice to show how SSA compares to the rest of the world in ICT development.

Human capital is by far the biggest barrier to SSA’s development, as this is a resource that is significantly lacking in the region. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that about 40% of the people are illiterate (Musa, Meso,

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Mbarika, 2005). The figure below shows the total enrollment rates of the world’s six regions, and it is clear that SSA has the lowest enrollment rates in all levels of education (Wils, Goujon, 1998). Although recent studies indicate SSA’s higher education enrollment rates has grown on an average of 20% per year over the last 30 years, this figure varies widely across individual countries and the average rate of enrollment still remains at 2%. Furthermore, SSA is still lagging far behind the rest of the world on this measure, as there were 200 people enrolled in tertiary level education per 100,000 people across SSA in 1995, whereas this number is 1020 in the Arab and Asian countries and 1500 in Latin America (Banya, Elu, 2001). All these factors add up to a lack of human capital.

Source: Wils, Annababette, and Anne Goujon. “Diffusion of Education in Six World Regions, 1960-90.” Population and Development Review, Vol. 24, No. 2. (Jun., 1998), pp. 357-368.

The telecommunication infrastructure is also significantly underdeveloped in SSA. On the measure of PCs ownership, the PC density for SSA in 2001 was only 0.1%, whereas it was 42% in the US. The number of telephone lines can be measured by the teledensity and as we saw earlier, SSA has very low teledensity levels. It is estimated that there are more telephones lines in New York City than all of Africa. As for the online population, Africa also lags far behind, with only 2 out of a 1000 (0.2%) people having private access to Internet dialup, compared to the 3 per 10 (30%) people in the US (Musa, Meso, Mbarika, 2005).

The inadequate educational infrastructure is reflected in the low illiteracy and enrollment rates mentioned above. This is also related to the lack of basic amenities such as electricity, buildings, access to roads, etc. As mentioned earlier, these socioeconomic problems are all interrelated, making it difficult to fix all of them. The lack of research on SSA also makes it difficult to figure how to begin, because SSA’s different environment makes it inappropriate to impose previous models.

SSA’s IT Development – A Special Case

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In spite of the UN’s authority, their e-readiness report does not completely and accurately reflect the situation in Africa. The figure below shows the expected and actual relationships between individual income and e-readiness in the 48 SSA nations, but these two relationships do not match. There is expected to be a positive linear relationship between the two variables (Predicted Y), but the actual data appears to be incredibly scattered and to have no relationship at all (Y).

Source: Mwangi, Wagaki. “The Social Relations of e-Government Diffusion in Developing Countries: The Case of Rwanda,” ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Vol. 151, 2006, pp. 199-208.

There are several explanations for this disparity. One is that the UN’s measure of e-readiness is a “one-size-fits-all” model that does not actually fit all. It does not take into the characteristics, investment, and application requirements for each individual country. SSA countries have a much different sociological, political, historical, financial, and cultural environment and this may translate into different e-readiness patterns as well. This may also explain why western e-government models have failed before when being imposed onto SSA countries.

This chart is also erroneous in that Rwanda only received an e-readiness score of 0.0035 in 2005 (Mwangi, 2006). With a GDP per capita of $1379.62 US in 2005, this would place it on the chart above approximately where the red circle is. Granted there is no actual dot on where it should be, but the point is that at the time in which the UN study was conducted, Rwanda’s IT structure was far more advanced than many of the other nations ranked above it. In 2005, all 34% of the government entities had dialup connection and 75% had websites. A possible explanation for Rwanda’s low score is that the UN focuses on the individual online population instead of the institutional online population (which may be more telling because the change in Rwanda began at an institutional level). Also, the UN measured according to telephony, but Rwanda was connected to the Internet via radio waves.

Given all the barriers and differences, the situation for SSA may seem quite dire. In the next section, however, we will discuss a way to lift them out of the quagmire. THE LEAPFROG EFFECT – How it Can Save the World

More Than Just a Game

Answers.com has a few definitions for “leapfrog,” one of which is a children’s game where one player hops over another (instructions can be found on Wikipedia!), but the definition we are

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interested in is “the notion that areas which have poorly-developed technology or economic bases can move themselves forward rapidly through the adoption of modern systems without going through intermediary steps” (Cascio, 2006). But how does this work?

How Can IT Help Developing Nations?

IT can alleviate poverty in developing nations is by stimulating economic activity and growth. The most basic way of boosting the economy is by raising the level of productivity. Productivity can only be achieved by the age-old economic formula of output divided by input and technology can increase productivity by producing more output with the same level of input. One very common sense example of this is how computer word-processing programs have enabled those who have access to write at a quicker rate given the same amount of time, thus increasing productivity.

IT can stimulate economic activity by bringing about e-commerce, which is the “conduct of business using the Internet.” This may be the most important effect of IT because it encourages the citizens to start private enterprises (IT reduces the startup and operating costs of running a business, thereby lowering the entry barrier) that generate income from economic activities, thereby making e-commerce self-propagating and self-sustaining. More positive spillover effects of e-commerce are the creation of new jobs and government revenue in the form of taxation (Okoli, Mbarika, 2003). Eventually, this will give the nation an opportunity to compete in the global market through international trade, which, in the long-run, can have the effect of equalizing wage rates between developed and developing nations.

Some experts would go as far as to say that developing countries have an advantage over developed nations when it comes to economic growth because there is more room to grow for the former. For an already industrialized nation like the United States, it is very difficult to stimulate economic growth by raising the productivity, but for a poor nation like Rwanda, there is the opportunity to leap over stages of growth that developed nations had to go through technological leapfrogging (Mansell, 2001).

Even from a non-economic point of view, IT investments help developing nations because it brings about the Internet, which has long been hailed as “a great equalizer” due to its ability to provide cheap access to a myriad of information across the globe, to connect people, and to transfer knowledge between them. Having access to Wikipedia, for example, slightly puts an African teenage at less of a disadvantage to an American one because they now have the same foundation of knowledge to build upon (Wikipedia, unfortunately, is censored in China). The Internet also empowers the people to gather information themselves and communicate with each other to solve a common problem. Just think of the online forums for all kinds of interest groups in the US that have helped countless people, such as cancer survivors. Finally, Victor Mbarika and other leading researchers in the area of IT in developing nations propose the model in the figure below as an answer to how developing nations can benefit from IT. The portion of the diagram we are interested in is the portion highlighted in the red box. This box shows that the relationship between the socioeconomic development level and accessibility and exposure to technologies (technologies that are universally available for use) is a two-way interaction, so that they can repeatedly feed into each other. Mbarika et al. states that basic

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technology use (technologies that support farming, health care, and education) provides the initial jolt in the relationship between the two boxes. Then the relationship will become self-sustaining and continue to loop back and forth, which results in more socioeconomic development and more basic technology use. Only after these two boxes are incrementally increased over time can the nation move to the last box and adopt and diffuse technologies for human development. We have already seen an example of the looping relationship in the telemedicine section, in which something as simple as a phone call to a health expert abroad can improve health services in SSA. We can imagine how this can give people a positive experience and therefore lead to more technology use.

Source: Musa, Phillip F., Peter Meso, and Victor Mbarika, “Toward Sustainable Adoption ofTechnologies for Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Precursors, Diagnostics, and Prescriptions.” Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Volume 15, 2005, pp. 592-608.

All the factors above

Singapore and South Korea – The Champions of Leapfrogging

Singapore and South Korea are both crowning examples of countries that have leapfrogged through stages of development through the use of technology. However, IT development was not the only factor in their success. These countries also invested in liberalized the telecommunications market, provided government support, encouraged private sector participation and competition, and perhaps most importantly, moved towards knowledge-based economies by investing in human capital (US National Intelligence Council, 2005).

As can be seen in the figure below, these two countries went from a being a low-income economy to a middle-income economy in 27 years’ time (International Monetary Fund, 2006).

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Source: www.imf.org, viewed November 30, 2006.

Not everybody can be like Singapore and South Korea, however, and we will examine the negative aspects of leapfrogging in the next section.

THE DARK SIDE OF LEAPFROGGING

Difficult to implement – Not An Easy Path

With the exception of a few countries, IT development in Africa has been more of a burden than an aid because technologies were introduced when the infrastructure was not ready. Many countries have tried to take advantage of leapfrogging by investing in computers, incorporating technology into different sectors, and developing human capital, but the result has been mostly unsuccessful. Technology equipment that were either donated or purchased has been largely underutilized due to lack of secondary equipment, electricity, or training, resulting in wasted and valuable foreign currency. Lack of training and equipment has also led to dependency on foreign companies and personnel, with no knowledge being transferred into the local economy. This is not IT transfer but “IT transplantation” and does not benefit the local people in the long-run (Odedra, 2006).

Lack of infrastructure is directly causing the dependency on foreign companies. Due to the small number of Internet service providers (ISPs), most information sent electronically within SSA have to be rerouted through Europe or North America. This increases the time and costs for SSA countries, thus deepening the economic divide.

So now it might be tempting to say, “ok, we know what not to do, so let’s just do this the right way.” Unfortunately, it is not so easy. Even if the above errors were avoided and implementation was done correctly, a developing country may still not “leapfrog” into a higher-income economy.

Even if It was correctly Implemented – Can IT help everybody?

In spite of all the evidence for the benefits IT development can bring to a developing nation, this

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is a difficult situation to bring into reality.

When studied more closely, there does not appear to be an empirical link between ICT diffusion and economic development on a macroeconomic level. The previous sources cited only state the relationship in a very broad manner without having done empirical research with other variables eliminated. This may be due to the fact that such evidence require time to buildup and study, but at the moment, even a helping relationship between the two factors on a firm level seems difficult to prove. Several occurrences have shown the economic benefits IT could bring – the Peruvian village that used the Internet to sell their products to New York is a case in point – but such occurrences are not systematic enough to draw any concrete conclusions.

India is a country that is often hailed as an example of how IT helped a nation on a macroeconomic level, but there are also negative sides to its growth. True, India’s economy has grown significantly over the past 20 years; increasing the GDP per capita as well as GDP growth (see the two figures below).

Source: www.imf.org, viewed November 30, 2006.

One must question, however, how many of the citizens of India are actually reaping the benefits from this growth? Researchers have concluded that India is developing rich enclaves while the rest of the nation is still being surrounded by poverty; meaning that only a small percentage of Indians are becoming rich, while the rest of the people’s lives remain very much unchanged

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(Mansell, 2001) (the gap between the rich and poor is also widening in China in spite of its significant growth, which is why it is shown in the above graph).

Drawing from the international digital divide discussed earlier, this disparity between the rich and poor widened by their accessibility to ICTs within a nation can be called the intra-national digital divide. China and India are not the only two fast-developing nations that have left the poor behind. Hiroshi Ono’s research on Japan, South Korea, and Singapore concludes in spite of these three countries being highly ranked in terms of overall access to ICTs, “inequality in ICT access, use and skills reflects pre-existing inequality in other areas of economy and society in the three countries” (2005).

The black outlined boxes in the table on the left demonstrate this disparity. The numbers are out of 1, so they can be easily converted to percentages. In Singapore, for example, only 1% of people who did not receive tertiary education use PCs at home, whereas 94% of people who went beyond the high school level use PCs at home. This is a huge gap. Moreover, Ono found that in Japan and South Korea, women tend to use or access technologies less than men, whereas in Singapore, this disparity is more pronounced between people who have received different levels of education and income.

Incidences of intra-national digital divide are also prominent in South Africa (between those of European descent and those of African descent) and New Zealand (between the indigenous Maori population and the rest of the population), but in the interest of length, these countries will not be discussed in detail. Resources about related topics can be found in the “Further Research” section at the end of the paper.

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As shown in the previous two sections, leapfrogging is neither easy to implement nor a surefire way to economic prosperity. The negative effects are just as poignant as the positive ones. Being a “technological lagger” in this case, however, can give Sub-Saharan Africa an advantage because the policymakers can learn from the countries that attempted leapfrogging and maximize the successes and minimize the failures.

Recommendations

Victor Mbarika and other leading researchers in the area of ICT growth in SSA believe that the use of technology can become widespread only after basic human needs are met. “It is when one has access to potable drinking water, health care, education, employment, roads, electricity, television, and telephone that one can address matters such as acquiring and applying more modern technologies to their full potential”. Specifically, Mbarika suggests systematically and incrementally introducing technologies to SSA, as flooding the region with technologies has shown in other areas of the world to be highly ineffective (Latin America, e.g.) because the infrastructure is not there. Furthermore, the introduction of technologies should be done in a meaningful and contextual way by harnessing IT to improve basic health, education, steady electricity, steady water supply, telecommunication networks, governance (e-government), the alleviation of poverty, and the conservation of the physical environment. Leveraging technology to improve the quality of life is the best way to acculturate technology and stimulate human development in SSA (Muso, Mesa, Mbarika, 2005).

After these basic needs are met and technology is accepted into mainstream culture, the stage is then set for leapfrogging through the proliferation of technology (it is assumed that the IT infrastructure at this point is well-enough developed to move onto more complicated projects). Mansell argues that there are three prerequisites for leapfrogging: accessing networks, trusting in commerce, and rules of international trade.

Accessing networks generally means providing access to affordable and open networks to everybody in hopes of promoting open competition through e-commerce. This can have the positive effects of liberalizing the market as well as preventing intra-national digital divide. In order for this to occur, however, the people must first have trust in e-commerce. The e-commerce industry must ensure “privacy protection and confidentiality, secure infrastructures, and the authentication and certification of firms” (Mansell 2001). E-commerce is especially difficult to spread in SSA because the current marketplace culture prefers to transact using cash (instead of credit cards) and to see and touch the physical product before making a purchase (Okoli, Mbarika, 2003). This is an aspect of culture that takes time to change, but can nonetheless be changed (from personal experience, I have seen Chinese consumers change from going to a physical market that requires price bargaining to an online marketplace with set prices in a mere generation). In order to eventually become competitive enough to compete in the global e-commerce market, SSA firms should try to work according to international commerce rules, such that those of the WTO, Information Technology Agreement (ITA), the General Agreement on Trade Services (GATS), and the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS, administered by the WTO). It is with these three preconditions set that leapfrogging can occur for the developing countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (Mansell, 2001).

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RWANDA

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Rwanda.svg, viewed October 10, 2006.

Why We Chose Rwanda

We chose to do a case study on Rwanda because the amount of development Rwanda is trying to succeed in is astounding. When most people think of Rwanda they remember the genocide where a million people were killed. Recently though Rwanda has shocked the world with a plan to become a middle-income economy in 20 years. This is a huge undertaking, which they plan to accomplish partly with IT development.

Where is Rwanda?

http://www.jayzeebear.com/map/africa.gif, viewed October 10, 2006.Rwanda Overview

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The small pink country is Rwanda

Rwanda USPopulation 9,038,000 298,444,215GDP $11.24 billion $12.31 trillionGovernment Republic federal republicLargest City Kigali New YorkLife Expectancy 44 years 77.85Literacy Rate 64% 99%

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda, viewed October 23, 2006.

Map of Rwanda

Source: https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rw.html, viewed October 15, 2006.

Genocide in Rwanda

Source: http://www.jerseyheritagetrust.org/occupation_memorial/thumbnails/1000232.jpg, viewed October 15, 2006.

The genocide began on April 6, 1994 when President Habyarimana was killed in a plane that was shot down; even now they are not sure who was responsible for shooting down the plane. Two different ethnic groups in Rwanda, the Hutus and the Tutsis had a history of fighting, and the

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killing of the President was just the opportunity the extremist Hutus needed. They began killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus for the next 100 days, murdering an estimated million people, 12%-15% of the population. On July 4, 1994 the genocide ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Front took over Kigali. The killings left a nation with a shattered political system and hundreds of thousands of orphaned children (“West”, 2006; “Rwanda,” Wikipedia, 2006; “Rwanda: How, 3006).

HIV/AIDS Effects in Rwanda

● 250,000(est.) living with HIV● 160,000(est.) children in 2003 orphaned by AIDS● 22,000(est.) HIV/AIDS deaths in 2003

These statistics are from 2003 and are an average of a low and high estimate that UNICEF gives. Because many people in Africa do not receive medical care for HIV or AIDS or even know they have the disease, the numbers that UNICEF gives are largely estimates. With all of this, there is still a lot of good happening in Rwanda and the rest of SSA to stop the epidemic. The First Lady of Rwanda is involved in a project with other African First Ladies called, Treat Every Child as Your Own. As the title states the goal of the program is to protect children that already have the disease and to prevent the spread of the disease. The effect of the disease is crippling the African continent. It is leaving many children with no parents, and possibly leaving them as the parent to younger siblings. This is yet another reason for the lack of human capital in SSA.(“Treat,” 2005; “UNICEF,” 2006).

Post-Genocide Government

Paul Kagame is the current elected leader of Rwanda. He has been credited for pulling a struggling country into economic development instead of economic downturn and overall stabilizing a country. Two of the major changes include, allowing women in parliament and allowing a free press. By law, at least 1/3 of the parliament representation must be female. They made this a law because it is believed if there are that many women in parliament than the violence and corruption of the past will not happen again. Below is a picture of the Rwandan Parliament.

Source: http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Rwanda/blog-48538.html, Viewed October 25, 2006.

Rwanda is attempting a free press. There are a few independent radio stations, yet the press is not necessarily “free.” There are still stories of journalists disappearing after they write a negative story about the government.

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Although the government may not be perfect, they have made great improvements. They wrote a new constitution and added things such as, free speech and press that were not even there before. Rwanda also now holds presidential and legislative elections when before they did not. The government is headed in the right direction (“Rwanda,” Wikipedia, 2006).

Education in Rwanda

Throughout the 1980’s and 90’s there was a huge decline in education mainly due to two factors: the genocide and AIDS. Both caused many children left to raise their siblings, and with no money to attend school. In the past few years there has been a push by the government for education. University enrollment at the National University of Rwanda has risen from 49 students in 1963 to 26,796 in 2006 with 39% being female (“Education,” 2006).

Another push for education is coming from London based, Volunteer Service Organization, VSO. The VSO is a program that sends teachers to developing countries to teach everything from reading and writing to IT skills. Their main goal is to teach skills so Rwandans can pass on the knowledge to other citizens. Their main project now in Rwanda is called “Valuing Teachers” it aims to find out how to keep teachers in Rwanda. A problem they are facing is keeping educated individuals to stay in Rwanda. They will leave Rwanda once they are educated to find better jobs elsewhere. The VSO has also aided in almost doubling the number of children attending primary schools (Volunteer Service Organization, 2006).

IT Education in Rwanda

The government in Rwanda now knows what education can do for their country. Because they are specifically trying to gain an IT industry they are especially interested in programs that will bring IT knowledge. RWEDNET, Rwanda Education Network, is an example of one of these programs. RWEDNET is a program that aims to link higher education universities together to offer more knowledge to students. In the future the plan for RWEDNET includes linking primary and secondary schools (“Education,” 2006).

Another program that aims to link schools together is NEPAD, New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Their overall plan is for complete economic regeneration by: stopping poverty, promoting growth, integrating Africa into the world economy, and empowering women. Specifically for IT education they have an e-school program that plans to equip 600,000 primary and secondary schools in Africa with equipment and internet access. Linking the schools together is a major step for Africa. Once the schools are linked via the internet, knowledge will flow much easier and the amount of students that can learn will greatly increase (The New Partnership, 2006).

RWANDA’S IT PLANThe first draft of Rwanda’s development plan was released in October 1999 with the aid of The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and was called “An Integrated Framework for ICT-Led Socioeconomic Development Policy and Plan for Rwanda.” After almost one year of consultation with governmental entities and stakeholders (including one month of national debate), the Rwandan government decided to adopt the plan, which

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incorporates a National Information and Communications Infrastructure Plan 2001-2020 (hereon after referred to as the NICI Plan). In order to implement the plan incrementally, this 20-year plan was broken down into four 5-year plans, with the ultimate goal of making Rwanda a middle-income economy by the year 2020. The only way to attain these goals was to turn Rwanda from an agrarian society into a knowledge-based economy.

The short-term strategy for the plan is to “use ICTs for poverty reduction through its catalytic and leveraging effect by improving access to basic services, education, and health.” The long-term strategy is to “position Rwanda within the global competitive digital economy.”

Along with this plan, two key governmental entities were established: the Rwanda Information Technology Authority (RITA) and the Rwanda Utility Regulatory Agency (RURA). RITA is an autonomous entity linked to both government and private ICT sectors and is the official body for articulating, catalyzing, and facilitating the NICI 2020 Plan. RURA is a governmental body responsible for providing telecommunication networks/services, electricity, waste product removal from residences and business, extraction and distribution of gas, and transportation of persons and goods. Both of these institutions have been fully functional since 2003.

IT SUPPLIERS FOR RWANDA Suppliers

Rwanda’s IT suppliers are varied in their nature, ranging from multinational corporations to local enterprises.

In terms of technology hardware and service, there are several entities providing crucial supplies such as electricity, fiber optic cables, Internet service, and so on. RURA and Rwandatel are the two local government organizations while Mediapost and the Electronic Tools Company are the two private US companies helping in this effort (Etta, 2005; “Investment Guide,” 2006). Rwanda Terracom and African Rural Telecommunication (ARTEL) are the two local private companies.

Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST) and National University of Rwanda (NUR) serve as both hardware providers and human capital providers. The latter quality of the two schools makes them crucial players in the development of the NICI 2020 plan, because skilled human labor is the most important factor for long-term economic growth. As a matter of fact, KIST was established in 1997 just to meet the demand of turning Rwanda into a knowledge-based economy. NUR was the only national 4-year university in Rwanda before and their programs mostly focused on medicine and humanities. The biggest challenge faced in the development of KIST was planning the programs. Since the goal was to build an indigenous and technical human resource base, capable of developing all sectors of the economy, the final program design included theory, as well as hands-on experience and a market driven orientation. (Etta, 2005). The country of Rwanda has also had many investors and donors giving toward their NICI 2020 Plan, including individuals sympathetic to their cause. The most prominent NGO organizations are the United Nations, the World Bank ($10 million US in 2005), and the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (SIDA) (“World Bank,” 2006).

Fruits of the Loom

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The Internet was first launched in Rwanda in 1997, three years after the devastating genocide. At this time, there was only one ISP in the nation: the government owned and operated Rwandatel. Thanks to the aggressive and systematic implementation of the NICI plan, Rwanda now has 6 internet providers competing with each other on in an open market: Rwandatel, Mediapost, NUR), KIST), Artel Communications, and Terracom (US private company).

Rwanda established its own Internet Exchange Point (IXP) in 2004 called Rwanda Internet Exchange (RINEX), thanks to the funds contributed by SIDA. The figure below is a schematic representation of RINEX. The ISPs connect to the IXP main switch to exchange information, thus eliminating the need for an international switch. The equipment within the inner box represent that they are within the IXP’s premises.

Source: Etta, Florence E., and Laurent Elder, eds. At the Crossroads: ICT Policy Making in East Africa. East African Educational Publishers, Nairobi; 2005.

Rwanda has further improved their technology and educational infrastructure since the plan has been in motion. In 2000, there was only one internet cafe and school with a computer in the country, and fewer than 100,000 of 8 million people had a telephone (mobile or land). As of August 2006, more than half of the 2,300 primary schools have at least one computer. The large cities altogether host 30 internet cafes and 30 more are to be built in the rural areas. Broadband Internet hookup is growing in personal households, and 300,000 now have cellular phones.KIST has also produced some physical results, with 74 graduates by March 2004. These people are the first indigenous ICT engineers in the history of Rwanda, and there sure is more to come (Etta, 2005).

The government of Rwanda, which could be considered where the ICT development began, has made the most significant improvements in employing ICTs. “Office workers talking over Skype. Fiber-optic cable snaking hundreds of miles underground and to the top of a 4,500-metre

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volcano. Paperless cabinet meetings with every minister using a laptop.” This is how the government office is described now (Steffen, 2006). And perhaps more impressive than anything else, the entire country of Rwanda has had wireless Internet access via radio-waves since February 2005 (Mwangi, 2006). Hardly the image we conjure up when thinking about Rwanda.

WHY IS RWANDA DIFFERENT?

So Rwanda has made significant progress, but what about the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa? Most of the other countries were already familiar of the economic benefits ICT diffusion could bring to a developing country and the term “leapfrogging.” Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe were some of the SSA countries that were already connected to the Internet by 1995, when Rwanda was still trying to recover from the economic crisis the genocide brought (Rwanda’s GDP dropped -50% in 1994, see figure below for comparison with other countries).

Annual GDP per capita change

-60-50-40-30-20-10

010203040

1980

1982

1984

1986

1988

1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

2006P

erce

ntag

e ch

ange

from

pre

viou

s ye

ar

Korea Rwanda SingaporeUnited States China India Source: www.imf.org, viewed November 30, 2006.

Yet in 2005, when Rwanda had already successfully completed a quarter of its NICI 2020 Plan, the above countries plus 21 more were still in the planning stages of their plans (Mwangi, 2006). Why is Rwanda making the most progress when they had the least resources to start with?

The Four Legs that Made the Frog Jump

Wagaki Mwangi, a professor of political science in New York’s Syracuse University, conducted a very detailed research on ICT development in Rwanda through 21 in-depth interviews with politicians and key informants from the government, business, academia, and voluntary not-for-profit organizations. He concluded that the convergence of four main driving factors unique to Rwanda that drove development quicker than the other SSA countries: emigrants and refugee returnees, networking with epistemic communities, political leadership, and an under-contested political environment.

Rwandan refugees left in three major waves in the 20th century: 1959, 1973, and 1994. These refugees were scattered around different areas of the world, some even as far as China. Those

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who came back to Rwanda had grown accustomed to the use of technology in everyday life in their countries of exile, and some of them even received a foreign education in the field of IT (these people would become the first contributors to developing Rwanda’s IT human resource base). But more importantly, many of these returnees had heard about Singapore’s rapid growth from a low-income to a high-income society in just 30 years’ time, and they were now conveying this tale to fellow Rwandans. “To be like Singapore” was the phrase every interviewee unanimously quoted when asked about the hopeful 20-year plan, and the similarities between Rwanda and Singapore (small land mass and high population, therefore less resources are needed to develop the human capital) were common knowledge. The returnees were dedicated to make Rwanda like Singapore and spread this story everywhere to convince the citizens – but more importantly, the government – that it is possible. Singapore’s transformation inspired the government and people of Rwanda to envision a new future, and this was a crucial turning point because “these images enabled the Rwandese leadership to cease viewing the Rwandese people as a problem, but rather, as its greatest asset and resource for future development.” And for the people themselves, “it altered Rwandese self-understanding of their country as one lacking in assets for economic growth, into a country with great potential of becoming a middle-income economy by the year 2020.” Had it not been for Singapore’s success story, the government and people of Rwanda would probably have been more resistant to change.

Networking with epistemic (knowledge) communities was necessary to implement diffusion of technology because the Rwanda government did not have the capital or an in-house staff that had the skills and knowledge needed to plan and manage the transformation they wanted to undertake. So they connected with global IT experts. Some the returnees or government officials already have worked with and some were introduced by regional intergovernmental organizations, which included the UN Task Force on ICT and the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa. There were also private initiatives such as CISCO System’s Networking Academy Program, from which the Rwandan government was able to receive first-rate technical knowledge without paying market rates. Through networking, the Rwanda leaders were also able to connect with some private investors whose primary motivation was not profit.

Political leadership also played a crucial role in Rwanda’s ICT development. Rwanda’s President, Paul Kagame, was hailed as the ICT “champion” by all the interviewees. President Kagame was not the person who thought of lifting Rwanda out of poverty through IT diffusion, but he certainly has been dedicated to the cause ever since his rise to power in 1994. He has convinced the Rwandan Transitional National Assembly (the House and the Senate) to vote for the NICI Plan (this was crucial because they approved the budget), provided them with e-government training, and grasped every opportunity to tell the international communities about Rwanda’s new image and grandiose plans. He was only one of two African presidents to attend the African regional preparatory meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005 and his sole request to the World Bank’s president Paul Wolfowitz during his visit to Rwanda was financial support for the NICI Plan. Few other African leaders have demonstrated as much zeal and dedication for a cause to the international community.

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Lastly, Rwanda’s under-contested policy environment propelled the quick diffusion of ICTs. Although Rwanda was established as a country in 1885 and gained independence from Belgium in 1962, Mwangi only views Rwanda as a nation that is a decade old. He argues that the 1994 genocide wiped out all previous government entities and values, giving President Kagame’s post-genocide government complete freedom. The rarity of Rwanda’s bicameral (composed of two legislative bodies) government structure in the rest of SSA is an example of just how much free-reign the new government had. The genocide also destroyed any political interest groups that might have contested the NICI Plan (interest groups in Kenya are currently slowing down their government’s IT diffusion plan). Ironically enough, the 1994 genocide has actually helped Rwanda propel forward in a sense. In the end, Mwangi argues that it is the convergence of last two factors – political leadership and under-contested policy environment – that was the key reason for why Rwanda is moving so much faster than the other SSA countries in IT adoption and diffusion.

CHALLENGES

In spite of all the progress Rwanda has made and all the international praise the country has received for it, the country still faces major barriers to becoming a middle-income knowledge-based economy by the year 2020.

These include issues already discussed that were either related to SSA or Rwanda specific such as health care, basic amenities, transportation, and infrastructure, but the biggest barrier is their lack of indigenous skilled human capital, so we would like to focus on this some more. Currently, only 1% of the total population enrolled in tertiary (university-level) school; 5% of the workforce received a secondary education; out of the 8.3 inhabitants, there are only 100 trained engineers available; and only 0.1% are trained managers (Etta, 2006). Even with the establishment of KIST and maybe other IT higher institutions of learning, it is questionable whether there will be enough supply to meet Rwanda’s demand for fast-paced technological development, which is absolutely paramount in order for the NICI 2020 Plan to be realized (many quickly growing nations also face the same skilled labor shortage problem).

RWANDA’S FUTURE

Whether Rwanda can overcome these problems remains yet to be seen, but for now, they are on the right track. The government is laying in the groundwork for the three preconditions for leapfrogging that Mansell subscribed. They are providing universal access (Internet cafes in cities as well as rural areas) and therefore promoting free market competition by market liberalization (more than one ISP); they are creating a trusting e-commerce environment by ridding corruption; and they are obeying international laws by consulting global IT experts (many connected by the UN) in their planning and implementation stages.

For the doubtful, it is important to remember that economic growth through technological leapfrogging is Rwanda’s only way to alleviate poverty. A report from the Department for International Development (UK) states, “in Rwanda’s case, the leapfrogging option may be the only option available. Given the high population density and growth, there is recognition that the

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country can no longer sustain itself on an unproductive agricultural sector. Given the high transport costs and the absence of many raw materials, there are also difficulties associated with developing the industrial sector.” And really, what do they have to lose?

CONCLUSIONS

It is worthwhile to keep a close watch on Rwanda’s progress. If the nation succeeds in becoming a middle-income economy in 14 years, their development would justify the leapfrogging theory and they would become a competitive player in the global IT industry. Their tale would be told around the world as a triumph of the human spirit. More importantly, Rwanda’s success would give hope to the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa and for the possibility of lifting the entire sub-continent out of poverty.

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Additional Resources:

NPR Report on Rwanda’s NICI 2020 Planhttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4800031

Rwanda Information Technology Authority http://www.rita.gov.rw, viewed October 25, 2006.

Rwanda TV https://www.jumptv.com/en/channel/rwandatv/ -- Rwanda International Conference

Department for International Development’s report on Rwandahttp://www.dfid.gov.uk/countries/africa/rwanda.asp, viewed Nov. 11, 2006.

Rwanda Gateway – http://www.rwandagateway.orgRwanda Global Information Systems – http://www.cgisnur.orgNational University of Rwanda – http://www.nur.ac.rwKigali Institute of Science and Technology – http://www.kist.ac.rwRwanda’s ICT for the Community – http://www.erwanda.org New Zealand’s Digital Divide –

http://www.executive.govt.nz/minister/maharey/divide/01-01.htm

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