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Research on ICT development in Africa: countries focusing on benefits, trends, challenges and solutions

Published: 27 October 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Enhancing Socio-Economic development through Information Communication Technology (ICT) is ongoing debate. Developed and developing nations have progressed in ICT use to facilitate socio-economic development but Africa still lacks behind in its ICT-based development agenda. Africa's efforts at using ICT for Socio-Economic development are not as promising as Asia-Pacific region. This paper outlines the roles of ICT in addressing benefits, trends, challenges and solutions in IT development in Africa. It addresses polices to enhance Socio-Economic development through ICTs. The paper stresses that the inability to enhance Socio-Economic development in Africa through ICT is due to the digital divide caused by inadequate infrastructure, high cost of access, inappropriate policy regimes, network telecommunication provision inefficiency, language divides, and lack of locally created content. The paper concludes that with increased cooperation between governments, private sector and the ICT industry, there is hope for growth and sustainability of ICT and accessibility to digital information.

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  • (2023)ICTs and Globalisation in the African Labour MarketJournal of the Knowledge Economy10.1007/s13132-023-01209-915:2(6079-6098)Online publication date: 2-May-2023

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cover image ACM Other conferences
ICEGOV '14: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance
October 2014
563 pages
ISBN:9781605586113
DOI:10.1145/2691195
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • Macao Foundation, Macao SAR Govt: Macao Foundation, Macao SAR Government
  • Municipio de Guimarães: Municipio de Guimarães

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 October 2014

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Author Tags

  1. challenges
  2. digital divide
  3. globalization
  4. information age
  5. landlocked
  6. marginalization
  7. social exclusion
  8. trends

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ICEGOV2014
Sponsor:
  • Macao Foundation, Macao SAR Govt
  • Municipio de Guimarães

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ICEGOV '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 30 of 73 submissions, 41%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 350 of 865 submissions, 40%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Spatial econometric analysis of the digital divide in Thailand at the sub-district levelTelecommunications Policy10.1016/j.telpol.2024.10281848:8Online publication date: 18-Nov-2024
  • (2023)ICTs and Globalisation in the African Labour MarketJournal of the Knowledge Economy10.1007/s13132-023-01209-915:2(6079-6098)Online publication date: 2-May-2023

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