A knowledge economy or an information society in Africa? Thintegration and the mobile phone revolution

Abstract

Much has been written about the impacts of new information and communication technology in Africa and its transformational socio-economic impacts. The penetration of mobile phones in particular has been particularly marked in recent years. This paper seeks to interrogate the hypothesis of transformation by examining the ways in which Africa is integrated into the global mobile phone value chain, and then the uses to which this technology is put on the continent. There is a fundamental distinction between having a knowledge economy and an information society. While mobiles are having significant, and sometimes welfare-enhancing impacts, their use is embedded in existing relations of social support, and also conflict. Consequently, their impacts are dialectical, facilitating change, but also reinforcing existing power relations. While Africa may be an information society, it is not, as yet, developing a knowledge economy. Mobile phone usage then represents a form of thin, rather than thick, integration (“thintegration”) in the global economy, which, because it does not lead to high value-added exports, does not fundamentally alter the continent's dependent position.

Keywords:

• Africa
• mobile phones
• knowledge economy
• information society

Acknowledgements

The research and writing of this article was supported by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (award no. 0925151) with Professor James Murphy of Clark University, USA, and a Senior Research Fellowship from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The opinions expressed here do not reflect those of these funding bodies. Many thanks to Mark Graham, Francis Owusu, Tom Molony, Sadjda Qureshi and the journal referees for their insightful comments which have substantially improved the paper and to Richard Duggan and Adrian Corcoran for their research assistance. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

Sajda Qureshi is the accepting Editor-in-Chief for this article.

There is, however, an incipient computer hardware industry based on the production of “clones” in Otigba in Nigeria, for example (Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, 2006).

Nonetheless, there is substantial, but latent, potential for the development of high-tech industries through the African telecommunication firms (Marcelle, 2003).

Although foreign firms have also driven down the price of telecommunication substantially, in Kenya for example.

These kiosks can be relatively lucrative for their owners; bringing in a reported US$75 per kiosk per day in one case in Gaborone, Botswana (Okpaku, 2006).

The fact that analogue still accounts for 40% of the total means that call completion rates are low and faults per mobile line are high, raising costs for small business (Ya'u, 2006).