Industrial transformation or business as usual? Information and communication technologies and Africa's place in the global information economy

Abstract

Many view information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as mobile phones, computers and the Internet as tools that can significantly strengthen the quality and depth of Africa's engagement with the world economy. This paper interrogates the impacts of Africa's burgeoning ICT ‘revolution’ through an examination of their use among small, medium and micro-scale enterprises (SMMEs) in South Africa's and Tanzania's wood products and tourism sectors. The findings reveal that while new ICTs are being adopted rapidly, they are generally used for communication purposes, not deeper forms of information processing and management. This ‘thintegration’, while positive in many ways, has done little to stop a trend towards the devaluation of the goods and services provided by the SMMEs surveyed here. Moreover, ICTs are enabling new forms of outside intervention and intermediation into African markets, often further marginalising local firms and industries. The article details these outcomes and demonstrates why ‘thicker’ and more transformative kinds of ICT integration will remain elusive in the absence of changes to non-ICT-specific structures and power relations that limit Africa's ability to participate in the global information economy.

[Transformation industrielle ou business as usual ? Les technologies d'information et de la communication et la place de l'Afrique dans l’économie de l'information mondialisée.] Beaucoup considèrent les technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) tels que les téléphones portables, les ordinateurs et l'Internet comme des outils qui peuvent renforcer de manière significative la qualité et la profondeur de l'intégration de l'Afrique dans l’économie mondiale. Cet article met en question les impacts de la révolution en pleine essor des TIC en Afrique à travers l'examen de leur utilisation par les très petites, petites et moyennes entreprises (TPPME) dans les secteurs du tourisme et des produits du bois en Afrique du Sud et en Tanzanie. Les résultats révèlent que, alors que les TIC sont adoptées rapidement, elles sont généralement utilisées à des visées de communication, mais pas via des formes de gestion et de transformation de l'information plus avancées. Cette « intégration faible », alors qu'elle est positive à bien des égards, n'a pas permis de freiner la tendance vers la dévaluation des biens et services fournis par les TPPME examinées ici. De plus, les TIC permettent de nouvelles formes d'intervention et d'intermédiation extérieures vers les marchés africains, marginalisant souvent davantage les entreprises et les industries locales. L'article détaille les résultats et montre pourquoi une intégration « plus profonde » et des types d'intégration des TIC qui induisent des changements plus importants resteront furtifs en l'absence de changements aux structures non spécifiques aux TIC et aux relations de pouvoir qui limitent la capacité de l'Afrique à participer à l’économie de l'information mondialisée.

Keywords:

• information and communication technologies
• global information economy
• industrial development
• South Africa
• Tanzania

Mots-clés:

• technologies d'information et de la communication
• l’économie de l'information mondialisée
• développement industriel
• Afrique du Sud
• Tanzanie

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0925151. The authors would also like to thank Ralph Borland, John Lauermann, Jackson Mongi, Alex Sphar and Sam Wangwe for field research support, and Claire Mercer, Richard Heeks and the manuscript reviewers for constructive and highly useful feedback on earlier versions of this work. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of these individuals or the National Science Foundation or the United Nations Development Programme.

Notes on contributors

James T. Murphy, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University; email: [email protected]; Pádraig Carmody, Associate Professor of Human Geography, Trinity College Dublin; email: [email protected]; Björn Surborg, Research Fellow, Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies, University of Johannesburg; email: [email protected].

Notes

1. For examples, visit the World Bank's InfoDev program (http://www.infodev.org) and/or the website of the UK-based ICT4D Collective and Multidisciplinary Centre (http://www.ict4d.org.uk/).

2. Most Africans can now communicate more easily with each other and, of the 20 countries where more than 10% of adults used mobile money in 2011, 15 were in Africa (Gates Foundation, World Bank and Gallup cited in The Economist 2012). Other ICTs have been less successful, although most major cities now have access to high-speed Internet (ITU 2010) and a quarter of Kenyans now use the Internet.

3. In outlining these three forms of connection, our goal is not to dismiss African ICT success stories such as the rise of mobile banking services, innovation hubs such as AfriLabs or the global diffusion of the open-source, crowdsourcing platform Ushahidi, but to instead highlight the principal structural ties that link the region to the GIE. In doing so, our emphasis is on well-established economic connections that are concomitant with significant flows of capital to/from the region.

4. Some who hold more optimist perspectives regarding the potential of ICTs refer to the experience of companies and industries in the USA (e.g. see Brynjolfsson and Hitt 2000), noting that thintegration was common in the early days of new ICT adoption but that this was followed by highly productive, thicker forms of ICT use. While we accept this argument for the case of the USA, we do not assume that such a trajectory or evolution is inevitable in the case of the African SMMEs and industries studied here.

5. The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) is a compilation of 11 indicators of ICT opportunity, infrastructure and utilisation (see http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/doi/index.html for details). The DOI has been calculated for 181 countries and thus provides a useful means through which to compare the extent and depth of ICT use at the national scale.

6. Evidence for intermediation was obtained through discussions with respondents and street-level observations. In Tanzania, wood products intermediaries (madalali) are easy to spot in major marketplaces and several respondents discussed their activities in detail. In the case of tourism, many respondents discussed the significance of third-party booking websites such as Trip Advisor and some respondents noted that they act as market intermediaries from time to time, receiving commissions after directing clients to hotels or restaurants.

7. We are grateful to Richard Heeks for the term (neo)intermediation.