Transformational Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Africa

According to this eTransform Africa report, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential to transform business and government in Africa, driving entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth. Prepared jointly by the World Bank and the African Development Bank in cooperation with the African Union, the report comprises six sector reports, two thematic reports, and an overall report, including more than 20 detailed case studies of ICT transformation in action in Africa. The case studies highlight how ICTs are changing the landscape in different sectors, both in terms of worldwide best practice and in specific experience of African economies. The report also notes that mobile phones in particular have revolutionised communications in Africa.
The report notes that in the year 2000 there were fewer than 20 million fixed-line phones across Africa. By 2012, there were almost 650 million mobile subscriptions in Africa, more than in the United States or the European Union, making Africa the second fastest growing region in the world. In some African countries, more people have access to a mobile phone than to clean water, a bank account, or even electricity. The report identifies best practices in the use of ICT in eight key sectors. Examples include:

• Agriculture: In Kenya, the Kilimo Salama scheme is providing crop insurance for farmers, using the M-PESA payment gateway, helping them to better manage natural hazards such as drought or excessive rainfall.
• Climate change adaptation: In Malawi, a deforestation project is training local communities to map their villages using GPS devices and empowering them to develop localised adaptation strategies by engaging communities.
• Financial services: In Senegal, SONATEL (a subsidiary of Orange) is one of the latest operators on the continent to launch a money transfer service that is enabling 200,000 subscribers to send and receive money using mobile phones.
• Health: In Mali, telemedicine is helping overcome the lack of trained healthcare workers and specialists in rural areas, specifically the IKON Tele-radiology programme.

As stated in the report, ICTs offer major opportunities to advance human development – from providing basic access to education or health information to making cash payments and stimulating citizen involvement in the democratic process. Phones, computers, and websites are powerful tools but the report states that it is individuals, communities, and firms that are driving change. Mobile phones and the internet are helping to release the dynamism of African society.
The report highlights some lessons learned from the sectoral studies:

• The study on the agriculture sector contains case study analysis of the use of Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags for tracking livestock in Botswana, and ICT sensor networks used in water management for irrigation in Egypt. These examples show how ICT can help address some of the challenges facing agriculture and food security in Africa, such as inadequate access to markets and unfavourable market conditions, weak infrastructure, high production and transport costs, natural disasters, environmental degradation, and loss of biodiversity. A common information system/platform for stakeholders – businesses, farmers, researchers, and government – such as DrumNet (Kenya) has been shown to improve efficiency by minimising the duplication of data, ensuring consistency, and improving integrity of data.
• The use of ICTs in adapting to climate change includes country case studies from Malawi, Senegal, and Uganda. The report notes that African countries are preparing for and responding to the potential consequences of climate change by building their understanding of climate science, assessing their vulnerability to projected impacts, identifying priorities for adaptation, developing plans and strategies, and implementing targeted adaptation measures. ICTs could play an important role in support of these efforts, although there is still much to learn.
• In terms of the education sector, the report focuses on case studies from South Africa and Uganda, and notes that for a knowledge society to be realised, supported, and developed, education and innovation should be viewed as interrelated drivers for socio-economic development, in a context where ICT is the enabler. A critical element concerns the devices through which educators and students access learning materials and collaboration platforms. Connectivity is also an important aspect of accessing learning resources. This calls for continued focus on the competitive supply of access to broadband networks using suitable technologies (wired and wireless). Fully integrating technology into teaching and learning requires well-qualified educators, with a clear focus on both equipping teachers with ICT literacy skills and showing teachers how to use these skills to plan lessons and use technology for teaching and learning.
• The Financial Services report includes country case studies from Kenya and Senegal. It concludes that mobile banking has reached a tipping point in Africa and now is the time for policy makers to act boldly. ICT and innovative business models have helped widen financial inclusion, most visibly in Kenya, where active bank accounts have grown fourfold since 2007 aided by some 17 million M-PESA mobile money accounts. Governments have a key role to play in encouraging investment and in enabling effective regulation, in consultation with central banks and the private sector, including commercial banks and mobile money service providers.
• The issue of Modernizing Government through ICT includes case studies of integrated financial management systems in Malawi and electronic tax filing in South Africa. The report states that ICTs are fundamentally changing the way in which citizens and businesses interact with government representatives and other agents of the state. Attention to how governments communicate should not overshadow the importance of the accuracy, completeness, and relevance of what they communicate. A balance is needed between the citizen facing aspects as well as the underlying efficiency and effectiveness of back-office systems. Hence, the delivery tiers of e- and m-Government are key but depend on the design, development, and implementation of underlying ICT systems. Governments should also recognise the power of social media and exploit it to their advantage, in particular to reinforce democratic processes, drive efficiency, foster innovation, empower public sector workers, and expose corruption.
• The Health sector study includes country case studies from Ethiopia and Mali. The pre-emptive use of ICT could act as a "game-changer" in helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). With the impact that mobile-based ICT has already made for consumer communication and transactions, ICTs could be used to enable and simplify consumer and institutional healthcare service delivery funded by out-of-pocket and insurance transactions. Supply chain issues that also impede procurement and delivery of equipment and medical supplies could be addressed by a mobile supply chain management and equipment tracking system in which mobile devices (phones, PDAs, tablets, laptops) are used for data collection and monitoring.
• The cross-cutting study of regional trade and integration includes case studies from Botswana, Kenya, and Senegal as well as thematic case studies of ICT use in governance, logistics, and cross-border information exchange mechanisms. Africa’s trade performance is weak compared with other world regions and within-Africa trade accounts for only 10% of total African trade. This suggests a missed opportunity for economic growth. The RECs and International Financial Institutions (IFIs) will need to work with other stakeholders to exploit ICTs in trade facilitation progressively over time.
• The study on ICT competitiveness includes country case studies from Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria. These countries are embracing the use of ICTs in novel ways to improve the social and economic opportunities available to firms and citizens. Provided the African ICT market continues its impressive double-digit growth, the market could be worth more than US$150 billion by 2016.

According to the report, valuable and sustainable ICT applications are most likely to develop within an environment that encourages experimentation and collaboration between technologists, entrepreneurs, and development practitioners. The report emphasises the need to build a competitive ICT industry to promote innovation, job creation, and boost the export potential of African companies. The challenge for the next decade is to build on the mobile successes and complete the transformation. This will require reducing the cost of access for mobile broadband, supporting government private-sector collaboration, improving the eCommerce environment, enhancing ICT labour market skills, encouraging innovative business models that drive employment, such as microwork and business process outsourcing, and creating spaces that support ICT entrepreneurship, such as ICT incubators, and local ICT development clusters.

To download the document in sections go to www.etransformafrica.org