Determinants of a Digital Divide in Sub-Saharan Africa : A Spatial Econometric Analysis of Cell Phone Coverage
Most discussions of the digital divide treat it as a "North-South" issue, but the conventional dichotomy doesn't apply to cell phones in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although almost all Sub-Saharan countries are poor by international standard...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/02/9003849/determinants-digital-divide-sub-saharan-africa-spatial-econometric-analysis-cell-phone-coverage http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6436 |
| Summary: | Most discussions of the digital divide
treat it as a "North-South" issue, but the
conventional dichotomy doesn't apply to cell phones in
Sub-Saharan Africa. Although almost all Sub-Saharan
countries are poor by international standards, they exhibit
great disparities in coverage by cell telephone systems.
Buys, Dasgupta, Thomas and Wheeler investigate the
determinants of these disparities with a
spatially-disaggregated model that employs locational
information for cell-phone towers across over 990,000 4.6-km
grid squares in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using probit
techniques, a probability model with adjustments for spatial
autocorrelation has been estimated that relates the
likelihood of cell-tower location within a grid square to
potential market size (proximate population); installation
and maintenance cost factors related to accessibility
(elevation, slope, distance from a main road, distance from
the nearest large city); and national competition policy.
Probit estimates indicate strong, significant results for
the supply-demand variables, and very strong results for the
competition policy index. Simulations based on the
econometric results suggest that a generalized improvement
in competition policy to a level that currently
characterizes the best-performing states in Sub-Saharan
Africa could lead to huge improvements in cell-phone area
coverage for many states currently with poor policy
performance, and an overall coverage increase of nearly 100 percent. |
|---|