Journal
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR DEVELOPMENT
Volume 19, Issue 1, Pages 24-39Publisher
ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/02681102.2012.719859
Keywords
Africa; mobile phones; knowledge economy; information society
Funding
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie [0925151] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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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.
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