Determinants Of A Digital Divide In Sub-Saharan Africa: A Spatial Econometric Analysis Of Cell Phone Coverage

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Technology and Collective Action: The Effect of Cell Phone Coverage on Political Violence in Africa

“…The African continent has been, and still is, a major hotspot for organized violent conflict (The World Bank 2011), yet also exhibits strong temporal and spatial variation thereof. At the same time, cell phone technology has proliferated at a rapid pace across the continent in the last 15 to 20 years (Buys, Dasgupta, and Thomas 2009), including to regions with characteristics that make them more prone to hosting violent events (e.g., aggrieved populations, poverty, difficult terrain, etc.). Often cell phones are the first long-distance communication device available in those areas.…”

“…Second, to safeguard against reverse causality and to improve the identification of a causal effect, we rely on an instrumental variable strategy. Prior research on the spread of cell phone technology in Africa has established the importance of regulatory quality and competitive private markets (Buys, Dasgupta, and Thomas 2009), which we use as an instrument for the extent of cell phone coverage. Third, we expand our analysis to a three-year panel of grid cells to exploit variation in cell phone coverage over time, controlling for any grid-level time-invariant factors.…”

Youth, mobility and mobile phones in Africa: findings from a three-country study

“…Buys et al (2009) observe how network coverage is affected by cell phone tower location related to population, elevation, slope, distance to the nearest main road, distance from the nearest large city and observes 'coverage exclusion for low density rural populations that are off-road and uphill (Buys et al, p. 1502).'…”

Water versus Wireless Coverage in Rural Mali: Links and Paradoxes

“…GIS databases are frequently used for this purpose, the main reason being that access to resources tends to be constrained by spatial and temporal variables. The literature showcases multiple approaches to mapping the geographies of access to services, including transport [36,37], health care [38,39], telecommunications [28,40,41] or water [42][43][44].…”

“…Furthermore, emigration patterns have been found to fuel telecommunication use, as having family members abroad has been identified as a catalyst for Internet adoption [22]. These factors all go along with a determined push to enhance telecommunications at the national policy level, including the privatization of this sector in several countries [27,28].…”