Digitization and Food Security, Part 2

Productive Use of Digital Technologies Will Transform African Economies

It has become evident to global researchers over the last decade that digital technologies are the key factor of a good-jobs strategy for African countries. In 2023 a team of researchers from the World Bank Group—Tania Begazo, Moussa P. Blimpo, and Mark A. Dutz—published a landmark study titled Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs in which they show the best available evidence for the transformative potential of digital technologies (DTs) for jobs. The main takeaway is that “internet use significantly increases inclusive jobs on the continent, which is poised to have the largest workforce in the world by 2100 relative to other regions” (p. xvii). But, of course, this puts the onus of change back on lessening the African constraints to digitalization and on creating the right kind of digital technologies with business models that make sense to Africans.

According to the authors, the primary challenge for Africa is its low productive use of DTs. They recommend that “Enterprises and households alike need greater ability to pay for and willingness to productively use these technologies.” As far as analysis of the problem is concerned, this recommendation is straightforward and spot on, but there are significant obstructions just below the water line.

For one, research shows that when country populations are averaged across Sub-Saharan Africa, 84 percent live in areas where mobile internet services are available, yet only 22 percent used them by the end of 2021. This signals a problem with adoption, and adoption at its most fundamental level is a matter of human behavior and social psychology. Similarly, when a shift is made to enterprise digitalization, we find that digitalization there is also low, and that micro, small, and medium businesses in Africa pay more for data plans than those in other regions.

This disparity is compounded by the fact that surveyed African microenterprises do not perceive the need for internet-supported technologies, or put another way, the cost-benefit ratio of DT to microenterprises is too high to make economic sense. Again, this speaks to an analog mindset that does not yet envision the future benefits of digitalization and focuses more on immediate financial costs. It is a present stubborn reality, however, that 40 percent of Africans fall below the global extreme poverty line, meaning the cost of even basic mobile data plans represent about one-third of their incomes. An analog mindset and prohibitive data costs, along with Africa’s lagging internet infrastructure and service quality, are primary factors constraining the user’s willingness to utilize DTs. This is the problem behind the problem of lagging digitalization in Sub-Saharan Africa.