Digitization and Food Security, Part 1
Technological Leapfrogging at a glance
African Constraints to Digitalization
Digitalization is one of the greatest transformative opportunities of our time. It can redress intergenerational systems of poverty, make incremental and impactful alterations in how humans interact with climate, accelerate human capacity development where it never existed before, connect people who are dispersed over vast tracts of land or ensconced in dense urban centers in relationships of trust and trade, and spur job creation and entrepreneurship, to mention just a few of the immediately perceived benefits of digitalization. Perhaps, even more significantly, however, is the downstream and economy transforming benefits of value-added production, including mechanization and post-production processing and manufacturing capacities, that enterprise digitalization enables and accelerates within a broad array of local and regional value chains. Value chains that integrate e-learning, e-commerce, digital social networking, banking, finance, credit score building, and healthcare capabilities are poised to fundamentally change the way Africans do business. But to fully appreciate and then operationalize these benefits, and many others, a person or group must be able to access the internet, to see beyond its current and limited uses, to envision productive and community supporting applications, and to have sufficient economic and financial resources to purchase data and sustain access over time.
Too few Africans can truly access these benefits of digitalization. Several key constraints hamper the progress of digitalization across Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite improvements, in 2022, only 36 percent of Africa’s population had broadband internet access. Though mobile internet availability has increased in the continent, broadband infrastructure reach and the quality of available services still lag other regions.
In addition, Africa has one of the widest digital gender gaps worldwide, with the greatest disparity between men and women using the internet (35 percent versus 24 percent in 2020, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)). Divides in the availability of high-quality digital services persist in all countries, particularly in remote and poorer subregions. This is compounded by Africa’s large usage gap due to several factors, including major affordability constraints, the limited availability of locally relevant content and inadequate digital literacy and skills.
These constraints, in short, affect everything else, including the forward march of digitalization (and the adoption of digital technologies), but it is important to observe that slow digitalization is linked both to human-centered concerns and technological hindrances, including the availability and use of digital technologies and the lack of digital infrastructure.