Does ICT access and usage reduce growth inefficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Désiré Avom (1) , Gilles Dufrénot (2, 3) , Sylvie Eyeffa (1)

1 Université de Yaoundé II
2 AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques
3 CEPII - Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales

This paper investigates whether or not the access to and use of ICT can help African countries reduce their growth inefficiencies. Inefficiency is measured, on the one hand, by the gap between a country's growth rate and its own frontier, and on the other hand by the relative position of each country compared to the best achievers. We find that if countries were doing a better job of controlling corruption and improving citizen participation in politics, they would achieve higher growth efficiency performance by using ICT. When countries are compared with each other, considering the growth "frontier" as countries in the sample, then growth differentials are explained primarily by non-ICT factors of growth (human capital, schooling rates, capital growth rates, etc.). The role of ICT factors is secondary. But they contribute to growth to a greater extent for the best achievers (compared to the lowest and middle achievers) because they are better endowed with ICT factors than the others.

Keywords: ICT; African countries; growth inefficiency; frontier; quantiles

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Désiré Avom, Gilles Dufrénot, Sylvie Eyeffa. Does ICT access and usage reduce growth inefficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa?. 2023. ⟨hal-04017691⟩