Determinants of a Digital Divide in Sub-Saharan Africa : A Spatial Econometric Analysis of Cell Phone Coverage

Buys, Piet ; Dasgupta, Susmita ; Thomas, Tim ; Wheeler, David

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AREA;    ATTRIBUTES;    BACKBONE;    BASIC;    BEST PRACTICES;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4516
RP-ID  :  WPS4516

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Most discussions of the digital dividetreat it as a "North-South" issue, but theconventional dichotomy doesn't apply to cell phones inSub-Saharan Africa. Although almost all Sub-Saharancountries are poor by international standards, they exhibitgreat disparities in coverage by cell telephone systems.Buys, Dasgupta, Thomas and Wheeler investigate thedeterminants of these disparities with aspatially-disaggregated model that employs locationalinformation for cell-phone towers across over 990,000 4.6-kmgrid squares in Sub-Saharan Africa.Using probittechniques, a probability model with adjustments for spatialautocorrelation has been estimated that relates thelikelihood of cell-tower location within a grid square topotential market size (proximate population); installationand maintenance cost factors related to accessibility(elevation, slope, distance from a main road, distance fromthe nearest large city); and national competition policy.Probit estimates indicate strong, significant results forthe supply-demand variables, and very strong results for thecompetition policy index.Simulations based on theeconometric results suggest that a generalized improvementin competition policy to a level that currentlycharacterizes the best-performing states in Sub-SaharanAfrica could lead to huge improvements in cell-phone areacoverage for many states currently with poor policyperformance, and an overall coverage increase of nearly 100 percent.