The pace of change and technological evolution has accelerated greatly over the last decade. It’s not only remarkable how dramatically the technologies in everyday use has changed, but also how easily society as a whole has adopted these innovations.
The adoption of these technologies has been unequivocally positive – for individuals, the business environment and society as a whole. This has been achieved through the liberation and democratisation of information and of technology.
Essential to this transformation has been the widespread proliferation and access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The impact of ICT can be grouped into three categories: economic, business and social. The three are interrelated, based on the fact that what happens in each of them is both cause and consequence of what happens in others.
However, ICT within a South African context has found itself behind the curve both globally and compared to the rest of the African continent. South Africa has lost its status as the continental leader in internet and broadband connectivity. Pricing of services and equipment remains a significant barrier to the expanded use of ICT.
Additionally, policy constraints, weaknesses in institutional arrangements, conflicting policies between responsible departments, regulatory failure and limited competition have all contributed to this fact.
Regardless, for those who have access, ICT in South Africa will continue to transform economic and social activities, as well as how individuals and communities communicate and function in our country. ICT’s impact on each sector of our society and each area of service delivery will depend solely on how uptake is addressed in the coming years. A single cohesive strategy is needed to ensure the diffusion of ICTs in all areas of our society and the broader economy. Just like energy and transport infrastructure, ICT can also be seen as an enabler. It can speed up delivery, support of analysis, build intelligence as well as create new ways to share, learn and engage one another.
According to the National Planning Commission (NPC), by the year 2030 ICT will underpin the development of a dynamic information society and knowledge economy that is more inclusive and prosperous. This will be based on a seamless information infrastructure which will meet the needs of our citizens, business sector as well as the public sector – achieved by providing access to the wide range of services required for effective economic and social participation, both at a cost and quality which is at least equal to South Africa’s competitor nations.
Within this vision that the NPC maps out, the underlying ICT infrastructure and institutions – referred to as an “info-structure” – will represent the core of a widespread digital communications system. This ecosystem of networks, services, applications, content and innovation will attempt to support economic growth, development and competitiveness, create decent work, and contribute to nation-building and social cohesion as well as local, regional and national integration. Public services and educational and informational products will be accessible to all in our country. The tangible outcome of this vision will be creating improved human development in South Africa premised on the creation of an e-literate public which has the power and advantage of technological advances to drive their demand for services and hold their government and elected officials to account.
In addition, with the added benefits of technology and ICT as the enabler, and multicasting and instant online translation, the digitisation of content and ICT applications will also make it simpler and easier for our citizens to be able to communicate and obtain information using different languages. Innovations such as mobile government services – delivered through mobile phones – will grow and converge with more traditional e-government services which are already in existence. ICT proliferation and adoption will also have the potential to reduce spatial exclusion, thus enabling seamless participation by the majority of our citizens in the global ICT system – not only as users, but also as developers of content and applications, business process outsourcing and innovators.
However, a major stumbling block to this utopian vision of a digitally connected South Africa remains the growing fissure of the digital divide. This refers to the gap between those who have access to service and the demand from those who are excluded by unavailability or prohibitive costs. When analysing the nature of the digital divide in South Africa, a distinction must be drawn between the real access gap and the market efficiency gap. The real access gap refers to households or individuals who can be reached only by providing permanent subsidies or some sort of support. The market efficiency gap refers to the difference between the share of households reached in an efficient market and what is actually achieved under existing conditions.
As a potential solution to the digital divide in our country, a more competitive efficient market and effective regulation that enables operators to meet the demand for affordable services, reducing the number of households or individuals requiring support must be implemented.
Improving equitable access to enhanced ICT services in South Africa will also require implementation to stimulate demand. At the most fundamental level, strategies are needed to improve e-literacy through basic and secondary schooling, tertiary, adult education and supplier training. These types of initiatives will support the production of multilingual, relevant and local content for public programming and information services, including education and mobile government services and applications. This would ensure that ICT will be able to deliver content and applications which are relevant to the needs of the wider community in our country.
ICT can be used as a tool to fight poverty, increase employment, education and encourage entrepreneurship in South Africa. In addition, by providing universal access to ICT in our country, citizens in our most rural areas of South Africa will not need to call their municipality or even go to home affairs or social welfare. They will be able to do everything online. That’s the true promise of technology in South Africa: making our citizens’ lives better.
Insightful article Lee-Roy on one of the most important issues in our country. I agree with the “the growing fissure of the digital divide” as a danger, however, the real cause is that the controllers of our economy have no interest in addressing this problem. In most democracies, business have the technological know-how to roll out technology and view the digital-divide this as an opportunity to give back to their community by donating equipment, installing broadband in schools, libraries etc. Our country however, businesses are always looking to the government or international NGOs to solve the problems of the poor and constantly point to government corruption as the source of all our problems.
Remember, the fatcats controlling our economy were the die-hard National Party supporters, now the DA, who always used inferior education as a way to keep the blacks subservient. So for SA businesses to ignore the growing digital divide makes perfect economic sense.
The last paragraph is highly significant in the promise of empowering the people.
Even more significant is the potential to dis-empower the bureaucracy that is so riddled with corruption and inefficiency.
However that is precisely the reason why it will take far too long to become a reality.
I have been following -on the inside- the developments in the ICT industry since the late sixties. I have always been amused by the -sometimes- naive optimistic expectations of the user community, including some very high level decision makers.
The spread of use of available ICT facilities has been frustrated by Telkom and ICASA and associated cosy relationships with some chosen partners.
Linespeed is well below international practice. Costs are well above the same. Both are fundamental issues to accessibility without which ICT is useless. Even our Cell phone connections are not covering the whole country. This implies that not all facilities are equally available.
The National Planning Commission’s ideal is noble indeed. I might be old fashioned but I would state that the ‘literacy divide’ deserves more attentiion as we, as a whole, are far from being functionally literate. On this I think the Governments’ intentions are good but its application is lacking. The dinosaur of literacy, libraries, are woefully underfunded (some provinces allocate less than R1.00 per person on book purchasing!). With the advent of the digital age and its perceived access to boundless information the humble book seems to have been relegated to the back shelf.
Your statement. ‘Improving equitable access to enhanced ICT services in South Africa will also require implementation to stimulate demand’ applies to literacy, books and libraries too – and we seem not to have even got that right!
Great Article Lee Roy….I have to say…I fully agree with you, that pricing of services and equipment is a significant barrier and a solution to this….is highlited by David Harris. We need to get the controllers of our economy interested in resolving this problem, by donating equipment to the poor communities and enforcing the formulation of a new policy that will allow free education on ICT.
ICT can also be used to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. That’s how it will be used. It won’t create jobs or help the disempowered, because that would involve diverting money away from the rich.
Technology solves nothing. Only political will can generate benefits from technology.
@ the Creator….u r wrong my friend…
If you want to lose all lingering faith in ICT as panacea, do a bit of research into the massive orgy of nepotism, corruption and incompetence that was known as Gauteng Online (aka ‘Gauteng Offline’) – a multibillion Rand ICT disaster wrought by the dept. of Ed.
Does the NPC realise its greatest stumbling block to achieving its goal is Telkom?
Almost 20 years has passed since we thought a new dawn had come to South Africa.
Unfortunately the information age is passing Africa by. Until all the resources are depleted and the profits in Swiss Banks I think that Africa will stay in the dark.
It is easy to string glass fibre on the poles that already exist and no one will try to steal it because it is made from sand. SA could have schools like Finland and Internet like South Korea but that would wake the people to the theft of their land. At least SA does not saddle the people with trillions in debt to steal other countries resources like the U.S. does.
@ The Creator
you are right. ICT alone is not the panacea for all our problems but can help if used correctly to help solve some of them.
Take Peak oil for example as our existential energy conundrum. How can ICT best be used to help us resolve this burning issue ?
Hi i am a programmer that would like to know where to submit market valued programs that i developed with my team to be submitted to a certain governing department so that they could get checked so anyone with info or interest, you’re invited to reply