Government quality determinants of ICT adoption in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This study investigates government quality determinants of ICT adoption using Generalised Method of Moments on a panel of 49 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 2000-2012. ICT is measured with mobile phone penetration, internet penetration and telephone penetration rates while all governance dimensions from the World Bank Governance Indicators are considered, namely: political governance (consisting of political stability and “voice & accountability”); economic governance (entailing government effectiveness and regulation quality) and institutional governance (encompassing the rule of law and corruption-control). The following findings are established. First, political stability and the rule of law have positive short-run and negative long-term effects on mobile phone penetration. Second, the rule of law has a positive (negative) short-run (long-term) effect on internet penetration. Third, government effectiveness and corruption-control have positive short-run and long-term effects on telephone penetration. Institutional governance appears to be most significant in determining ICT adoption in SSA.