The acceleration of global digital services and e-commerce has exposed the outdated nature of many tax regimes around the world. The forgone potential revenues for states, particularly in the context of post-pandemic economic reconstruction has further …

The digital economy, particularly location-based platforms, could potentially provide alternative forms of work to alleviate mass unemployment in many countries. Such platforms may offer opportunities to people who face unequal access to income-generat …

The novel coronavirus has, in many ways, grossly affected the lives of people. In order to protect the health of the population and possibly curb the spread of the virus, countries around the world introduced containment measures including hard lockdow …

Digitalisation has prompted the evolution of innovative business models and created new forms of value creation. In the mobile telecommunications industry, this has resulted in the ubiquity of over-the top (OTT) and other digital apps and services such …

Containing the spread of COVID-19 (and the SARS-CoV-2 virus) involves an interlocking set of activities and none of these alone are a silver bullet to technically containing the virus. Due to the high natural rate of infection for COVID-19 (it has a ba …

Techno-utopian views of ‘Smart Cities’ not only perpetuate inequality and negate future urban resilience, they also disregard the user-centric, social-technical criteria that are crucial to classify a city as ‘smart’—where all who reside in the city ar …

The release of the temporary spectrum in advance of the spectrum auction later this year or possibly next, provides us with an opportunity to correct course in order to meet our primary national digital objective of affordable access to the full range …

Since Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum’s announcement in 2016 of the impending Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) in his book of the same title, South Africa has been swept up in the wave of global hype around the extraordinary potential for 4I …

In line with global commitments to improve digital inclusion and to realise the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, the Government of Uganda has committed the country to developing a digital vision for Uganda. It aims to build a digitally-enabled s …

Information communication technology (ICT), and particularly broadband technologies, have been identified as critical drivers of social and economic growth and development. Smartphones, in particular, have revolutionised the telecommunications industry …

Mozambique has a challenging path ahead if it is to realise the full potential of the ICT sector in developing its economy and to make progress on the information communication technology targets that are intended as enabling the achievement of the Uni …

There has been considerable hype about the potential of online work to contribute to economic growth and development and ameliorate unemployment in Africa through the creation of jobs, particularly ‘decent work’, by freeing citizens from geographic con …

Increasing Internet connections suggest a bridging of the digital divide yet, as more people are connected, digital inequality paradoxically increases. Inequality exists not only between people online and offline, but also between those who have the sk …

At a time when the ICT sector is most needed to bolster Nigeria’s ailing national economy, the sector finds itself under considerable political and regulatory pressure, with the country sliding down global indices and some players even preparing to exi …

There is extensive evidence now that, as technology evolves from basic voice services to that of broadband, the value of networks increases exponentially with significant multiplier effects impacting positively on economic growth and individual well-be …

Almost half of South Africans (47%) over the age of 15 years do not use the Internet. After collecting information on the access and use of ICTs in nine African countries, the Survey identifies the affordability of devices and data services as the main …

Information Communication Technology (ICT) is recognised as a key enabler of economic growth and development in South Africa. Progress towards modernising ICT in the public sector has been slow and the government lags the private sector in terms of ICT …

Lesotho has the lowest broadband penetration despite extensive 3G and some 4G coverage. About 70% of Lesotho resident have never used the Internet. The low level of Internet use is attributed to high mobile telecommunication services and products. Usin …

While Lesotho has made significant progress towards its national vision of 2020, it faces several challenges as a small landlocked, lower-middle income country, with mountainous terrain and low population density outside of the capital, Maseru. The fiv …

“Although most Africans remain disconnected from the Internet, and access to broadband services continues to be a central policy issue, the increased availability of broadband services alone will not reduce digital inequality on the continent. While th …

Despite its policy currency from the open source and open data movements there is little thorough analysis of how open access affects ICT policy outcomes in relation to extending broadband networks in Africa. There is very little acknowledgement of pol …

From an African perspective, Internet governance requires not only an understanding of the unevenness in access to and use of the Internet, but also of the disparities between developed and developing countries’ abilities to effectively participate in …

Vietnamese backed Motivel has shaken up the Mozambican mobile market with its high investment, low user cost business model — creating the largest 2G/3G network in the country and winning 37% of subscriber-based market share in its first three years of …

A fresh, public-interested assessment of the zero-rating of certain applications (apps) and platforms in the African mobile prepaid environment is overdue. This policy paper examines the issue of zero-rating within the contexts of the range of discount …

The lacuna in South Africa’s national broadband policy on how to implement open access in order to contribute to national policy objectives prompted Research ICT Africa (RIA) to investigate whether open access strategies could be the policy and regulat …