Technological Infrastructure and Use of ICT in Education in ... - ADEA

68 Working Group on Distance Education and Open Learning
7. ICT Infrastructure in Africa..................
The importance of ensuring access to ICT has been noted above. Even
though it was argued that real access to ICT means much more than just
a consideration of the infrastructure available, having the infrastructure
available is still a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for access
(Mansell & Wehn, 1998). This section considers the state of ICT
infrastructure available in sub-Saharan Africa. 8 It should be noted that
aggregated statistics for the African continent can be very misleading
given wide disparities in conditions across the continent. This is also
true within specific countries. For example, in South Africa, the Internet
industry was rated 18th globally in 1998, but this included a small group
of mostly white men in the urban centre of Johannesburg. Further, it is
difficult to measure Internet access because patterns of use in developing
countries are different from those in developed countries. For example, in
developing countries there are many shared Internet accounts and public
access is most common; thus statistics used in developed countries such
as dialup subscriber accounts are misleading (Jensen, 2000, 2002).
In general, the level of technology penetration in Africa is very low
compared to developed countries (US Internet Council, 2000). Of the
818 million people in Africa, statistics from 2001 estimate that only:
• 1 in 4 have a radio
• 1 in 13 have a television
• 1 in 35 have a mobile phone
• 1 in 40 have a fixed line telephone
• 1 in 130 have a personal computer (PC)
• 1 in 160 use the Internet
• 1 in 400 have pay-TV
(Jensen, 2002)
There are several reasons for this, 9 including:
7. ICT Infrastructure in Africa
• The general low level of economic activity often makes technology
unaffordable
• Many African countries still have irregular or non-existent electricity
supplies, which makes ICT use problematic
8. For a detailed discussion please see African Internet Status, available at www3.sn.apc.org/
Africa/afstat.htm. Much of the information presented in this section is taken from this
website and from Jensen (2002).
9. See Jensen 2002 for details.