Development Co-operation Report 2020

Digital development for Africa: Preparing for an e-future

Tunde Fafunwa,
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the urgent need for a digital transformation in Africa. This case study provides an overview of the digital landscape today and the policies needed to foster investment and innovation. It highlights the widespread lack of access to broadband and Internet services and points to the potential for growth, as shown by the enthusiastic public response to new e-health and e-learning services in countries with developed digital infrastructure. It argues that closing the digital gaps is essential – not only as a pandemic response, but also to weather future crises and expand digital opportunities for all.

•  The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need for an exponential expansion in digital services and infrastructure in Africa to increase broadband penetration, develop e-services in health, education, agriculture and other sectors, and build capacity to respond to future shocks and crises.

•  The recent success of e-health and e-learning services in some African countries shows there is enormous potential, but governments’ limited adoption of e-government services is dampening digital demand and innovation.

•  Addressing even some of these digital gaps will have knock-on benefits that will continue to deliver after the pandemic, such as innovation, digital skills development, digital governance, data protection and cybersecurity.

• Collaboration between development co-operation agencies and African stakeholders can help foster the policies, governance, systems and innovation needed to achieve the African Union’s 2020-2030 Digital Transformation Strategy.

While digital infrastructure and services have developed significantly across the African continent in the past decade, broadband penetration and Internet services remain limited for much of the population. Only one in ten students had a computer or Internet at home to study remotely when schools closed in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments, the biggest purchasers and employers, have been slow to adopt e‑government services, which limits digital demand and innovation beyond the scope of financial technology.

The success of e-health and e-learning services in some African countries suggests there is enormous potential. Expanding digital infrastructure and digital services in Africa will generate wide-ranging benefits, including the skills and capacity to respond quickly and robustly to future shocks and crises. Development co-operation has an important role to play in supporting governance and policy making that will attract investment and spur innovation to achieve the African Union’s 2020-2030 Digital Transformation Strategy and the global goals.

COVID-19 shows the urgency of speeding up digital development to broaden access

A successful response to COVID-19 requires a significant portion of society to reduce or eliminate face‑to‑face activity and engage in work, business, education, health, entertainment, religion and social activities remotely (UNECA, 2020[1]). This means that the entire digital infrastructure and digitally enabled services are not only necessary for improved productivity, but have become critical to essential basic services (Bogdan-Martin, 2020[2]; World Bank et al., 2020[3]).

To effect a digital change of this magnitude, a significant effort must be made to shift the approach to and use of digital technologies. Across Africa, access to broadband and online services is limited and, in many instances, available primarily in business locations, government offices and educational institutions. Prior to the pandemic, there was limited use of e-learning, e-health, e-agriculture and digital enablers in other sectors. The pandemic has exposed the lack of infrastructure and development in these areas. In many parts of Africa, almost 90% of students do not have access to a computer or Internet at home to continue their education remotely (UN, 2020[4]). Education and other critical areas need an exponential expansion of digital services to compensate for the restrictions on movement and physical distancing requirements and to enable remote work and service delivery.

The race is now on to create new services or ramp up existing ones. In West Africa, a new mobile and offline e-learning service, uLesson (Kazeem, 2020[5]), attracted several hundred thousand users in the first few months of 2020. In health, Babyl, which has provided digital health service in Rwanda since 2018, reports that it now has more than 2 million registered users and has performed over 1.2 million health consultations (Pathways for Prosperity Commission, 2019[6]; Babyl[7]). The potential to expand this successful approach is enormous, particularly where there is already a well-developed digital infrastructure, such as in Rwanda.

Digital infrastructure and services have developed significantly across the African continent in the past ten years. Most notable is the coverage and accessibility of mobile services, mobile-based payments and, to a lesser extent, broadband. For example, 3G or better mobile coverage is available in over 80% of the continent's geographic area (ITU, 2019[8]). However, broadband penetration (whether wireless or fixed) is just 25% (Gandhi, 2020[9]). In addition to broadband and digital entrepreneurship, the Digital Transformation Strategy adopted by the African Union at the 2020 summit identified digital skills, an enabling policy environment, digital ID, applications and platforms as pillars and cross-cutting areas. While point solutions can be developed, they cannot be successfully deployed or adopted at scale without these fundamental components.

More than 640 hubs across the continent host entrepreneurs and attract investment in digital services. Venture capital investment in African start-ups has been estimated at USD 1.3 billion in 2019 (Shapshak, 2019[10]; 2020[11]). However, this activity in digital services is concentrated around financial technology (FinTech) and payments, which accounts for more than 51% of the activity (Shapshak, 2020[11]). Crippling gaps remain across digital ID, broadband, and a trust framework for digital transactions and e-trade. The barriers to date include a lack of sufficient policies and regulation to attract the critical investment in these foundational pillars for digital transformation (African Union, 2020[12]). Several factors along with policy and investment constrain the ability to foster innovation outside of FinTech, including government itself. As governments are among the biggest employers and biggest buyers of goods and services, the limited adoption of e-government casts a pall across the digital landscape, dampening demand and innovation.

Expanding digital infrastructure will enable e-services and prepare for future shocks

The digital gap between those who have access to technology and the means to use it and those who do not will translate into whether or not a person can earn a living and access government services and benefits, which will increasingly be delivered in a digital-only form. If everyone cannot access them, many development gains could be reversed or lost in the future. Failure to build back better, especially in light of the pandemic, will have dire consequences. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, already a stretch in many cases, becomes unattainable.

The digital gap between those who have access to technology and the means to use it and those who do not will translate into whether or not a person can earn a living and access government services and benefits

Expanding digital infrastructure and services in health, agriculture, education and commerce and closing the digital gap, will benefit people – not just in the immediate response to the pandemic, but afterward as well, as people and society adjust to a post-COVID-19 world. Addressing even some of these digital gaps will have fantastic knock-on benefits. Innovation, skills development, digital governance, data protection and cybersecurity will continue to deliver post-pandemic.

A build back better approach that furnishes leapfrog technology could provide lasting infrastructure and improved services, which in turn will respond more quickly and robustly to future shocks. One example of this is the Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing (PACT) in Africa, launched by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. PACT, along with a mobile-based health status report, provides a method to scale up COVID-19 testing to 10 million over 4 months and engage 1 million community health workers (Songok, 2020[13]; Jerving, 2020[14]). The combination of innovative, low-cost, sample collection and a digital vaccination certificate can also be applied to other diseases.

Development co-operation can support policy making and digital governance to launch the digital transformation

There are several areas of opportunity for the development community to collaborate with African stakeholders to support digital development. Overall, what is essential is to generate policies and governance that will attract investment and spur innovation to deliver platforms and systems in the critical areas identified by the African Digital Transformation Strategy – namely broadband, digital skills, digital ID and a digital trust framework for interoperability. Policy and investment success in these pillars would be revolutionary (African Union, 2020[12]).

Broadband usage, for instance, could be doubled through a few specific actions. One such action would be putting in place policies to streamline the multiple overlapping operator fees, permits and licenses at the national, state and local levels; a second would be improving the use of fees, including the universal service fund, to target infrastructure development where it is needed most. Creating policies that promote knowledge building and learning among sector professionals and organisations, and specifically governments, would promote digital skills. The key to success may be implementing innovation at the levels of industry practitioners and government. Development co-operation agencies can also support the Peer Exchange and Learning efforts for policy makers and practitioners pursued by several African institutions. Another area of potential collaboration is examining OECD trade and non-trade barriers for opportunities to apply digital innovation to support African trade and industry exports; this could include promoting platform co-operativisim, an approach where stakeholders build and share the benefits of innovation and improved productivity (Schneider, 2018[15]).

References

[12] African Union (2020), The Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020-2030), African Union, Addis Ababa, https://au.int/sites/default/files/documents/38507-doc-dts-english.pdf (accessed on 9 November 2020).

[7] Babyl (n.d.), Babyl – Rwanda’s Digital Healthcare Provider, http://www.babyl.rw (accessed on 9 November 2020).

[2] Bogdan-Martin, D. (2020), “Accelerating digital connectivity in the wake of COVID-19: Building back better with broadband requires all stakeholders to work together”, International Telecommunications Union, Geneva, https://www.itu.int/en/myitu/News/2020/09/16/19/22/UN75-Partnership-Dialogue-for-Connectivity-Doreen-Bogdan-Martin (accessed on 13 October 2020).

[9] Gandhi, D. (2020), “Figure of the week: Gap in universal mobile phone and internet access in Africa”, Brookings Africa in Focus blog, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2019/04/12/figure-of-the-week-gap-in-universal-mobile-phone-and-internet-access-in-africa/ (accessed on 13 October 2020).

[8] ITU (2019), Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures 2019, International Telecommunications Union, Geneva, https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/FactsFigures2019.pdf (accessed on 14 October 2020).

[14] Jerving, S. (2020), “Africa CDC rolls out strategy to ramp up coronavirus testing”, Devex, https://www.devex.com/news/africa-cdc-rolls-out-strategy-to-ramp-up-coronavirus-testing-97408 (accessed on 13 October 2020).

[5] Kazeem, Y. (2020), “Digital innovators are trying to plug gaps in Nigeria’s broken education system”, Quartz Africa, https://qz.com/africa/1800778/kongas-sim-shagaya-launches-nigeria-edtech-startup-ulesson (accessed on 13 October 2020).

[6] Pathways for Prosperity Commission (2019), Positive Disruption: Health and Education in a Digital Age, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom, https://pathwayscommission.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-11/positive-disruption-report.pdf (accessed on 13 October 2020).

[15] Schneider, N. (2018), Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that is Shaping the Next Economy, Nation Books, New York, https://nathanschneider.info/books/everything-for-everyone (accessed on 13 October 2020).

[11] Shapshak, T. (2020), “African startups raised $1.34 billion in 2019”, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2020/01/07/african-startups-raised-134bn-in-2019/?sh=563b96315685 (accessed on 9 November 2020).

[10] Shapshak, T. (2019), “Africa now has 643 tech hubs which play ’pivotal’ role for business”, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2019/10/30/africa-now-has-643-tech-hubs-which-play-pivotal-role-for-business/#6a6264c24e15 (accessed on 13 October 2020).

[13] Songok, E. (2020), “A locally sustainable approach to COVID-19 testing in Africa”, The Lancet Microbe, Vol. 1/5, p. e197, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s2666-5247(20)30118-x.

[4] UN (2020), “Startling disparities in digital learning emerge as COVID-19 spreads: UN education agency”, UN News, United Nations, New York, https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1062232 (accessed on 13 October 2020).

[1] UNECA (2020), COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Strategies for Africa, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Adaba, https://www.uneca.org/sites/default/files/PublicationFiles/ecarprt_covidexitstrategis_eng_9may.pdf (accessed on 13 October 2020).

[3] World Bank et al. (2020), COVID-19 Crisis Response: Digital Development Joint Action Plan and Call for Action, World Bank, Washington, DC, http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/788991588006445890/Speedboat-Partners-COVID-19-Digital-Development-Joint-Action-Plan.pdf (accessed on 13 October 2020).