The Mobile Phone in the Diffusion of Knowledge for Institutional Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa

By Simplice A. Asongu, Jacinta C. Nwachukwu. 2016

355 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study assesses the mobile phone in the diffusion of knowledge for better governance in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2000-2012. For this purpose we employ Generalised Method of Moments with forward orthogonal deviations. The empirical evidence is based on three complementary knowledge diffusion variables (innovation, internet penetration and educational quality) and ten governance indicators that are bundled and unbundled. The following are the main findings. First, there is an unconditional positive effect of mobile phone penetration on good governance. Second, the net effects on political, economic and institutional governances that are associated with the interaction of the mobile phone with knowledge diffusion variables are positive for the most part. Third, countries with low levels of governance are catching-up their counterparts with higher levels of governance. The above findings are broadly consistent with theoretical underpinnings on the relevance of mobile phones in mitigating bad governance in Africa. The evidence of some insignificant net effects and decreasing marginal impacts may be an indication that the mobile phone could also be employed to decrease government quality. Overall, this study has established net positive effects for the most part. Five rationales could elicit the positive net effects on good governance from the interaction between mobile phones and knowledge diffusion, among others, the knowledge variables enhance: reach, access, adoption, cost-effectiveness and interaction. In a nut shell, the positive net effects are apparent because the knowledge diffusion variables complement mobile phones in reducing information asymmetry and monopoly that create conducive conditions for bad governance. The contribution of the findings to existing theories and justifications of the underlying positive net effects are discussed.

Subfields: Information Systems, Media Technology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/66fbaca2049ab9aabe02b8cc6ba74d770be23705

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Citations in the corpus

Information Asymmetry and Market Power in the African Banking Industry (2017, methodology): “…(OIR) test indicates that the instruments do not explain the outcome variable beyond the suspected endogenous variables (see Beck et al., 2003; Asongu & Nwachukwu, 2016b), with the GMM technique (based on forward orthogonal variations), the information criterion needed to investigate if…”
The Role of ICT in Modulating the Effect of Education and Lifelong Learning on Income Inequality and Economic Growth in Africa (2019, neutral): “It has been documented in recent literature that all explaining variables are presumed to be suspected endogenous (or predetermined) whereas years (or time-invariant variables) are expected to be strictly exogenous (Asongu & Nwachukwu, 2016; Tchamyou & Asongu, 2017).”
Environmental Degradation, ICT and Inclusive Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (2017, result): “Evidence of this extreme poverty trend substantially contrasts with the fact that the sub-region has been enjoying more than two decades of economic growth resurgence which began in the mid-1990s (Asongu and Nwachukwu, 2016a).”
Inequality and gender economic inclusion: The moderating role of financial access in Sub-Saharan Africa (2020, background): “…of foreign aid in order to improve socio-economic development in the post-2015 development agenda (Page & Söderbom, 2015; Jones & Tarp, 2015; Asongu, 2016) whereas another stream has been concerned with nexuses between education, the sharing of information, the redistriction of income and…”
The Role of Information Sharing in Modulating the Effect of Financial Access on Inequality (2019, background): “The third strand has focused on information sharing and financial access nexuses (Tchamyou & Asongu, 2017; Asongu et al. 2016; Asongu et al. 2017a).”
Educational quality thresholds in the diffusion of knowledge with mobile phones for inclusive human development in sub-Saharan Africa (2018, neutral): “Consistent with Asongu et al. (2016), the relevance of ICT and knowledge in economic prosperity has long been documented in the management and economics literature.”
The Impact of Terrorism on Governance in African Countries (2017, methodology): “In accordance with recent governance (Asongu & Nwachukwu, 2016b) and development (Tchamyou, 2016) literature, this study employs PCA in order to bundle governance indicators.”