Guest editorial

Citation

Gillwald, A. (2012), "Guest editorial", info, Vol. 14 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/info.2012.27214daa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: info, Volume 14, Issue 4

This diverse set of papers was selected from the second Communication Policy Research Africa (CPRafrica) conference organised by Research ICT Africa in association with the University of Nairobi in April 2011. The conference is part of a wider programme to develop African research excellence in the area of ICT policy and regulation which is made possible by the extensive support received from the Canadian International Development Research Centre.

With the theme Connectivity and Convergence the selected papers cover a wide range of subjects from the examination of infrastructure investment patterns and their relationship to policy and regulatory constraints across five African countries by Enrico Calandro and Mpho Moyo to a discourse analysis of media coverage of broadband in South Africa by Wallace Chigona, Johannes Willem Vergeer and Andile Simphiwe Metfula.

Some of the stodgy government interventions in the area of broadband investment and the re-entry of the state into the ownership and operation of the backbone networks captured in these papers contrast starkly with the developments occurring in the dynamic mobile market reflected in other papers such as those by Christoph Stork and Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u, Timothy Mwololo Waema and Winnie V. Mitullah.

The debate on mobile termination rates presented in the paper by Christoph Stork provides critical insight into the positive competitive effects of shifts towards cost based termination rates in some African countries. Debunking what has become a conventional wisdom about two-sided markets and waterbed effects associated with the reduction of termination rates and the increase in retail rates, he shows that on the contrary in sufficiently competitive markets where there has been a significant regulated reduction in termination rates end user prices have come down, uptake of mobile services has increased and operator profitability has remained high.

The demand side of some of these positive outcomes in the dynamic East Africa market – the countries of which have led mobile termination rate reductions – are captured in the paper by Nyambura Ndung’u et al. Using Amartya Sen’s capability approach to analyse their survey data they identify the factors influencing the usage of new technology in low-income households in Nairobi and find that access to the new technologies does not lead to the automatic use thereof. A combination of the demographic factors influence the usage of the new technologies and these are presented to inform policy-makers, donors in the development arena, and technology providers.

The paper by Ibrahim Kholilul Rohman determines whether increased access to mobile phone and the internet will improve the quality of life at an individual level in African countries. In the face of all the development and donor hype around mobile access, the study found that access to telecommunication devices has contributed very little to closing the income gap, though the mobile phone has had a slightly higher impact than the internet. The findings highlight the need for policies for the telecommunications sector in African countries to be designed with a stronger connection between access and use of devices and economic activities.

The paper by Chigona, Vergeer and Metfula adopts a more qualitative methodology exploring in the first instance the role the media play in the ICT debate in a developing country context through analysing the media discourse surrounding the South African broadband policy process. Through a critical discourse analysis the paper identifies that despite a strong administrative justice framework and legally compelling consultation, participation in the policy process is limited to a few key stakeholders as a result of a technocratic rather than developmental approach to policy making, which allows government to dominate the debate.

With the massive growth in mobile data arising from these developments the linkages between public policies and investments in the terrestrial backbone, dimensioned originally for relatively limited voice services, before accessing the now widely available, though still expensive, international bandwidth, remains a key policy and research question. So too are the policy and research issues not only of access and affordability, but also of privacy and surveillance, emerging from the incorporation of social networking into interpersonal communication whether for private or public purposes or in social or work contexts, all of which are becoming increasingly blurred.

It would be remiss of me to complete this note without thanking the various contributors, without whom this issue would not have come to fruition. Thanks of course go the authors for their responsiveness to revisions and to Enrico Calandro, who assisted the editor with coordinating the refereeing and revisions and without whom the issue would not have been completed on time.

A special thank you to the review panels of CPRafrica who did the first round of paper reviews and the eminent group of referees for this issue who continue not simply to referee but to mentor authors to publication – Lishan Adam (Research ICT Africa, Ethiopia), Ernesto Flores Roux (CIDE/DIRSI) Anders Henten (Aalborg University, Denmark), Helani Galpaya, (LIRNEasia), Tim Kelly (infoDev), Robin Mansell (London School of Economics and Political Science), William Melody (Technical University of Denmark), Rohan Samarajiva (LIRNEasia), Leo Van Audenhove (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and Laura Recuero Virto, (OECD).

We continue to be indebted to Colin Blackman (Editor, info) for providing a publication platform for the still limited research emanating from the continent in this subject area. I trust it makes for interesting reading.

Alison GillwaldExecutive Director of Research ICT Africa (www.researchictafrica.net) and Adjunct Professor at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, Management of Infrastructure Reform and Regulation Programme, Cape Town, South Africa