Ethnic politics and the diffusion of mobile technology in Africa

摘要

We analyze the effect of an ethnic group's country-level population share on the mobile phone infrastructure in Africa. Consistent with the African power-sharing arrangements documented by Francois et al. (2015), we find that larger ethnic groups benefit from a higher concentration of mobile phone infrastructure and a higher fraction of UMTS cell sites. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.