ICT Adoption and Usage in Africa: Towards an Efficiency Assessment

摘要

During the last two decades, most developing countries (including African nations) have demonstrated a significant improvement in information and communication technology (ICT) adoption and usage. A non-parametric slacks-based measure model of data envelopment analysis (DEA) is applied in this study to investigate the relative efficiency of ICT adoption and usage in 40 African countries with respect to the utilization of existing socio-economic, infrastructure, and political input factors. Recent data acquired from different sources, such as the World Bank and International Communication Union, are applied to identify the benchmark. Results indicate that Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Nigeria, Mauritius, and Gambia are relatively efficient in terms of ICT adoption and usage. Furthermore, this work adopted the Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes model of DEA to discuss the output projection of inefficient countries.