A climate for investment

In order to achieve these advances, investment is needed. Etienne Sinatambou, Deputy Speaker of the Parliament in Mauritius, says that it is up to African governments to provide a favorable investment environment for the information and communications technology (ICT) sector.

Sinatambou, the former ICT minister on the island, boasts that his country has the continent’s most investor-friendly regulations. As a result, he says, “Mauritius is now in the top three in Africa for most of the ratings on ICT, such as the ITU [International Telecommunication Union] report and the UN eGovernance report.”

Academic David Jingura, of the Global Solutions Centre based in Nairobi, Kenya, points out that alongside its other benefits, technology can drive economic growth. “Technology has created an environment that stimulates economic activity, which translates directly into economic development,” he says. “The growth of SMEs and cooperatives will be stimulated further by the adoption of comprehensive technology policies. This will allow them to gain access to the global village, enabling them to trade their products and services on the world market.”

More broadly, as we reported in the Autumn 2009 edition of The Review, the expansion of the IT and IT-enabled services (ITES) sectors can have dramatic effects on employment prospects in developing countries, and thus on the wider economy. Experiences in India and the Philippines show that each new job created in IT and ITES results in the creation of two to four further positions in other sectors.
 

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