Effects of Information and Communication Technologies on Structural Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

The objective of this work is to assess the effects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on structural change in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, perceived through the new school of Knowledge Economy (KE), ICTs present today more opportunities and development prospects for SSA countries. As knowledge, ICTs have emerged as an unlimited resource that SSA countries can draw on to drive structural change. This paper uses data from the World Bank’s Interprise Surveys from 2004 to 2019 on 28 SSA countries. We first assess structural change using Fabricant’s (1942) method, and then investigate the effects of ICTs on structural change using panel instrumental regression. The results show that the level of internet use and the level of telephone use positively affect structural change in SSA. However, the effects of the internet are more significant and larger than those of telephony and can be explain by the lower adoption and the upper specialised skills needed of internet compared to telephony, who creates more heterogeneity in the case of internet use. These results argue in favour of promoting ICT tools that require specific skills, thereby accelerating the mobility of skilled workers and accelerating structural change.