Strategic digital technology investment for growth -II
The first article of this two-part series highlighted the opportunity for Tanzania to increase investment in digital technology towards accelerated growth and reaching its goal to become a middle income economy by 2025. The mainstreaming of technology disrupters such as mobile, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), social media platforms, analytics, smart systems, cloud computing and more hold great potential to accelerate development by empowering communities.
Digital technology enables productivity and innovation across industries by facilitating availability of information, automating production, increasing competition, enabling financial inclusion, facilitating fair trade, and stimulating entrepreneurship.
This second part of the article takes a more in-depth look at connectivity -- one of the three areas the country can focus investment on to enable it to leapfrog to its 2025 goal through adoption of digital technology.
The three areas are: Increase Connectivity, Develop Technology Skills, and Promote Innovation.
Connectivity
Increased connectivity and high speed internet access in developing economies contributes to gains in productivity, employment and increased firm and public service efficiencies. Connectivity is also linked to increased financial inclusion by providing access to Digital Financial Services (DFS) such as mobile, SIM and online banking. Mobile and online platforms are also being increasingly used for provision of government services, including access to information and payment platforms.
Tanzania has made strides in increasing connectivity including establishment of the National Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Broadband Backbone.
(NICTBB) across 24 regions as well as the landing of 2 submarine cables (EASSy and SEACOM) by 2012. Mobile penetration has also made significant progress at 40.08m subscriptions (2017).
However, internet access remains low with the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) citing internet penetration at 45 per cent in 2017. Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) internet use is also lukewarm based on World Bank indices. In addition, the Quality of Service for mobile data networks, a primary internet access technology in our region, is also limited.
The government should continue to build on the progress of providing connectivity, however investment and regulation should also be strategically targeted towards stimulating the private sector to leverage and accelerate the increasing connectivity of consumers while closing the overall gap of access and coverage in remote hard to reach areas.
