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The role of information and communication technologies and access to electricity on education in Africa

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Abstract

Access to quality education for all children is important for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals especially in Africa. However, information and communication technologies (ICTs) and access to electricity have continued to be burning issues hindering access to quality education in Africa. However, empirical evidence on the impact of ICTs and access to electricity on primary education in Africa is rare. This paper, therefore, investigates the impacts of information and communication technologies and access to electricity on the education of children in Africa. The study used rich data on primary school enrolment, education expenditure, access to electricity, fixed broadband subscriptions, fixed telephone subscriptions, mobile cellular subscriptions, and individuals using the internet in Africa obtained from the World Development Indicators. Leveraging on panel autoregressive distributed lag model, we find that fixed broadband subscriptions, mobile cellular subscriptions, individuals using the internet, and access to electricity exert significant impacts on school enrolment in Africa. We find from the Granger causality test result a unidirectional causality between school enrolment and mobile phone subscription. Furthermore, we identified bidirectional causalities between school enrolment and access to electricity, education expenditure, fixed telephone subscriptions, fixed broadband subscriptions, and individuals using the internet. We conclude that information and communication technologies improve education in Africa.

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Data availability

The data used for this study are openly available. The data can be downloaded from the World Development Indicators website. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators#.

Notes

  1. https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4.

  2. The data reported here came from the World Global Electrification Database from ‘Tracking SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report’. The database is available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS?locations=ZG.

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  1. Department of Educational Foundations, Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Abakaliki, Nigeria

    Chinyere Ori Elom

  2. Department of Agriculture, Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Abakaliki, Nigeria

    Robert Ugochukwu Onyeneke

  3. School of Continuing and Distance Education, University of Ghana Learning Centres, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

    Hayford Mensah Ayerakwa

  4. Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER), College of Humanities, University of Ghana, Legon - Accra, Ghana

    Richmond Atta-Ankomah

  5. Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Accra, Ghana

    Eric Worlanyo Deffor

  6. Department of Science Education, Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Abakaliki, Nigeria

    Chidebe Chijioke Uwaleke

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Elom, C.O., Onyeneke, R.U., Ayerakwa, H.M. et al. The role of information and communication technologies and access to electricity on education in Africa. Educ Inf Technol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-024-12504-6

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