Much research and media attention has been devoted to exploring rapidly emerging African countries in recent years. In addition to extraordinarily high GDP growth rates, many African countries have seen their middle classes grow substantially and demand goods and services that were formerly available only to individuals in more developed countries. Cell phone use in Africa has increased substantially in recent years; its nearly 649 million mobile users in 2011 made it the second-largest market for mobile phones in the world after Asia.
Furthermore, the continent has the fastest-growing cell phone market in the world, maintaining an annual growth rate of almost 20% since 2007. This has substantially contributed to economic development within the continent as a result of various innovations and improvements, from mobile banking to faster communications between merchants and customers, as the World Bank notes. In Kenya, the success of the mobile banking system M-pesa has opened the door for a multitude of mobile phone tech startups, prompting some to refer to the country as the ?Silicon Savannah.? (It should be noted, however, that mobile phone technology in Africa frequently does not afford robust Internet access, with all its innovation potential.)
The benefits of mobile technology in other regions are widely hailed. The availability of cell phones and use of social media is often credited with playing a key role in the Arab Spring, which toppled dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, and sparked protest movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa. In Mozambique, cell phones have been shown to improve voter education and political participation, while in Namibia cell phone usage has allowed citizens to hold their government officials more accountable and reduce corruption. Although much research has been done on the rise of technology in the developing world and its positive dimensions for politics, very little research has been done regarding possible negative externalities of increased communications capacity, such as improving the organizational abilities of violent groups to incite more conflict.
A 2013 paper from Duke University and the German Institute of Global and Area Studies published in the American Political Science Review, ?Technology and Collective Action: The Effect of Cell Phone Coverage and Political Violence in Africa,? examines the impact that cell phones have had on violent conflict on the continent. The authors, Jan H. Pierskalla and Florian M. Hollenbach, utilize conflict data from the UCDP Georeferenced Event Data Set, which includes data on organized violence from 1989 to 2010, and data on cell phone coverage from the GSM Association, a global association of mobile phone service providers. The authors use various statistical techniques to account for economic, social and geographical factors related to conflict and to determine whether there is indeed an association between cell phone coverage and violent conflict in the context of Africa.
Key findings include:
- Even when confounding variables such as income, inequality, ethnic fractionalization, geography are accounted for, increases in cell phone coverage are associated with higher levels of violence throughout Africa.
- When evaluated on an individual country level, the impact of cell phone coverage on conflict is also significant within each country.
- Greater cell phone coverage leads to more conflict in ?areas with structural conditions that favor violence? than those where the conditions do not favor violence; it ?enables groups to overcome their collective action and coordination problems more easily, which translates to more organized conflict events.?
- The authors conclude that ?cell phones lead to a boost in the capacity of rebels to communicate and monitor in-group behavior, thus increasing in-group cooperation. Furthermore, cell phones allow for coordination of insurgent activity across geographically distant locations.?
?We do not believe,? the researchers caution, ?that the spread of cell phone technology has an overall negative effect on the African continent. The increase in violence induced by better communication might represent a short-term technological shock, while the positive effects of better communication networks on growth and political behavior may mitigate root causes of conflict in the long run.? The authors suggest that more research must be done to determine how communication technology, such as cell phones, impacts various forms of collective action, whether violent or non-violent, in Africa. They also note that prior research on the connection between cell phone capacity and violence ? namely, the 2012 working paper ?Is the Phone Mightier than the Sword? Cell Phones and Insurgent Violence in Iraq? ? observed the opposite effect: Mobile technology was associated with decreased insurgent violence in Iraq.
Related research: The World Bank?s 2012 report ?eTransform Africa: The Transformational Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Africa? examines a wide variety of areas, including agriculture, health, education and governance. The report discusses the implications of Africa?s so-called ?mobile decade.? ? journalistresource.org
Source: http://praag.org/?p=5660
Macho Camacho Rise of the Guardians Pumpkin Pie Jack Taylor Apple Pie Recipe black friday How long to cook a turkey
No comments:
Post a Comment