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Connectivity in Africa: Use, Benefits and Constraints of Electronic Communications - Ethiopia By Abebe Rorissa,
National University of Lesotho Table of Contents 1. Introduction
2. Implementation of the Study
3. Patterns of Use of Electronic Communications 4. Benefits and Constraints of Electronic Communications 5. Changes Brought by Full Internet Access 6. Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations
List of Tables Table 1: Number of Completed Baseline & Revised Baseline Questionnaires Returned Table 2: Number of Completed Questionnaires (on Changes Brought by Full Internet Access) Returned Table 3: Distribution of Local(Ethiopian) and Expatriate(Foreigner) Respondents by Gender Table 4: Distribution of Local(Ethiopian) and Expatriate(Foreigner) respondents by Level of Use Table 5: Highest Qualification of the Respondents Table 6: Computer Skills of the Respondents Table 7: How Essential it is to Communicate Outside the Country Table 8: Adequacy of Information Facilities at the Respondents' Organizations Table 9: From Where Respondents Send/Receive Electronic Messages Table 10: How Often Respondents Send/Receive Electronic Messages from their Office and/or Home Table 11: How Respondents Usually Send Electronic Messages Table 12: Who Covers Electronic Mail Cost Table 13: How Often the Local & Expatriate Respondents Send/receive Electronic Messages Table 14: Relationship Between Computer Skills of Respondents and How They Send Electronic Messages Table 15: Relationship Between Computer Skills of Respondents and How Often They Send Electronic Messages Table 16: What E-mail was Used for Table 17: Percentage of Electronic Messages Sent Outside Africa, Within Africa and Within the Country Table 18: Percentage of Electronic Messages Destined Outside Africa by Type of Organization of Respondents Table 19: Percentage of Electronic Messages Destined Within Africa by Type of Organization of Respondents Table 20: Percentage of Electronic Messages Destined Within the Country by Type of Organization of Respondents Table 21: Improvements, in Ranked Order, Brought in the Respondents' Work by the Use of Electronic Communications Table 22: Difficulties, in Ranked Order, Brought in the Respondents' Work by the Use of Electronic Communications Table 23: Constraints to the Respondents for Making Effective Use of Electronic Communications Table 24: Number of Respondents Who are Currently Using Internet, Have Full Internet Access and those Who Plan to Obtain Full Internet Access Table 25: Reasons Given by Respondents Who do not have Plans to Obtain Full Internet Access. Table 26: Type(s) of Internet Services that Prompts/Prompted Respondents to Subscribe Table 27: Types of Internet Services Respodents Use and Feel Useful Table 28: How Respondents Feel about the Adequacy of Telecommunications Facilities Available at their Organizations and in their Area for Full Internet Access Table 29: Adequacy of Information Facilities at the Respondents Organizations Table 30: Improvements, in Ranked Order, Brought in the Respondents' Work by the Use of Internet Table 31: Technical or other Constraints Preventing Respondents from Making a more Effective Use of Internet Table 32: Improvements, in Ranked Order, which Respondents Expect to be Brought to their Work by the Use of Internet Table 33: Technical or other Constraints which Respondents Expect May Prevent them from Making a more Effective Use of Internet Appendix I: Baseline Questionnaire Appendix II: Revised Baseline Questionnaire. Appendix III: Procedures Used for Classifying PADISnets E-Mail
Appendix IV: Questionnaire on Changes Brought by Full Internet Access Appendix V: Interview Schedule 1. Introduction 1.1. The IDRC Impact Program In 1992, the International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada organized an exploratory workshop in which researchers from almost all the continents participated in. The main theme of the workshop was the impact of information on development. An electronic conference, on top of the above mentioned workshop, gave rise to the production, in 1993, of an important publication in the area of impact assessment, "Measuring the Impact of Information on Development", edited by Michel Menou and published by the IDRC. The entire IDRC Impact Program was divided into two phases. The first phase identified key issues and formulated "a preliminary framework for future investigations" while the second phase of the IDRC Impact Program, which run from 1994 to 1998, focused on testing "the preliminary framework and get hands-on experience of the problems associated with this unusual kind of investigation." A total of eight (8) projects were launched during the second phase to test the framework under different situations. 1.2. The UNECA/PADIS Project The IDRC sponsored project "Capacity Building for Electronic Communication in Africa" (CABECA), which was implemented by the Pan African Development Information System (PADIS) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) introduced low cost electronic communication networks in many African countries since 1993. The UNECA/PADIS project which is one of the eight IDRC supported projects mentioned above (1.1) and being reported here involved four of the countries (Ethiopia, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia), which were beneficiaries of the CABECA project. It was originally entitled "Impact of Electronic Communications on Development in Africa", consonant with the overall theme of the program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, through which it was supported. The research team felt that this title sounded too broad and ambitious with respect to the actual scope and outcome of the project. They thus decided to use the above main title for the final reports of the project. The final report of the project is made of a series of self-contained documents with a view to facilitate their further dissemination and use. The series includes:
The reports will be available in print or electronic form from the Pan African Development Information System (PADIS) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. It is also planned to post, at a later stage, an eventually adapted version of all of them on the Web site of the African Information Society Initiative (http://www.uneca.org/aisi). The present document is devoted to reporting results of a two-phase survey of users of the PADISnet FidoNet node in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 1.3. Objectives of the Study The main objectives of the UNECA/PADIS study were "to contribute to the development of indicators for the measurement of the impact of information and to assess the impact of electronic communications (telematics) on development in Africa." However, due to various reasons (constraints in time and other resources), the study failed to achieve its objectives. 1.4. Organization of the Report This report has six sections. The first section outlines the IDRC Impact Program and the UNECA/PADIS Project together with its objectives. Section two deals with detailed procedures followed in the execution of the study. In sections three and four, patterns of use of electronic communications and their benefits and constraints, respectively, as indicated by users of the PADISnet through their responses to the baseline and revised baseline questionnaires (Appendix I and II) and interviews (Appendix V) are presented. Results obtained from the questionnaire on changes brought by full Internet access (Appendix IV) are presented under section five. The last section gives summary of major findings, conclusions and recommendations for future studies. 2. Implementation of the Study 2.1. Baseline Survey
Table 1: Number of Completed Baseline and Revised Baseline Questionnaires Returned
P=Private/Individual, A=Academic & Research, I=International, G=Governmental, NG=Non-governmental, *This classification was made based on PADISnets traffic data for January & February 1995; **N=101 Table 1 above shows that users affiliated to Academic and Research institutions and users from the low level of use group were the majority of the respondents. (see Appendix III for the original structure of the 206 entry points)
Table 2: Number of Completed Questionnaires on Changes Brought by Full Internet Access Returned
P=Private/Individual, A=Academic & Research, I=International, G=Governmental, NG=Non-governmental *This classification was made based on PADISnets traffic data for January & February 1995; **N=58 According to Table 2 above, private/individual users of the PADISnet and users affiliated to Academic and Research institutions as well as users from the low level of use group were the majority of the respondents.
2.2. Interviews Interviewing was the most difficult as well as least productive part of the study. A total of 33 out of the original sample of 50 users were interviewed. Out of the 33 users interviewed, 22 were interviewed between December 1995 and March 1996 while the remaining 11 were interviewed during the month of March 1997. The organizational affiliations of these 33 users are as follows: 11 were from private/individual, 8 were from academic & research, 7 were from non-governmental, 5 were from international and 2 were from governmental organizations.
2.3. Problems encountered
3. Patterns of Use of Electronic Communications Out of 25 respondents who indicated that they are the sole users of their addresses, about half (12=48%) are private/individual users with 5, 4, 3 and 1 respondents from academic & research, non-governmental, international and governmental organizations, respectively. Moreover, 15(60%) of the sole users were expatriates.
Table 3: Distribution of Local(Ethiopian) and Expatriate(Foreigner) respondents by Gender
P=Private/Individual, A=Academic & Research, I=International, G=Governmental, NG=Non-Governmental, *N=101, **N=59, ***N=42 Female respondents were very few (13.9%) compared to male respondents (86.1%). Respondents from academic & research institutions are also the majority (61.0%) of the local users while 71.4% of the expatriates were private/individual users and users from International organizations. Out of the 42 expatriate respondents, more than two third were temporary residents (i.e. less than 5 years). Table 4: Distribution of Local(Ethiopian) and Expatriate(Foreigner) respondents by Level of Use
Table 4 above shows that the majority of both local and expatriate respondents were from the low and very high levels of use groups. This is due to the fact that the low and very high level of use group of entry points were the 1st and the 2nd largest groups of all the PADISnet users.
Table 5: Highest Qualification of the Respondents
*N=100 Almost all the respondents (96.0%) are holders of BA/BSc degree or above. On the average, the higher the qualification the greater the number of respondents.
Table 6: Computer Skills of the Respondents
*N=100 Qualifications and computer skills of the respondents do not seem to be positively correlated for experienced computer users though they do for those who rated their computer skills as intermediate. Only 3.0% of the respondents are beginners while the rest 97.0% are intermediate and experienced computer users, the majority of them (60%) being experienced computer users. Table 7: How Essential it is to Communicate Outside the Country
P=Private/Individual, A=Academic & Research, I=International, G=Governmental, NG=Non-Governmental, *N=99 As far as essentiality of communicating outside the Country is concerned, 93.9% of them indicated that it is essential while only 1.0% of them think that it is seldom essential.
Table 8: Adequacy of Information Facilities at the Respondents' Organizations
P=Private/Individual, A=Academic & Research, I=International, G=Governmental, NG=Non-Governmental, *N=99 Except respondents from international and governmental organizations, the majority of those from other types of organizations feel that information facilities at their organizations are inadequate. Moreover, respondents from academic & research institutions, who heavily rely on libraries and information centers for their day to day activities, feel more so. Their opinion conforms with the usual criticism about the inadequacy, in terms of quality as well as quantity of information, of academic and research libraries in the country. Table 9: From Where Respondents Send/Receive Electronic Messages
P=Private/Individual, A=Academic & Research, I=International, G=Governmental, NG=Non-Governmental, *N=101 Tables 9 and 10 show that home computers in general and E-mail facilities at home in particular are not common among the respondents and that is why more than three fourth of them indicated that they send/receive electronic messages only from their offices, with the exception of about half of the private/individual users who send/receive electronic messages both from their offices and homes. It is also apparent from Table 10 that the majority (75%) of the respondents send/receive electronic messages at least once per week. Table 10: How Often Respondents Send/Receive Electronic Messages from their Office and/or Home
*N=99
Table 11: How Respondents Usually Send Electronic Messages
P=Private/Individual, A=Academic & Research, I=International, G=Governmental, NG=Non-Governmental, *N=100 It is clear from Table 11 above that most (90%) of the respondents send electronic messages by logging in and typing for themselves. This conforms to the fact that E-Mail is more personalized than, for instance, fax. Out of a total of 21 respondents who subscribe to other networks (on top of PADISnet), about half (47.6%) of them are affiliated to international organizations which have electronic connections to their respective head offices abroad. The Ethiopian Telecommunications Authoritys network (which provides full Internet services), UN CC-Mail(?) and HealthNet are the networks, other than PADISnet, used by the 21 respondents. Table 12: Who Covers Electronic Mail Cost
P=Private/Individual, A=Academic & Research, I=International, G=Governmental, NG=Non-Governmental, *N=100 Electronic mail cost is mostly covered by either the respondents organizations or projects. Only 14.0% of the respondents cover the cost for themselves, among which (64.3%) are private/individual users. Table 13: How Often the Local & Expatriate Respondents Send/receive Electronic Messages
*N=99 According to Table 13 above, there is no difference between the locals & expatriates in the frequency with which they send electronic messages. More than three fourth of the respondents send an average of one message per working day (Monday - Friday).
Table 14: Relationship Between Computer Skills of Respondents and How They Send Electronic Messages
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