Diffusion of ICT in Developing Countries: A Qualitative Differential Analysis of Four Nations

Abstract This study compares the diffusion of ICT in two sets of matched developing nations: Zimbabwe and Albania, and Namibia and Venezuela. Each pair of developing countries had similar average gross domestic products for the years 1990-1999 but different ICT diffusion levels. Using qualitative analysis, we compared the paired nations on six groups of national-level factors: demographic, economic, regulatory, infrastructural, educational, and affordability factors. The findings indicate that the difference in ICT diffusion may be attributed to factors such as poor infrastructure, income inequality, and adult illiteracy. Regulatory and affordability factors are also possible reasons why the African nations seem to perform differently than their non- African counterparts. This study further reveals that the impact of a given factor depends on the type of ICT in question in at least some of the nations investigated. The model is further tested using most recent ICT diffusion data and is found to produce mostly similar results to those of the original dataset. The paired nation-level qualitative analysis may be more suitable and more relevant than a macro-level regression analysis in certain situations because it is capable of revealing the role of specific factors in a given nation whereas macro-level regression can only reveal the impacts of a set of factors on a group of nations.

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