Despite issues associated with the digital divide, mobile telephony is growing on the continent and the rise of smartphones has given citizens easy access to social networking sites. But the digital divide, which mostly reflects on one's race, gender, socioeconomic status or geographical location, stands in the way of digital progress. What opportunities are available to tame digital disparities? How are different societies in Africa handling digital problems? What innovative methods are being used to provide citizens with access to critical information that can help improve their lives? Experiences from various locations in several sub-Saharan African countries have been carefully selected in this collection with the aim of providing an updated account on the digital divide and its impact in Africa.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Section I. Foundations and Theory
- 1. Comprehending the Digital Disparities in Africa
- Bruce Mutsvairo and Massimo Ragnedda
- 2. Conceptualising the digital divide
- 3. From Global to Local, Metropolitan to Village
- A Case for a Definitional and Context-Oriented Approach to Examining the ‘Cigital Divide’
- 4. Technology and the Democratic Space in Africa
- A Re-Examination of the Notion of ‘Digital Divide’
- Section II. Social Inclusion and Digital Exclusion
- 5. The Partially Digital
- Internet and South African Youth
- 6. Online Football Fandom as a Microcosm of the Digital Participation Divide in Zimbabwe
- 7. The Discourse of Digital Inclusion of Women in Rwanda’s Media
- A Thematic Analysis of Imvaho Nshya and The New Times Newspapers.
- Margaret Jjuuko and Joseph Njuguna
- Section III. Cultural, Social, and Economic Paradigms
- 8. The Digital Divide and Film
- 9. Digital Divide or Information Divide
- Interrogating Telecommunication Penetration Measurements in Communal African Societies
- 10. Exploring How Mobile Phones Mediate Bonding, Bridging and Linking Social Capital in a South African Rural Area
- 11. Bridging the Digital Gap in Sub-Saharan Africa
- A Critical Analysis of Illiteracy and Language Divide
- 12. Kenya’s ‘Mobile Agriculture’ Discourse
- Unpacking Notions of Technology, Modernisation, and Development
- Index
- List of Figures and Tables
- Figures
- Figure 2.1 The three levels of digital divide
- Figure 9.1 Communal Social Structure
- Figure 11.1 Roger’s innovation-adoption process
- Figure 11.2 The interface of Alimamy’s mobile phone showing how he saved and retrieved contacts
- Figure 11.3 Popular dumbed mobile phones used by the participants
- Tables
- Table 4.1 Internet Users Statistics for Africa
(Africa Internet Usage, 2017 Population Stats and Facebook Subscribers)
- Table 4.2 Key indicators
- Table 4.3 Social Media Penetration Rankings
- Table 4.4 Mobile Social Media Penetration
- Table 7.1 Selected Sample