Internet adoption and usage patterns in Africa: Evidence from Cameroon

Thierry Pénard, Nicolas Poussing, Blaise Mukoko and Georges Bertrand Tamokwe

No 2013-22, LISER Working Paper Series from Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to understand what factors stimulate or hinder the adoption and usage of the Internet in Africa. We adopt a micro-econometric approach and use household survey data from Cameroon. Our results show that Internet users in Cameroon tend to be young, educated and in employment. The probability of using the Internet is also higher for male, as well as for English-speaking and computer savvy individuals. Moreover, Internet users are more likely to have family abroad. We also find that Internet usage patterns differ across gender, age and education. For instance, young generations (below 21) tend to favor leisure usage (games) while older generations are more likely to use the Internet to search (local and international) information. Highly educated and computer savvy users are also more likely to use the Internet for professional purpose (information search) and less likely to have entertainment usage. These results provide evidence of digital divide in the Internet access, but also in the usage patterns on the African continent.

Keywords: Internet adoption; Internet usage; Digital divide; Africa; Survey data; Empirical analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L86 L96 O33 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2013-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev and nep-ict
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.liser.lu/publi_viewer.cfm?tmp=2542 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Journal Article: Internet adoption and usage patterns in Africa: Evidence from Cameroon (2015)
Working Paper: Internet adoption and usage patterns in Africa: Evidence from Cameroon (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:irs:cepswp:2013-22

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LISER Working Paper Series from Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) 11, Porte des Sciences, L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette, G.-D. Luxembourg. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Library and Documentation ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).