Intensity of technology use and per capita real GDP across some African countries

Voxi Heinrich S Amavilah ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: African countries may have fared poorly compared to some countries in other regions, but relative to their own performance history some African countries have done quite well over the past eight years. In particular 2004 and 2005 were especially good years. How can such performance be made to stick and even expand? The answer to that question requires better understanding of the source of good performance. This paper proceeds on the assumption that technology was, at least partially, responsible. The result shows that a feeble technology undercuts per capita real GDP across African countries. However, the impacts of new technologies, measured by the intensities of internet and cell phone use are very strong. The policy implication of the findings speaks to the need for investment in new technologies for which productivity is high and the adoption and diffusion costs seem low. Further research can clarify the findings and policy by expanding and improving the data coverage, and examining effects on income of different kinds of technologies.

Keywords: technology and per capita income; GDP per capita Africa; African countries’ GDP-technology nexus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O55 O47 C21 O14 C51 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev and nep-ino
Date: 2006-11-18
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/1675/

Related works:
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:1675

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany
Address: Schackstr. 4, D-80539 Munich, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Ekkehart Schlicht ().