Digital Infrastructure as a Driver of Inclusive Growth

Lukasz Grzybowski ()
Additional contact information
Lukasz Grzybowski: University of Cape Town
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alexander Zimper

No 358, ERSA Working Paper Series from Economic Research Southern Africa

Abstract: South Africa’s persistent growth and employment underperformance have drawn renewed attention to structural reform in network industries. Over the past decade, GDP per capita growth has remained well below population growth, while unemployment has stayed above 32 percent. Digital transformation has recently been added to the priority reform areas under Operation Vulindlela Phase II, creating an opportunity for reassessing the role of digital infrastructure in inclusive growth. Drawing on an extensive empirical literature, much of it focused on sub-Saharan Africa, this paper examines South Africa’s digital infrastructure landscape: a progressively deconcentrating mobile market with near-universal 3G and extensive 4G coverage; a fixed broadband sector reshaped by the conditional approval of the Vodacom–Maziv transaction; and persistent gaps in affordability, adoption, and effective use. The central argument is that South Africa’s digital infrastructure challenge is no longer primarily one of basic network coverage. The binding constraints now lie in affordability, effective adoption, regulatory modernisation, energy reliability, and the institutional capacity to implement complex reforms.

Keywords: Digital infrastructure; broadband; mobile telecommunications; inclusive growth; competition policy; telecommunications regulation; spectrum policy; fixed broadband (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L43 L51 L96 O18 O33 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2026-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in ERSA Working Paper Series, July 2026, pages 39

Downloads: (external link)
https://ersawps.org/index.php/working-paper-series/article/view/358/211 First version, 2026 (application/pdf)

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rza:ersawp:358

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ERSA Working Paper Series from Economic Research Southern Africa
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maggi Sigg ().