Paper short abstract:

We analyse the effect of ICT policies on growth of local digital content in Sub-Saharan Africa. We situate our findings into the context of ongoing policy development, as the lack of local web content has been identified to limit the region's opportunities to benefit from ICTs and the Internet.

Paper long abstract:

The Sustainable Development Goal 9.c aims to increase access to ICTs and the Internet in least developed countries, while technology is framed as essential for achieving all of the SDGs. Over the past decade, the majority of Sub-Saharan African countries have laid the groundwork for these goals through the development of national ICT policies and will base the blueprint for integrating 'the digital' into the 'New' National Development Plans upon these policies. Data on ICT infrastructure and adoption is relatively readily available for the region, but there is only scant empirical evidence measuring the effect of the national ICT policies on fostering digital participation or content creation from the region. Recent research highlights the lack of local web content as a key factor limiting the region's opportunities to benefit from ICTs and the Internet. Using a unique dataset covering the counts of domain registrations in Sub-Saharan African countries over two decades, we estimate how the introduction of an ICT policy is related to growth of local digital content in the region. Using fixed effects modelling, we test whether having published an ICT policy has an effect on the growth of local digital content and whether having published an ICT policy recently seems to be a more important determinant of growth in local web content. We situate our findings into the context of ongoing policy development, as the effectiveness of ICT policies driving digital content creation is of great interest to those concerned with the sustainable development of the region.