New Telegraph

IMF: Only 60% of Nigerians have access to Internet

…says low access driving inequality globally

Despite its record of 138.7 million active internet subscriptions as of April 2020, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that Nigeria falls among the category of countries where only 40-60 people have access to the internet out of 100 inhabitants.

The body in the latest report on global internet access distribution said internet usage remained a luxury for many people as half of the world’s population does not have access to the Internet, either through a mobile device or through fixed-line broadband.

Nigeria, however, falls in the third category of countries with higher access and at the same level as South Africa, Algeria and Egypt, where 60 out of 100 people have access to the internet. American and European countries such as the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada have the highest access rates with 80-100 having access to the internet out of 100 people.
Emphasising the need for universal internet access, IMF noted that the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown had triggered a mass migration from analogue to digital and highlighted that access to the Internet was crucial for socio-economic inclusion.

“High-speed Internet is key for working from home, for children’s education when they can’t attend school in person, for telemedicine, for benefiting from social support programmes and for enabling access to financial services for everyone, especially for those living in remote areas,” the body stated in the report.

“The digital divide — the gap between those who have Internet access and those who don’t — is more like a chasm, both within and between countries. Advanced economies like the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada have the highest access rates. Big emerging economies show large disparities in the proportion of Internet users in their populations, which range from about two-thirds in Brazil and Mexico to about one-third in India.

“Countries in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by many in emerging and developing economies in Asia, are among those with the lowest access to the Internet despite being world leaders in mobile money transactions. There is also a large variation in Internet connectivity by firms in sub-Saharan Africa — only about 60 percent of businesses use email for business compared to about 85 percent in Europe and Central Asia,” IMF stated.

The body observed that the lack of universal and affordable access to the Internet may widen income inequality within and between countries.
“Income inequality and inequality of opportunity may worsen—even in advanced economies—because disadvantaged groups and people who live in rural areas have more limited Internet access. The disparity between men and women in their labour force participation, wages, and access to financial services may increase where there is a gender gap in access to the Internet. This could be the case in many emerging and developing countries where fewer women than men own a mobile phone.

“The relatively low Internet access might depress productivity in emerging and developing countries. IMF staff research finds that a one percentage point increase in the share of Internet users in the population raises per capita growth by 0.1-0.4 percentage points in sub-Saharan Africa.

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