Two reports that I co-authored were released last week. They explore the impacts that changing broadband infrastructure is having on some of the key sectors of production in East Africa. See the short outlines, summaries and links below:
Connectivity and the Tea Sector in Rwanda
Adoption of digital technologies is not comprehensive in the Rwandan tea sector (with, for example, very low Internet use among tea growers), but we did find growing use of the Internet and ICTs.
Where they were present, digital flows of information were increasingly important to the ability of firms to improve production and ultimately to increase their share of economic value from tea.Thus we see a growing importance of ‘data-driven value chains’ – that is, new digital information flows which are becoming as important as the flows of material goods.
The Internet and Tourism in Rwanda
Tourist service providers in Rwanda have a very high Internet adoption, and even the smallest hotel or tour agency is likely to have at least one mobile Internet-connected laptop. Many of the global tourist platforms also have a presence in the region. So, Internet connectivity, Internet access and sector-wide platforms are available for tourism firms. However, we found impact of internet on Rwandan tourism to be modest.
In this report we explore the uneven relationships, platforms and customer relations which effects the impact of the internet in tourism