We employ new empirical data from interviews of over 200 academics in 10 universities in Kenya and Nigeria to explore the
dynamics of Internet adoption and usage in African universities. Our results suggest mixed demographic significance.
Among academics, age is positively correlated with use while we found no significant gender disparity in Internet use. Individual
income and institutional provision of end-user facilities influence adoption and use. Internet use for research and teaching is still
limited to the most basic functions.
The Internet has emerged arguably the most visible
component of the information and communication technologies
(ICTs). The rate of adoption of the Internet
exceeds that of all technologies before it.2 Its use ranges
from communication, publishing to research. It has
impacted, albeit, differentially every sector, from manufacturing,
services to education. Higher education is
particularly crucial to long run economic growth because
it is the source of knowledge workers and an important
source of inventive outputs. The role of universities as
centres of research and diffusion of findings will become
increasingly important in the 21st century (Rosenberg,
2001). Secondly, higher education produces skilled
engineers and scientists whose skills and knowledge
drive the industrialisation process. Again as competitiveness becomes less price-based and more innovationdriven,
the dual role of universities listed above will
become decisive factors in transforming economies. The
Internet is perhaps the most remarkable technological
breakthrough of the 1990s. Undoubtedly it is, and will
continue to play an important role in transforming higher
education itself just as the universities have contributed
in remarkable ways in generating new technologies in
ICT, life sciences and biotechnology.3
In this study, the first of its kind that we were aware
of, we carried out extensive surveys and conducted indepth
interviews of academic users and non-users of
computers and the Internet in an attempt to understand
the dynamics of adoption and use of a new technology
in a developing African country. The paper is organised
as follows: In Section 2, we review briefly the state of
the communication infrastructure in Kenya and Nigeria
followed by Section 3, with a framework for analysing
adoption. Section 4 presents a methodology and in Section
5 we present the findings while Section 6 concludes
the paper
Form our survey the following broad conclusions
emerge.
6.1. Demographic characteristics and usage
Age is an important distinguishing factor. Staff members
under the age of 40 years tend to use the computer,
e-mail and the Internet more than those above 40 years.
Although all the age groups use the facilities, younger
staff members have the propensity to be more frequent
users and more eager to learn. There is no significant
gender differentiation; usage performance of male and
female is relatively equal in terms of recency, frequency
and propensity to train and learn. These findings on age
are consistent with worldwide demographic distinction
in Internet use by which the young and educated tend
to use the Internet more. However, global trend in respect of gender usage is highly skewed in favour of
men but our sample is also distinct since we focused on
a community of scholars rather than the total population.
As the output table shows, age correlates positively with
usage while there is no association between gender and
usage except in the low correlate obtained for computer
and gender in Kenya. The strong cultural limitation on
girls’ education may partly explain this result.
6.2. Academic specialisation and usage
We examined the relationship between usage and the
broad academic specialisation of the humanities, social
sciences and natural sciences. We found no positive significance
between computer, e-mail and Internet usage
and the three specialisations, although in a slight departure
we found that Internet usage is significantly higher
in humanities then in social sciences. This should be
interpreted with caution, as it may be a result of systematic
bias in sample. Overall the pattern of usage is similar.
6.3. Academic position and usage
We found computer, e-mail and Internet usage to be
significantly positively correlated with academic position
(that is between lower degree holders and professors).
Degree holders tend to use the facilities more frequently,
are early adopters and have higher propensity to train
and learn. This may be due to several reasons. In Africa
higher academic attainment is synonymous with
advanced age, an affectation to ‘wisdom’, and superior
skills. Older male professors may not want to be seen
in the same class with younger staff members who may
well be their students. This is a cultural bias that constrains
learning. Secondly, the perquisites of office, particularly
the availability of secretaries to professors, could
be a hindrance to proficient use of the computer and the
Internet. There is also a tendency on the part of support
staff such as secretaries and programmers to ‘shield’
their bosses from mastering usage. This is due to the
fear of being rendered redundant. There is as we saw
earlier, positive correlation between academic position
and usage as well as recentness of adoption. Both factors
are related to age and not surprisingly, display the
same tendencies.
6.4. Inter-institutional disparities
We found very significant disparities in Internet, computer
and e-mail usage between federal and state universities.
Federal universities tend to have better facilities
and relatively better institutional access. The proportions
of users of computers, e-mail and Internet are far higher.
For instance only 6.2% are non-users of computers in
federal while surprisingly 75% are non-users in state uniuniversities.
The main reason was non-availability of facilities.
Institutional provision of computers is twice that of
state universities, the use of cybercafes by state users is
double that of federal staff members. The same was evident
in the case of Kenya; it is noteworthy that academics
at the private universities in Kenya have better access
institutionally to the Internet in comparison to their public
university counterparts.
E-mail and Internet are used in almost equal proportions
for ‘private correspondence’. In Nigeria, for
example, the reasons for non-use are not dissimilar and
‘lack of access’ rank high but a larger proportion of state
users (17%) compared with less than 1% in federal universities
claim ‘do not know how’. However, staff members
in both countries desire the same type of content.
In a ranked scale of 1–5, about 4.5 ranked academic articles
as preferred Internet content. This means that there
is a strong desire to employ the Internet for teaching and
research functions.
