Digital inequality is increasing as an urban elite benefit from being online while most of the Basotho population does not accessIn 2018 a study commissioned by the Lesotho Communication Authority and the International Telecommunication Union found that mobile phone penetration in Lesotho was at 78.65%, while internet penetration stood at only 30%, with 83% of rural dwellers not using the internet at all. In urban areas, half of the Basotho population does not access the internet.
The dominance and contribution by mobile operators towards economic growth in the African countries in which they operate is substantial, thus making the telecom sector an important one that governments should nurture and grow. To do this effectively, regulatory oversight and compliance are critical.
GSMA’s 2019 Mobile Economy Sub-Saharan Africa analysis reported a GDP contribution for 2018 of 8.6% from the telecom sector and forecast this to grow to 9.1% by 2023. Mobile operators saw their revenues grow from $35bn in 2013 to $45bn in 2019 . In an age of rapidly advancing technologies, another question arises about whether governments are sufficiently armed with best-practice regulatory monitoring systems to enforce compliance within the telecom sector. In many instances governments rely on a self-declaratory system to oversee the sector. This means it has limited oversight and is at the mercy of mobile operators, hoping that they will provide accurate, fair and complete declarations regarding the revenues and profits generated.
The result is that digital inequality is increasing as an urban elite benefit from being online. At the same time, most of the population is left offline, or only able to be online intermittently and for short periods due to the relatively high cost of communications for them.
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