Digital Infrastructure: The role of public-private partnerships in mitigating the digital divide

Newlands is a beautiful, lush suburb of Cape Town. It sits at the foot of Table Mountain and boasts both the stunning Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens and Newlands Forest. The last South African census found that 83 percent of residents have internet access. A twenty-six minute drive from there sits Enkanini, an informal settlement in the township of Khayelitsha. Here, just 23 percent of residents reported having internet access. These examples are not isolated – the areas with the lowest reported internet access near Cape town were townships such as Nyanga, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, and Philippi, with less than 25 percent of residents having access to internet. In contrast, upmarket areas such as Rondebosch, Rosebank and Blouberg Rise were amongst the most connected, with over 80 percent of residents having internet access. This is the “digital divide.” The term refers to the gaps in information and communication technology (ICT), that threatens those who lack access.

The reality is that the digital divide, like other infrastructure gaps, is deeply refl ective of the systematic and embedded nature of inequality in South Africa. The digital divide is an infrastructure gap that deepens the inequality between townships and suburbs in several key ways: (i) human capital development, by limiting education and training opportunities; (ii) income and social mobility, by suppressing growth of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs); (iii) competition, research shows that in South Africa, the introduction of high speed high internet was associated with a signifi cant increase in net fi rm entry; and (iv) employment, as high speed internet access increases firm entry, productivity and exports, and has been show to increase employment, particularly in higher-skill occupations (Hjort and Poulsen 2019).

Read the full paper here: Digital Infrastructure