Page 3 - Caleb University Lagos Conference Paper MSWord #1

INTRODUCTION

Information communication technology (ICT) is any technology that enables communication

and the electronic capabilities to capture, process and transmit information from the source of the

information to a targeted receiver. Radio, television and print media, the old sources of the

information transmission and retrieval process, are important in almost all the developing countries of

Africa because their impact in the reception and transportation of news and information from one

source to the other cannot be discounted. However, in recent times, the new information

communication technology (ICT) such as mobile phones, the internet, electronic mail (e-mail), You-

tube, yahoo messenger, my space, satellite dynamics and computerized databases have become

increasingly available in most of the developing countries of Africa. The most rapid growth is in

mobile phone usage, whose growth has been so remarkable over the past two decades that in 1991,

the percentage of Africans using cell phones increased significantly from 2 percent to 31percent in

2004. Internet usage also grew rapidly from 0.03percent in 1994 to 6.7percent in 2004 (Thomas,

2006).

In Nigeria, for instance, the growth in mobile telephone ownership and usage has significantly

tripled in the past ten years. In 2001, very few Nigerians had a telephone even in their offices

(Onwumechili, 2010). A one-time Nigerian Minister of Information infamously inferred that

telephones were not meant for everyone, asserting that telephones could be owned and used only by

the wealthy. Today, mobile or cell-phones are owned and used by almost everyone, including the

trader and farmer in the village. This tremendous improvement came as a result of the liberalization

of Nigeria’s telephone service.

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