Does technology affect human development? Examining some important moderating factors

Abstract

Nowadays ICTs are fully integrated with human life. This may be why there is an increasing interest in understanding the role that ICTs development plays in societal transformations, especially in response to the challenges posed by human development in Africa. However, not much is known about the channels through which ICTs are likely to affect human development, allowing us to investigate other transmission channels of the ICTs-Human development nexus. For this purpose, we used data collected in the 2000–2017 period for 27 African countries and employed the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) for empirical estimations. Our findings indicate that ICTs, captured by mobile phone and internet penetration rates, significantly improve human development. The study also found that trade openness, financial development, electricity consumption and democracy are the main channels through which ICTs positively improve human development. In light of these empirical findings, we suggest fresh insights that can convince policymakers to care so much about trade openness, financial development, electricity consumption and democracy if ICTs are to be used as economic tools for human development improvement.