A Disconnect in Stakeholders' Perceptions from Emerging Realities of Teledensity Growth in Africa's Least Developed Countries

Abstract

With the dynamic and meteoric rise in teledensity diffusion across Sub Saharan Africa, one would expect a departure in the perceptions of stakeholders as they relate to the Bernt and Weiss framework that identifies organizational, financial, technological, and geographical factors as the key impediments to teledensity growth. The findings of this research show that there is disconnect between current happenings and perception of stakeholders. Specifically, there is no change in stakeholders’ perceptions with respect to the framework mentioned above. However, historical and recent teledensity data from Africa’s Least Developed Countries illustrate that the model is inconsistent with the emerging realities in these countries, and that it may be getting obsolete. This leads us to conjecture that in this new dispensation, there may be some emerging factors, issues, constraints, and opportunities that may be of greater importance to understanding telecommunications capabilities in these countries and the world at large.