International Journal of Computing and ICT Research
Contents Volume 6, No 1, June 2012.
ISSN 1818-1139 (PRINT), ISSN 1996-1065 (ONLINE)
Africa Can Greatly Benefit from Virtualization Technology – Part I …………………………………………….6 Joseph M. Kizza – Editor-in-Chief
E-Money for Enhanced MDGs at the Bottom of the Pyramid: A Case Study of MPESA Agents in Kenya…………...... 11 Francis Wambalaba, Akosa Wambalaba, Philip Machoka and Patrick Afundi.
Determination of the End-To-End Delays of any Switched Local Area Network ………………………...... 24 M. O.Eyinagho
Application of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in M-Banking Adoption in Kenya…………………….31 Isaiah Lule, Tonny Kerage Omwansa, and Prof. Timothy Mwololo Waema
Development of a Real-time Customer Service System. ……………………………………………………….44 I. O. Awoyelu
Mobile Phones as Mobile Banks and Credit Outlets: The Experiences of Farming Households n Rural Southwest Nigeria. …………………………………………………………………………………………...... 52 Isaac B. Oluwatayo
Obstacles in Bridging the Digital Divide in Tanzania...... 60 Eliamani Sedoyeka
Near Field Communication (NFC) Technology: The Future Payment Service for Kenya ……………………..73 Lawrence M. Muriira
Teachers‘ Awareness of Nigeria‘s Educational Policy on ICT and the use of ICT in Oyo State Secondary Schools. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….84 O. F. Adebowale, and Dare, N. O
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International Journal of Computing and ICT Research Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Joseph M. Kizza, Department of Computer Science and Engineering College of Engineering and Computer Science The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, 615 McCallie Avenue, Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA [email protected]
Managing Editors:
Computer Science Prof. Anthony Rodrigues, University of Nairobi, Kenya
Information Technology Prof. Shushma Patel, London South Bank University, UK
Information Systems Prof. Ravi Nath, Creighton University, Nebraska, USA
Computer Engineering Prof. H.N Muyingi, Polytechnic of Namibia, Namibia
Software Engineering Prof. P.K. Mahanti, University of New Brunswick, Canada
Data Communication and Computer Networks Prof. Vir Phoha, Louisiana Tech, USA
ICT for Sustainable Development Prof. Kathy Lynch, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
Production Editor: Book Review Editor: Prof. Timothy Waema, School of Computing and Informatics, The University of Nairobi, Kenya
Journal Editorial Office: The International Journal of Computing and ICT Research Makerere University P.O. Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda. Tel: +256 414 540628 Fax: +256 414 540620 Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.ijcir.org
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International Journal of Computing
and ICT Research
Volume 6, Issue 1 June 2012
The International Journal of Computing and ICT Research College of Computing and Information Sciences Makerere University P.O. Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda. Tel: +256 414 540628 Fax: +256 414 540628 Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.ijcir.org International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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Book Reviews
Every issue of the journal will carry one or more book reviews. This is a call for reviewers of books. The book reviewed must be of interest to the readers of the journal. That is to say, the book must be within the areas the journal covers. The reviews must be no more than 500 words. Send your review electronically to the book review editor at: [email protected]
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International Journal of Computing and ICT Research
The IJCIR is an independent biannual publication of Makerere University. In addition to publishing original work from international scholars from across the globe, the Journal strives to publish African original work of the highest quality that embraces basic information communication technology (ICT) that will not only offer significant contributions to scientific research and development but also take into account local development contexts. The Journal publishes papers in computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, information systems, data communications and computer networks, ICT for sustainable development, and other related areas. Two issues are published per year: June and December. For more detailed topics please see: http://www.ijcir.org.
Submitted work should be original and unpublished current research in computing and ICT based on either theoretical or methodological aspects, as well as various applications in real world problems from science, technology, business or commerce.
Short and quality articles (not exceeding 20 single spaced type pages) including references are preferable. The selection of journal papers which involves a rigorous review process secures the most scholarly, critical, analytical, original, and informative papers. Papers are typically published in less than half a year from the time a final corrected version of the manuscript is received.
Authors should submit their manuscripts in Word or PDF to [email protected]. Manuscripts submitted will be admitted subject to adherence to the publication requirements in formatting and style. For more details on manuscript formatting and style please visit the journal website at: http://www.ijcir.org.
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Africa Can Greatly Benefit from Virtualization Technology – Part 1
PROF. JOSEPH M. KIZZA*, Editor-in-Chief Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, Tennessee, 37403, USA.
IJCIR Reference Format: Kizza, Joseph. M. Africa Can Greatly Benefit from Virtualization Technology – Part I. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp 6-10. http://www.ijcir.org/volume6-number1/article1.pdf
INTRODUCTION
In my last issue in Volume 5 Issue 1, I articulated the benefits of Clouding computing and in particular, I focused on how Africa might benefit if there is a drive to change the model of computing. In this follow-up piece, I was to go more into the virtualization technology and how Africa especially African Higher Education institutions chocked with the scarcity of resources and severely under funded, can benefit from virtualization technology. We will start by defining virtualization to give everyone a fair understanding of the technology before we start our discussion.
Virtualization is a process through which one can create something that is there in effect and performance but in reality not there – that is virtual. VMware.com, a software developer and a global leader in the virtualization market defines virtualization as a process in which software creates virtual machines including a virtual machine monitor called 'hypervisor,' that allocates hardware resources dynamically and transparently so that multiple operating systems, called ―guest operating systems‖ can run concurrently on a single physical computer without even knowing it (VMware.com ) For example using software virtualization, one can, using the existing underlying hardware and software resources like operating systems create and run several independent virtual operating systems on top of one physical operating system using the existing hardware resources to execute independent system tasks. Hardware virtualization also takes the same concept where several servers or client machines can be created based on one underlying hardware. The virtualization concept has been with us for sometime.
The potential power of virtualization in substantially increasing the performance of computing systems such as hardware and software through division of the underlying physical computing resources into many equally powerful virtual machines, has increased the popularity of the technology in the last twenty years and this love continues today. According to the IDC, an IT research firm, 2012 ranking of Chief Information Officers (CIO) priorities, virtualization and the server consolidation that it delivers were the top priority for chief information officers. Fourty percent of CIOs picked virtualization and server consolidation, more than any other area of IT [Mullins, Robert]. The rush to virtulization is driven by its resulting server consolidation creating savings to be invested in new IT initiatives such as cloud computing, mobility, data analytics, and use of social media for business purposes. This rapid growth is a reflection of the changing benefits of virtualization from being used only as a tactical tool to drive consolidation and higher system utilization to leveraging the mobility of virtual
* Author‘s Address: Joseph M. Kizza, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, Chattanooga, TN 37403, USA., [email protected]. "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IJCIR must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee." © International Journal of Computing and ICT Research 2008. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, ISSN 1818-1139 (Print), ISSN 1996-1065 (Online), Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 6-10, June 2012.
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machines to improve management and operations of IT environments. The virtualization concept now includes a host of new use cases that range from high availability and disaster recovery to hosted clients and true utility computing.
History of Virtualization
The history of virtualization is as amazing as the concept itself. Since computers of the 1960s could do only one task at a time and depended on human operators, increasing system performance was bottlenecked at two points: at the submission stage and at the computation stage. One way to improve the submission stage was to use a batch, where jobs were submitted into a queue and the system picked them from there, thus reducing human intervention and errors. Batching improved system performance some but did not go far enough. This problem, together with creating backward compatibility for customers of older computing systems the ability to bring old functionalities of the old to the new, and thus keep customer royalty, led IBM began work on the S/360 mainframe system. The S/360 mainframe was capable of running legacy functionalities of nearly all IBM‘s older systems, although it was still a batch machine. In the following years, there was a growing need, especially in the research community like at Bell Labs and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a machine that was capable of running tasks of more than one simultaneous user. In response to this growing need for speed up, IBM responded with the CP-40 main frame which later evolved into the CP-67 system, thought to be the first commercial Main Frame to support Virtualization. The CP-67 had a unique operating system combination consisting of CMS (Console Monitor System) piggybacked on a control program called rightly CP. The CP/CMS was a small single-user interactive operating system and CP, upon which CMS run, actually run on the Mainframe to ctreate the Virtual Machines which individually run their own copies of CMS. To each virtual machine running CMS, CP allocated parts of the underlying physical machine which formed the virtual machine (History of Virtualization, http://www.everythingvm.com/content/history-virtualization).
When microprocessors made their debut into computing in the 1980s and beyond, creating an era of personal computers which led into desktops and small servers leading to computer networks of varying sizes which seemed to lower the costs of computing and improved system performance, virtualization technology took a back seat and was almost forgotten. The situation did not change until the mid 1990s when the cost of computing sky-rocked again in spite of large scale distribution of computing by client-server models of computation. There was a growing need to revisit virtualization and rain in the rising costs of information technology.
In 1999, VMWare introduced a new kind of virtualization technology which instead of running on the mainframe, ran on the x86 system. Vmware virtualization technology was able to isolate the shared hardware infrastructure of the x86 architecture. Today, VMWare is the global leader in x86 virtualization which offers desktop, server and datacenter (http://www.infobarrel.com/History_of_Virtualization#ixzz1l9armMAL).
Types of Computing System Virtualization Virtualization technology falls into two types: platform and application.
Platform Virtualization
In platform virtualation, the virtualization software package emulates the whole physical computer functionalities into multiple virtual machines each with with either the same operating system image like the physical machine or different operating systems. Platform virtualization itself is subdivided into two types: workstation and server.
Workstation Virtualization
This is also referred to as desktop virtualization. It is a technology which allows full exploitation of the true power and flexibility of a desktop or laptop computer by making it capable of running multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single processor. With the ability to emulate multiple fully operational ―machines‖ International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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on one computer, one can get the following benefits from that one computer (Workstation Virtualization Featuring VMware Workstation 7.0 / 7.1 http://mv4t.com/Virtualization_VMware-Workstation.php):
Ability to run a variety of applications specific to individual operating systems not currently running on the physical machine.
Ability to host legacy applications and overcome platform migration issues Demonstrate multi-tier configurations on a single processor like running SQL-Server Database Server running in one virtual machine, a Web-Server running on another virtual machine and several other server based applications all running on a single host desktop. Configure and test new software or patches in an isolated environment, thus reducing deployment risks and costs. Automate tasks for software development and testing.
Server Virtualization
Server virtualization is the process of having a physical server run a server-based virtualization software called a hypervisor to divide the physical server into multiple isolated virtual environments. Each virtual environment is a virtual machine, homed on a virtual server and has all the functionalities of the physical server it is homed on and runs a virtual operating system called a guest operating system. The virtual machines created are known by different names including virtual private servers, guest machines, instances, containers or emulations.
According to the article (http://www.infobarrel.com/History_of_Virtualization#ixzz1l9armMAL) there are three popular approaches to server virtualization: the virtual machine model, the paravirtual machine model, and virtualization at the operating system (OS) layer.
The virtual machine model is based on a host/guest paradigm. Each guest runs on a virtual imitation of the hardware layer. This approach allows each guest operating system on each virtual machine to run without modifications. It also allows the different virtual machines to run different guest operating systems. The guest operating systems has no knowledge of the host's operating system because they assume that they are running on the physical hardware. Each guest operating system access to the physical resourses of the host machine is managed by the hypervisor.
The paravirtual machine (PVM) model is also based on the host/guest paradigm. The two models are very much alike. The only difference though between the virtual machine and the paravirtual machine models lies in the fact that this time, the hypervisor can modify the guest operating system‘s code through a process called porting. With porting, the hypervisor can prioritize and utilize privileged systems calls between the guest operating system and the physical processor.
Unlike the virtual machine and paravirtual machine models, the OS level virtualization model is not based on the host/guest paradigm. In the OS level model, the host runs a single OS kernel as its core and exports operating system functionality to each of the guests. Guests must use the same operating system as the host, although different distributions of the same system are allowed. This distributed architecture eliminates system calls between layers, which reduces CPU usage overhead. It also requires that each partition remain strictly isolated from its neighbors so that a failure or security breach in one partition isn't able to affect any of the other partitions. In this model, common binaries and libraries on the same physical machine can be shared, allowing an OS level virtual server to host thousands of guests at the same time. Virtuozzo and Solaris Zones both use OS-level virtualization.
Benefits of Virtualization for African Institutions and Businesses
As we have seen above, virtualization is not a new technology, since the sixties we have been using virtualization to speed up computation and storage. The modern and more improved virtualization technology makes these two aspects more appealing and adds more benefits into the mix. Among these are:
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Minimization of hardware costs Save on energy Faster server provisioning Provision of better and faster disaster recovery Better Load Balancing Creating a better and faster software testing envirnment Increase uptime Increase uptime Isolate applications Extend the life of older applications
Minimizing Hardware Costs
One thing that causes more pain in African system management is first acquisition and upgrading of both hardware and software and maintaning these resources in good working conditions. When it comes to maintsining network equipment, this further creates a constact problem. For large institutions and busnesses, the costs of keeping all servers and other hardware in top working conditions is always higher that in other parts of the world. Virtualization eases this burden of purchasing more hardware each time a new system is put in place. Why because one server can be used in place of several servers.
Save on energy
Along with running fewer servers as a result of migrating physical servers over to virtual machines and consolidating them onto far fewer physical servers and other associated equipment, you reduce on the energy bill considerably depending on the size of your institution or company.
Faster server provisioning
It is always difficult to have a good estimate of how many servers may be needed especially during those times when there is unseasonal demand. Virtualization gives an answer to being always ready to meet the challenges of unseasonal demands by using its elastic capacity to provide system provisioning and deployment at a moment's notice.
Provision of better and faster disaster recovery
Imagine a disaster happening to the network or a data center. In the current condotions, the recovery process may take a long time to build the system and data center to the level prior to the disaster. Virtualization provides the least expensive and shortest way to achieve near full recovery by providing the institution or organization three important components that include hardware abstraction capability because servers and other hardware and software no longer depend on one particular hardware vendor or server model. Also since there was few servers before the disaster, there are fewer servers and other equipment to replace and finally most enterprise server virtualization platforms have software that can help automate the failover when a disaster does strike (David Maeshall, 2012). Better Load Balancing
Each virtualization server runs a load balancer- a software that effectively spreads out network traffic among multiple systems, thus avoiding horrible network jams. Network traffic is easily dispersed to multiple systems, virtual or physical by the load balancer.
Creating a better and faster software testing envirnment
Virtualization can bring a better software development and testing by creating indipendent non-interructing testing envvirionments. This possible isolation development and testing environment leaves normal work undisturbed by system corruption and collapsed because of software debugging.
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Reduce the data center footprint
In addition to saving more on energy with a smaller energy fbills, server consolidation with virtualization will also reduce the overall footprint of the entire data center because data is now on fewer servers, requiring less networking gear hence a smaller number of racks needed (David Maeshall, 2012).
Increase uptime Most server virtualization platforms now offer a number of advanced features such as live migration, storage migration, fault tolerance, high availability, and distributed resource scheduling. These technologies give the virtual machines the ability to quickly recover from unplanned outages. In addition, modern virtualization software has the ability to quickly and easily move a virtual machine from one server to another. There will be more and better capabilities with newer virtualization software (David Maeshall, 2012).
Isolate applications
Virtualization technology has removed the old requirement of a "one app/one server‖. This requirement used to cause physical server sprawl, and increased costs, and underutilized servers. This also cuts down on server waste by more fully utilizing the physical server resources and by provisioning virtual machines with the exact amount of CPU, memory, and storage resources that it needs (David Maeshall, 2012).
Extend the life of older applications Let's be honest -- you probably have old legacy applications still running in your environment. These applications probably fit into one or more of these categories: It doesn't run on a modern operating system, it may not run on newer hardware, your IT team is afraid to touch it, and chances are good that the person or company who created it is no longer around to update it. By virtualizing and encapsulating a legacy application and its environment, we can extend its life, maintain uptime, and finally get rid of that old and costly machines such an application used to run on, thus extending its like(David Maeshall, 2012).
REFERENCES
DAVID MAESHALL. Top 10 Benefits of Server virtualization: Virtualize your data center and gain these efficiencies and capabilities that aren't possible within a physical-only world. Inforwald. http://www.infoworld.com/d/virtualization/top-10-benefits-server-virtualization-177828?page=0,2. History of Virtualization. http://www.everythingvm.com/content/history-virtualization. http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/virtualization/232400150. http://www.infobarrel.com/History_of_Virtualization#ixzz1l9armMAL). MULLINS, ROBERT. ―Virtualization Tops CIO Priorities In 2012: IDC Savings from server consolidation will go to new IT innovations, IDC says‖, InformationWeek, January 11, 2012. VMware.com Workstation Virtualization Featuring VMware Workstation 7.0 / 7.1. http://mv4t.com/Virtualization_VMware- Workstation.php
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E-Money for Enhancing MDGs at Bottom of the Pyramid: A Case Study of Mpesa Agents in Kenya
PROF. FRANCIS WAMBALABA† Professor of Economics, Chandaria School of Business (CSB) [email protected]
AKOSA WAMBALABA Lecturer, School of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) [email protected]
PHILIP MACHOKA, Lecturer, School of Science and Technology (SST) [email protected]
PATRICK AFUNDI Lecturer, School of Science and Technology (SST) [email protected] United States International University, P.O. Box 14634 – 00800, Nairobi, Kenya
Abstract
The general objective of this study was to investigate the implications of mobile money (M-Money) in society and document the experiences of respective service agents. Specifically, this study sought to determine performance and how business partnerships and agent networks had responded to the developments in the m- money economy. Implicit in the study were challenges that the agents face in doing their business, the potential for m-transaction‘s enhancement of MDGs at the bottom of the pyramid and challenges regulators must confound to create a financial inclusive environment. The research used a case study approach. To do this, the study used a triangulation of exploratory and descriptive research design approaches. The target population consisted of MPESA Agents across the country. The sampling technique used was a combination of cluster and convenient sampling.
With respect to business partnership and agent networking performance, the study found that KCB commanded a disproportionately large control on provision of the float, followed by Cooperative Bank. In most cases the float was between Ksh 5,000 and Ksh 100,000, and the level of the float increased with the age of the business and it was clear that there was a close correlation between the age of the business and the amount of the float. It was also found that most agents served less than 100 customers per day and there was also a correlation between the age of the business and the number of customers. Other pertinent findings showed that the majority of transactions per customer were below Ksh 20,000 the average age of the customer was between 26 and 40 years of age and most of them were men, even though the majority indicated they served equal numbers of men and women.
With respect to business challenges and welfare implications, the study found that fraud was the major challenge followed by a slow system due to network congestion. A challenge cited for not participating in new MKESHO product included technical problems, lack of MKESHO facilities nearby, customer confusion between MKESHO and MPESA, and lack on information. On the issue of welfare implications, respondents felt that the business had improved their welfare through job creation, improved incomes and general livability.
† Author‘s Address: Prof. Francis Wambalaba, Akosa Wambalaba, Philip Machoka and Patrick Afundi. United States International University, P. O. Box 14634-0080, Nairobi, Kenya. "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IJCIR must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee." © International Journal of Computing and ICT Research 2012. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, ISSN 1818-1139 (Print), ISSN 1996-1065 (Online), Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 11-23, June 2012.
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This study made the following conclusions. First, being a pioneer in this business is no guarantee for leadership. The critical success ingredients include a widespread infrastructure network and appealing to the low income base that constitutes a larger proportion of new entrants into the market. Secondly, the MPESA business fits in with a network model and would therefore grow in value and customer base with length of operation (age). Thirdly, the amount and availability of the float is not a major impediment in this business. The main threat for this business has to do with problems of fraud, the slow system arising from network congestion and security exposure for agents handling money as well as confusion between the new and old product as with the case of customers confusing between MKESHO and MPESA. Finally, the MPESA concept enhances accessibility to financial markets among the poor and thus benefits those at the bottom of the pyramid.
Key Words: Agent Networks, Bottom of the Pyramid, Business Partnerships, E-Money, MPESA Agents Welfare Implications ______
IJCIR Reference Format: Prof. Francis Wambalaba, Akosa Wambalaba, Philip Machoka and Patrick Afundi. E-Money for Enhanced MDGs at the Bottom of the: A Case Study of MPESA Agents in Kenya. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6 Issue 1, pp 11-23. http://www.ijcir.org/volume6-number1/article2.pdf ______
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Problem Money is a medium of exchange with typical functions constituting transactions and wealth storage. In modern economies, access to money is critical for economic development and banks tend to be the medium for access to money.
Source: Susie Lernie, Safaricom
However, for years, Kenyan banks did not go looking for customers; people instead went searching for the banks. Banks did not locate branches in low income neighborhoods, and were rare in middle income areas. They preferred to focus their investments and growth on corporate and wealthy clients and locate themselves within the city centre.
Some banks had exclusive services for those earning over Kshs 100,000 ($1,350) per month. Rural regions were ignored. The few with bank accounts traveled miles away to access banks. Conditions for opening an account were stringent, requiring a steady flow of monthly deposits. At least three customers had to write recommendation letters to open an account.
The financial relationship between banks and most customers was of suspicion and limited to deposits and withdrawals. This situation was even worse for those who wanted to borrow money from banks. The interest rates between the 1990‘s to early 2000, averaged at 40%. However, money transfer companies like MoneyGram and Western Union penetrated some of these markets, but remained expensive and often elitist. They focused on the high end customer and completely ignored the poor. The Post Office also offered money- order transfers, but these services operated only during the five working days. Bus companies too started to ferry money in ―letter parcels‖ from urban migrants to rural areas with risks of money hidden in the package disappearing.
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Therefore, the entry of Safaricom with its widely distributed agent network was a revolution in the financial sector for most Kenyans, especially those at the bottom of the pyramid. In 2007, Safaricom de-crowned the myth of banking for the privileged by developing M-PESA, a mobile based money system that allowed the majority of Kenyans quick, easy and convenient access to money transactions, at an affordable price. M-PESA allowed Kenyans to borrow, save and pay for services and products easily, (Tavneet Suri Banking on Money). It then embarked on making the mobile phone a financial tool for easy access and money transfer. It thus introduced formal financial inclusion that was less risky and widely accessible. This introduced 90% of Kenyans who did not have bank accounts to the possibility of being part of the formal financial world of legal short term money savings and money transfers. Money that was previously transferred clandestinely could now be sent legally, in real time and anywhere within the country. Within three years, the M-PESA customer base had grown from 0 to 11.89million which represented a quarter of Kenya‘s population (Sunday Nation, 15 August 2010 30). By July 2010, M-PESA had transferred Kshs525.85 billion since its inception in 2007 and in July 2010 alone, Kshs 33 billion was transferred compared to Kshs. 20 billion for the whole of 2009. According to Safaricom records by April 2011, Safaricom had successfully registered 14,008,319 Kenyans to mobile technology and made communication possible and had a network of 27,988 agents countrywide.
1.2 Statement of Problem In 2008, on realizing that their core business was threatened, banks became antagonistic towards Safaricom, citing M-PESA product as an illegal bank service. They petitioned regulators – Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) and Ministry of Finance to declare the M-PESA service illegal. The CCK did not agree. Similarly, there was political goodwill from the finance minister who was advised by the Central Bank (CBK) that the concept was safe from being used as a money laundering conduit. Ironically, boxed in by the M-PESA developments, banks began playing catch up. Together with mobile telephone companies, they began lobbying a very receptive regulator to legislate laws that would facilitate partnerships across both sectors, leveraging on their competitive advantages. In response, legislation was passed that made it possible for partnerships between the banking and mobile sector. For example, Safaricom and Equity bank developed a collaborative revolutionary E-banking tool known as M-KESHO (an M-PESA Equity account). It was launched in May 2010 and within a month, 400,000 M-KESHO accounts had been opened, literally a miracle for a country where accounts had been stagnant at 5% for decades, (Sunday Express, July 25th 22). Other examples included Family Bank which introduced a mobile banking service called ―Pesa Pap‖ using Safaricom‘s M-PESA platform. Similarly, Kenya Commercial Bank re-launched ‖KCB Connect‖ in 2009 in partnership with Safaricom and by June 2010, it had a customer base of over 230,000.
Given such rapid developments within three years, it is critical that scholars document and examine their implications to society and suggest pertinent policy and operational adjustments that would ensure a sustained conducive climate for the poor to participate extensively in the money economy and enhance prospects towards the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Secondly, there was need to engage businesses to explore agent network strategies for accessing low income groups and challenge policy makers to adapt by being pro-active and anticipating these dynamic socio-economic changes.
1.3 General Objective of the Study Therefore the general objective of this study was to investigate the implications of mobile money (M-Money) in society with respect to service agent experiences and perceptions.
1.4 Specific Research Objectives This study attempted to address partnership issues with respect to the MPESA Agents. Specifically, this study sought to: 1.4.1 Determine how business partnerships and agent networks had responded to the developments in the m-money economy and the nature of the business environment 1.4.2 Assess the challenges that the agents faced in doing their business as well as the welfare implications of this business
1.5 Scope of the Study and Research Design This study targeted M-PESA service agents in a sample of urban areas in Kenya, including Kakamega, Kisumu, Machakos, Maragua, Meru, Mombasa, Murang‘a, Nakuru, Thika and Voi. The research design was a case study that was descriptive in nature using primarily interviews and observations. The study took place from December 2010 through May 2011. A total of 129 agents participated in the study.
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1.6 Significance of the Study The research will benefit; 1) Service Providers, i.e., findings will provide feedback to mobile phone companies and financial institutions about market opportunities for accessing those at the bottom of the pyramid. It will also inform them on system challenges facing agents in growing their businesses, including specialized areas of training; 2) Policy Makers, Findings will provide data on the major beneficiaries of agents as SME‘s and whether this income activity has made a significant contribution towards achieving some millennium development goals and if mechanisms for public funding are needed to support M-PESA SME‘s. These findings will also present a profile of the attitude of low income earners towards money and their needs for creation of an effective financially inclusive environment as well as meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); 3) Low Income Groups, i.e., findings provide insight to interventions needed to make the businesses expand into other financial service areas and also help service providers design products that meet the needs of those at the bottom of the pyramid and for policy makers to create a conducive environment for participation of the poor in a money economy; and 4) Researchers i.e., a platform for multidisciplinary approach to researching on the role of money in society, especially from economic, sociological and political perspectives. It will hence enhance efforts to design methodologies towards financial inclusion of the poor and mainstream m-money as a plausible strategy towards MDGs.
2.0 LITERATURE BACKGROUND
2.1 Introduction This section will briefly review the literature related to m-money in general, and specifically with respect to the developments of the M-PESA money transfer concept in Kenya.The section is organized according to the specific research objectives. These include the review of literature on business partnerships and agent networks as well as welfare implications to participants.
2.2 Business Partnerships and Agent Networks In January 2010 a new law governing partnerships between mobile telephone companies and banks was passed (Standard, Media 2010). Safaricom and Equity Bank soon developed M-KESHO (an M-PESA Equity account). ―Kesho‖ is a Kiswahili word that means ―tomorrow‖ which was used in the context of a futuristic connotation which changed the financial landscape in Kenya by expanding the range of financial options available to the poor. According to Mr. James Mwangi, CEO Equity Bank ―at the village level, the shopkeeper will allow his customers to deposit and withdraw money as they buy sugar and milk‖ (Standard Media, 2010). M-Kesho, described as the world‘s first bank account ―on your phone‖, allowed virtual interbank transfers. Safaricom had 11.89 million M-PESA customers who used their accounts as short term saving accounts. Safaricom also had the most extensive country wide network of 19,500 agents. And by March 2010, it had established 30 retail outlets throughout the country that made it easy to move money in real time and offer customer care.
Source: Safaricom Presentation
Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), the oldest indigenous bank in Kenya also partnered with M-PESA. It has the largest bank network in East Africa and branches in Southern Sudan. The partnership allowed KCB customers to withdraw or deposit money from their KCB accounts through M-PESA onto their mobile phones and vice versa (Sunday Express, July 25th 2010. 21).
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By 2010, Safaricom had formed partnerships with 300 firms in the public and private sector. ―The growth of the M-PESA service had gone beyond its primary role of mobile money transfer to include value added services such as the ―Pay Bill‖ and ―Bulk Payment‖ functionalities‖ (Sunday Express, July 25th 2010. 21). To pay electricity bills, previously one would spend hours on queues to pay in one of a few offices serving a population of 2 million in Nairobi. Now all one needed to do was to M-PESA (forward by phone text) ones payment and receive a text message confirming payment. Self-employed individuals could now pay their monthly social health insurance through the National Health Insurance Fund contributions using M-PESA. Banks such as Consolidated Bank now offered E-cell banking allowing customers to access mini-statements, purchase airtime, transfer funds within bank accounts, receive balances and stop check payments. Family Bank offered a mobile banking service called Pesa Pap using Safaricom‘s M-PESA platform. One unique service offered by Family Bank through Pesa Pap was salary advance and loan repayments (Business Daily Africa, June 4 2010 1).
2.3. Challenges and Welfare Implication to Participants At the time when banks refused to open up new money transfer opportunities, money transfer companies like Money Gram and Western Union were already efficient, reliable, but expensive. The Post Office also offered money order transfers, but operated only during the five working days, took very long to deliver, many times got lost within the system and one had to wait long hours to be served. Bus companies took the ―courier‘s services‖ model to ferry cash in the name of ―letter parcels‖ from urban migrant workers to rural areas. It was more efficient, took a day and one could pick the ―package‖ any day at the nearest bus office. Since envelopes were sealed, all contents arrived safe. However, this was still not as convenient, since bus offices were few, apart and risk of money hidden in the package disappearing. It was thus subject to theft without proof for recovery.
Source: Safaricom Presentation
Banks were inaccessible and did not locate branches in low income neighborhoods and preferred to focus on corporate and wealthy clients. One bank, for example, had special branches exclusively serving those with over Kshs 100,000 per month.
As pointed out earlier, by 2007, Safaricom had successfully introduced 10 million Kenyans to mobile technology and de-crowned the myth of banking being for the privileged. This introduced 90% of Kenyans who did not have bank accounts to the possibility of being part of the formal financial world of money transfers, legally. In January 2010 a new law governing partnerships between mobile telephone companies and banks was passed as part of the Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) programme supported by the UK‘s Department for International Development, the World Bank, and the Swedish government aimed at increasing access to financial services in marginalised areas of the country (Standard, 2010). The legislation made it possible for Safaricom to enter into its 3rd technological growth level, i.e., financial services expansion.
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.
Source: Safaricom Presentation.
By July 2010, the M-PESA customer base had grown to 11.89million, from 7.38 million, the same period a year before (Sunday Nation, 15 August 2010 30) which was approximately 25% of Kenya‘s population. It had transferred 525.85 billion since its inception in 2007. In July 2010, Kshs 33 billion was transferred compared to Kshs. 20 billion for the whole of 2009.
3.0 THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This research sought to determine how business partnerships and agent networks had responded to the developments in the m-money economy and the nature of the business environment. In addition, the research wanted to understand the challenges that the agents face in doing their business as well as the welfare implications of this business.
3.1 Research Design The research design used a case study approach. As a case study, most of the analysis is qualitative in nature. To do this, the study used a triangulation of exploratory research design as well as descriptive research design approaches. The reason for an exploratory approach was two pronged. First, given a small budget, it was felt that covering one urban area would not provide a good national perspective and hence need to spread thin but across the country. Secondly, it was felt that using the grant as a national pilot test would provide better insights for designing a more comprehensive national study for future research. The goal for the descriptive research design approach was to identify and document performance issues and patterns emerging from interactions with the service provider on one hand and customers on the other.
3.2 Population and Sampling Design The target population consisted of M-PESA Agents across the country. The sampling technique used was a combination of cluster and convenient sampling. Thus, the population was divided up into regional clusters based on the old provincial boundaries to ensure that each of the provinces was represented. Within each province, a convenient sampling was used to select target urban areas for data collection. These included Kakamega, Kisumu, Machakos, Maragua, Meru, Mombasa, Murang‘a, Nakuru, Thika and Voi. Within each urban area, a convenient sampling was used to identify participating agents in terms of their willingness to participate. Therefore, the sample size constituted 129 MPESA agents in the ten urban areas covering each of the old provinces (see Table 4.1 on Respondents below for the sampling distribution).
3.3 Data Collection and Analysis The research collected information through interviews of M-PESA service agents to develop a profile of business partnership and agent networking experiences as well as welfare implications. The study also used extensive desk top literature review with emphasis on recent developments in the industry and respective implications.
With respect to business partnerships and agent networking, the focus was on both the supply side (suppliers of the float and the amounts) and demand side (type of customer and the value of transactions). In terms of International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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challenges, the study investigated issues of lack of the float, challenges of adding new product lines, and types of risks in this business. With respect to welfare implications, the study simply wanted to determine the effect of these types of business on both the agent and the communities they serve.
It was anticipated that findings from the surveys and interviews would help generate a general profile of transformative strategies and policies. Hence, part of the analysis was descriptive including tabular presentations of percentages of suppliers of floats, users and levels of services provided as well as types of challenges and impacts of the service. In addition, a small amount of inferential analysis was done using both correlation and cross tabulation analysis, specifically on the relationship between the age of the business and both the value of the float and the number of customers served.
4.0 RESEARCH FINDINGS
4.1 Introduction This research sought to determine how business partnerships and agent networks had responded to the developments in the m-money economy and the nature of the business environment. In addition, the research wanted to understand the challenges that the agents faced in doing their business as well as the welfare implications of these businesses. With respect to business partnerships and agent networking, the focus was on both the supply and demand sides. On the supply side, the study wanted to know who was providing the agents with the float and what the value of the float was. On the demand side, the study wanted to know the agents‘ typical number of customers, the typical value of customer transactions and the type of customers they were serving. In terms of challenges, the study investigated lack of the float, challenges of adding new product lines, and types of risks. With respect to welfare implications, the study simply wanted to determine the effect of these types of business on both the agent and the communities they serve.
4.2 Demographic Distribution These findings are based on 129 returns from participating Safaricom M-PESA agents in ten urban areas including Kakamega, Kisumu, Machakos, Maragua, Meru, Mombasa, Murang‘a, Nakuru, Thika and Voi. The majority of the respondents were in Kisumu (27.9%), Meru (16.3%), Nakuru (11.6%) and Mombasa (10.9%).
The research was also interested in determining the length the agent had been in business. The majority (37.1%) had been in business for less than one year, while 25.8% had been in business for one to two years and the same percent for two to three years. Given that this was a brand new segment of the industry, it is difficult to determine whether the market pyramid with a triangular large base with narrow tip is a reflection of growing market and drop out respectively or a combination.
When asked which types of mobile money services the agents provided, the majority (37.8%) provided M- PESA service. Most of them provided deposit and withdrawal services, with very few providing ―paybills‖, ―M- KESHO‖ or sim replacement. Ironically, some (5.5%) indicated they provided Zap service, 3.9 provided Yu- Cash service and 1.6% provided Orange service all of which are MPESA rivals.
4.3 Agent Networking Partnerships and Business Environment This research sought to determine how business partnerships and agent networks had responded to the developments in the m-money economy and the nature of the business environment. Specifically, on the supply side, the study wanted to know who was providing the agents with the float and, what the value of the float was. On the demand side, the study wanted to know the agents‘ typical number of customers served the typical value of customer transactions and the type of customers they were serving.
Hence, one of the agent partnerships the research sought to identify was who was providing most of the float for agents. While Commercial Bank of Africa was the first to venture into this business, other banks seem to have moved fast to establish themselves as key providers of float. From data compiled, KCB commanded a huge lead with 42.9% followed by Cooperative Bank at 16.5% while 13.2% of the respondent agents supporting the float internally, especially those with multiple outlets making internal transfers. Equity Bank controlled 9.9%, Commercial Bank of Africa settled for 5.5% with Barclays and Consolidated Bank taking 4.4% each.
The study also wanted to estimate the daily float value of most of the agents. The majority held a float of 50,001 to 100,000 at 36.5%, closely followed by the daily float of 5,001 to 50,000 as shown in table 4.1 below. There was however a fairly good number of agents whose floats were over 100,000 including about 8.7 with a float of 100,001 to 150,000 while 9.6% had a float of 150,001 to 200,000 and another 9.6 with a float of over 200,000. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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Table 4.1: What is the daily value of your float? Amount of Float Frequency Percent 0 – 4,999 1 0.9% 5,000 – 50,000 40 34.8% 50,001 – 100,000 42 36.5% 100,001 – 150000 10 8.7% 150,001 – 200,000 11 9.6% Above 200,000 11 9.6% Total 115 100% Missing Data 14
Further analysis was done to assess the relationship between the value of the float and the age of the business. A correlation analysis established the existence of such a relationship as shown in table 4.2 below.
Table 4.2: Correlation Analysis
From table 4.2, there is a strong correlation at 1% significance level (r=0.249, p<0.01) between how long a business has been in operation and the value of the daily float. This was further enhanced by the cross tabulation analysis as shown in table A1 in the appendix. This shows that the more the years of operation, the higher the chances were for a bigger float. This finding was substantiated by a follow up question which inquired to know from the agents if their level of the float increased with time. About 70% of the respondents answered in affirmative.
Further investigation revealed that most of the agents were not engaging in very large volume operations. The study showed that almost a half of the agents (41.7%) served between 51 and 100 customers per day, followed by another 31,7% serving 1 to 50 customers per day with a combined total of 73.4% of the agents serving 1-100 customers per day. There were 16.7% serving 101-150 customers per day and only 8.3% served more than 200 customers per day. And when analyzed for correlation it was found that there was a strong correlation not only between the age of the business and the value of transactions, but also the age of business and the number of customers. Thus, as shown in table 4.3 below, there is a significant correlation between the duration that the business had been operational and the value of the daily float (r=0.249, p<0.01). The table also showed a significant correlation between the duration that the business has been operational and the number of customers (r=0.308, p<0.01). This is typical characteristic of a networking business.
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Table 4.3: Correlation Analysis
It was also clear that almost all of the transactions were less than Kshs10,000 worth at 73 percent and about 90% had transactions less than Kshs20,000. However, there were about 1% of agents who had carried transactions above 101,000 worth. This could be attributed to the fact that the increase of the maximum amount for transactions from 30,000 was not common knowledge to most of the customers, and hence very few large sum customers bothered to patronize the service or that reflected regions with small scale business activities, type of income generation activities and perhaps due to lower standards of living, hence the lower value transactions.
The study wanted to establish the demographic composition of customers. It was found that the majority (27%) were in the 36-40 age bracket while 26% were between ages 31-35 with a combined total of 70% in the 26-40 age bracket. The age brackets also pointed out that the majority (49.6%) of their customers were balanced between men and women. However, 39.5% indicated that the majority of their customers were men, while in others (9.3%) indicated that the majority of their customers were women. The region where women seemed to carry a fairly better participation is Maragua where the distribution was 50% men and 50% women. Kakamega, Voi and Nakuru also showed a good representation of women while Murang‘a, Mombasa and Machokos showed a higher representation of men.
4.4 Business Operational Challenges and Welfare Implications In addition to understanding the business networking environment, the research wanted to understand the challenges that the agents face in doing their business as well as the welfare implications of this business. In terms of challenges, the study investigated issues of lack of the float, challenges of adding new product lines, and types of risks in this business. With respect to welfare implications, the study simply wanted to determine the effect of these types of business on both the agent and the communities they serve.
The focus of the first question in this section was to determine the potential for lack of the float as an impediment to the transactions. Lack of the float did not seem to be a major impediment. For example, 56.1% of the respondents indicated that they had never turned a customer away due to lack of a float. About 31.8% indicated they may have turned away1-5 customers on an average day due to lack of a float, about 6.5% may have turned away between 6-10 customers in an average day while the remaining 5.6% indicated they may have turned away over 10 customers on an average day due to lack of a float.
For those incidences where they had to turn customers away due to lack of a float, the agents were further asked about any challenges they had experienced with the float. Most agents seemed to point to other general systemic problems that had nothing to do with the float. The research was therefore curious to learn about these general issues. Some of the major concerns included slow system or network congestion (26.8%), fraud (19.8%), and lack of float (16.4%). Other explanations are captured in Table A2 in the appendix.
At the time of the survey, a new M-Kesho product had recently been introduced into the market. The research therefore wanted to know how many of the agents were participating or offering this product. An overwhelming majority (80.7%) were not participating at all with only 5% indicating they were participating. About 5.9% indicated they would not participate due to problems with the money system, 3.4% indicated they could not
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participate since they were not registered, and about 5% planned to participate. When asked why they did not participate, several reasons were given including technical problems, lack of MKesho facilities nearby, customer confusion between MKESHO and MPESA, etc.
In terms of risks that agents face in their business, the majority (37.6%) pointed out that fraudsters were the major risk for an agent. Most of it was attributed to fake currencies. Other risks included system delays (17.6%) and security at 11.8%. Further concerns included customer resistance to produce ID cards (5.9%), lost money (4.7%), unreachable customer care (4.7%), float reduction (3.5%) and several others.
The research was also interested in how the business had impacted the personal lives of the agents and/or their employees. The data revealed that most of the respondents felt that the impact has been positive, including 32% who indicated improvement in personal lives, 17% indicating exposure to business environment and 15% indicating general improvement in life. On the other extreme were 6% who felt this business exposed them to fraud.
Finally, respondents were asked about their perception of the impact of M-PESA and similar other money transfer technologies on the lives of people in general. Most of the respondents (47.9%) felt that M-PESA and similar other technologies made people‘s lives easier, while another 31.5% felt it improved financial services. A further 13.7% felt it created jobs and 6.8% felt the technology benefited the previously unbanked. Table A6 in the appendix provides additional comments.
5.0 DISCUSSIONS, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS In this final section of the report, a summary of the study is presented to provide the context of the research and as a basis for the subsequent discussions. This is followed by discussions of the findings including implications. Based on these discussions, the report provides overall conclusions followed by recommendations for improvement and recommendations for further studies.
5.1 Summary of the Findings The goal for the research was to identify and document performance issues and patterns emerging from interactions with the service provider on one hand and customers on the other. The target population consisted of M-PESA Agents across the country. The sampling technique used was a combination of cluster and convenient sampling.
With respect to business partnership and agent networking performance, the study found that KCB commanded a disproportionately large control on provision of the float, followed by Cooperative Bank. The Commercial Bank of Africa which was the original player came in a distant fifth. Most of the float was between 5,000 and 100,000, in most cases, the level of the float was increasing with the age of the business and it was clear that there was a close correlation between the age of the business and the amount of the float. It was also found that most agents served less than 100 customers per day and there was also a correlation between the age of the business and the number of customers. Hence, implications of a typical network type of business where the longer one is in business, the higher the value of the float extended and the more the customers. Other pertinent findings showed that the largest amount of the transaction per customer was below Kshs20,000, (The minimum transaction = 30 Shillings; The Maximum = 125,000 shillings; The median transaction is 5,000 Shillings) the average age of the customer was between 26 and 40 years of age and most of them were men, even though the majority indicated they served equal numbers of men and women.
With respect to business challenges and welfare implications, the study found that while an overwhelming majority of respondents did not experience lack of a float to serve their customers, a fairly large number felt fraud was the major challenge followed by a slow system due to network congestion. Similarly, when asked to specify types of risks in the business, they also pointed out the problem of fraudsters, slow system and security concerns. Another challenge was related to participation in the new MKESHO product in which an overwhelming majority did not choose to participate. Several reasons cited for not participating included technical problems, lack of MKESHO facilities nearby, customer confusion between MKESHO and M-PESA etc. On the issue of welfare implications, respondents felt that the business had improved their welfare through business or job creation, improved incomes and enhanced livability. They also felt that their communities have benefited from the fact that the service had made their lives easier and improved financial access in the community.
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5.2 Discussions
5.2.1 Business Partnership and Agent Network Performance One of the key issues of interest in the study was to gauge the performance of business partnership and agent networking. Given the pioneer participation of the Commercial Bank of Africa, it was anticipated that this bank would continue to dominate the market as the main source of the float. However, the study found that KCB commanded the largest share of the market followed by Cooperative Bank with Commercial Bank of Africa coming in fifth. This might be attributed to the large branch network that KCB commands and the market appeal of Cooperative Bank among the low income groups respectively. The later is supported by the fact that equity which also has an appeal among the low income groups, came in fourth only behind internal floats by large agents with multiple outlets, given that the needed float was between Kshs5,000 and Kshs100,000, which is not a large deposit base for agents to manage.
Given that the M-PESA business fits in with a network model, it was expected that it would grow in value and customer base with length of operationage. Thus, over time, an agent would be able to accumulate enough float for internal support and also gain credibility among the banks providing the float and reliability in the eyes of the customers. The study confirmed this hypothesis. Thus in most cases, the level of the float increased with the age of the business and it was clear that there was a close correlation between the age of the business and the amount of the float. It was also found that most agents served less than 100 customers per day and there was also a correlation between the age of the business and the number of customers.
Finally, it was implied in the literature that this service will increase access to financial markets among the low income populations. Typically, women and the young tend to be predominant among these populations. The findings in this study however were mixed. Men tended to be the majority participants, the average age was between 31 and 50 and the value of the most frequent transaction ranged from 500 to 50,000. However, further analysis reveals that as much as the high income groups have been participating, and thus pushing the maximum allowable amount for transaction from 30,000 to 70,000 and later above, compared to the previous situation, more people from the low income brackets are now participating in the financial markets. This logic too holds for the young and for women as well whose proportionate level of participation is now higher than it was before.
5.2.2 Business Challenges and Welfare Implications With respect to business challenges and welfare implications, it was hypothesized that the key challenge for agents would be access to the float, especially given the resistance by banks to allow for the M-PESA concept in the first place. However, the study found that an overwhelming majority of respondents did not experience lack of a float to serve their customers. This could be explained by several factors. First, with the support of the concept by regulators (the Central Bank and the Information Communications Commission) along with the policy makers (Ministry of Information and Technology), the banks had no choice but to turn a seeming problem into an opportunity. Secondly, related to this, was the new competition among banks to capture part of the new found market niche. And finally, because of the low threshold for the float, most agents were able to support their own float, and hence expanding sources of the float.
Based on concerns by banks and findings from the previous study, challenges were also envisaged in terms of money laundering, security for agents handling cash and for customers in terms of technological complications, the results were mixed. The issue of money laundering did not feature at all. Instead, a fairly large number felt fraud was the major challenge. The issue of security did not come up at the initial inquiry about challenges either, but only featured on the follow up question about risks. As for technological challenges for customers, it turned out that this was instead a challenge facing Safaricom as reflected by the slow network system due to network congestion. However, the area where customers seemed to have faced challenges was operational, specifically with the adoption of the MKESHO service. The reasons cited for not participating included technical problems, but also lack of MKESHO facilities nearby and customer confusion between MKESHO and M-PESA etc.
Finally, the study hypothesized that the M-PESA concept would enhance accessibility to financial markets among the poor and thus benefits those at the bottom of the pyramid. The findings seem to have supported such a hypothesis since most respondents felt that the business had improved their welfare through job creation, improved incomes and enhanced livability. They also felt that their communities had benefited from the fact that the service had made their lives easier and improved financial services in the community.
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5.3 Conclusions From the discussions above, it appears that there were mixed findings from the study from the perspectives of Business Partnership and Agent Network Performance as well as Business Challenges and Welfare Implications
5.3.1 Business Partnership and Agent Network Performance Based on the takeover of the lead by KCB from CBA we can conclude that being a pioneer in this business is no guarantee for leadership. The critical ingredients for leadership include having a widespread infrastructure and appeal to the low income base who constitute a larger proportion of new entrants into the market. The later is supported by the performance of Cooperative Bank and Equity Bank. It is also the conclusion of this study that the M-PESA business fits in with a network model and would therefore grow in value and customer base with age. Thus, over time, an agent would be able to accumulate enough float for internal support and also gain credibility among the banks providing the float and reliability in the eyes of the customers. Finally, it is concluded that the MPESA concept attracted a fairly large number of low income groups, the young and women into the financial markets. However, as the minimums allowable by the law increased, those who were fairly well to do, typically older people and especially men joined the market and gradually increased in number.
5.3.2 Business Challenges and Welfare Implications With respect to business challenges and welfare implications, it can be concluded that the amount and availability of the float is not a major impediment in this business. This can be explained by the public policy support for the concept, the competition among banks to capture part of the new found market niche, and the low threshold for the float which makes it possible for most agents to support their own float. It is also the conclusion of this study that the main threat for this business has to do with problems of fraud, the slow system arising from network congestion and security exposure for agents handling money. Another related challenge is that of introducing new products in the market which may not have an adequate and widespread infrastructure as well as potential for confusion between the new and old product as was with the case of customer confusion between MKESHO and M-PESA. Finally, this study concludes that the M-PESA concept would enhance accessibility to financial markets among the poor and thus benefit those at the bottom of the pyramid. This is supported by the respondents indication that their business had improved their welfare through job creation, improved incomes and general livability and that their communities had benefited from the fact that the service had made their lives easier and improved financial services in the community.
5.4 Recommendations Based on the findings, discussions and conclusions of this study, two types of recommendations are proposed. First, recommendations for improvement are presented. Secondly, this is followed by recommendations for further study. With respect to business partnership and Agent Network Performance, this study makes the following recommendations. First, financial institutions that intend to support a network of Agents will need to develop an extensive support infrastructure and pitch their appeal to capture a market niche among those at the bottom of the pyramid, especially targeting female agents. Secondly, it is also recommended for prospective and existing agents persistence over time and cultivation of multiple outlets is a critical strategy for survival and growth of this business and possibly similar other network type of businesses. And finally, it is recommended that policy makers and regulators not only provide a strong institutional framework for M-PESA type of services as a strategy for enhancing access to financial markets among those at the bottom of the pyramid, but also to create opportunities for participation of those in high income brackets as a means of creating a critical mass for sustaining and growing the product and similar other.
With respect to business challenges and welfare implications, this study makes the following recommendations. First, there is need continually assess and strengthen public policy in favor of the M-PESA types of concepts including enhancement of competition among the financial institutions and allowing of flexibility for agents to support their own floats. Secondly, it is also recommended that a public-private partnership be formed among the agents, financing institutions and the public sector to develop mechanisms for the purpose of reducing potential for fraud, security exposure, and management of new products in the market. Thirdly, and related to the above, it is more importantly recommended that Safaricom and providers of similar services (products) enhance their technological systems and customer service practices to reduce frustration experienced by agents especially when trying to solve time sensitive services. Finally, this study recommends for a public policy approach to enhancement of these types of services as a means of integrating those at the bottom of the pyramid into the financial markets and a partial strategy towards the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
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As previously pointed out, due to limited funding, this research was designed as an exploratory pilot study to provide insights into the agent segment of the m-money transfer business. It was therefore limited in scope and its findings may not be widely generalized. It is therefore the recommendation of this study that given the insights so far gathered, a more comprehensive study is done to cover a larger set of the population, including the number of urban areas covered as well as rural shopping centers. The study should also be more segmented so as to distinguish practices by the sizes of the agents, types of location, characteristics of customers, nature of the sources of the float and the type of the service provider to include Airtel, Yu, Orange, and similar other providers.
REFERENCES ANADA, FANON (2008), Security Issues of M-banking, www.strathmore.edu/news/m-pesa-security.php ANYANZWA, JAMES (2008), Banks Panic Over M-Pesa, Sokotele, Financial Journal, Kenya, December 8. Business Daily Africa, at www.bussinessdailyafrica.com June 4 2010 1 Daily Nation, Kenya, December 10 and 11, 2008. Daily Nation Kenya, May 29, 2009 Daily Nation Kenya, August 5 and 14, 2010 DFID, ‗Economic empowerment through mobile‘, The Vodafone CR Dialogues, http://www.vodafone.com/etc/medialib/attachments/cr_downloads.Par.74986.File.tmp/VF_CR_Dialogue_3_Ec onomic_Empowerment.pdf website: http://www.financialdeepening.org/default.asp?id=694&ver=1 HUGHES, N and LONIE, SUSIE (2007), M-PESA: Mobile Money for the ―Unbanked‖ Turning Cellphones into 24-Hour Tellers in Kenya, Innovations, MIT Press Journals, Winter/Spring 2007, Vol. 2. No. 1-2, pp 63-81. KATZ, ROBERT (2007), M-Banking Accelerates, One M-Pesa at a Time, The Guardian, March 29, 2007. MIT, http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/mobile-money-0223.html February 23, 2010 MWAKUNGU, NOEL (2008), Money Transfer Service Vows Kenya, BBC News, Nairobi. PICKENS, MARK (2008), Can M-PESA Work for Microfinance Clients, Technology CGap, Wednesday, May 28, 2008, www.technology.cgap.org/index,phb PORTEOUS, DAVID (2006), ‗The enabling environment for mobile banking in Africa‘, Bankable Frontier Associates, Report commissioned by DFID, May 2006, http://www.bankablefrontier.com/assets/ee.mobil.banking.report.v3.1.pdf Pyramid Research (2008), M-Pesa Will Account for as Much as 49% of Safaricom's Non-Voice Service Revenue in 2008, Business Wire, Thursday, May 22, 2008. ROSENBERG, JIM (2008), Why has M-PESA Become so Popular in Kenya, CGAP, Tuesday, June 17, 2008. Standard Media, 2010, at wwwstandardmedia.co.ke 19/5/2010). Standard Media, 2010, http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/mag/InsidePage.php?id=2000014710&cid Sunday Nation Kenya, August 15 2010 Sunday Express Kenya, July 25 2010 The Standard July 27, 2010 WISHART, NEVILLE (2006), Micro-Payment Systems and Their Application to Mobile Networks: An Assessment of Mobile-Enabled Financial Services in the Philippines, InfoDev Report, http://www.infodev.org/en/Publication.43.html www.standardmedia.co.ke May 19 2010 www.businessdailyafrica.com Jun
Acknowledgement: ―This paper was presented at The First nternational conference on mobile money (AMMREC2012) whose theme was ‗Evidence of Financial Inclusion Through Mobile Technology‘, organised by the Africa Mobile Money Research (AMMREC) initiative of the School of Computing and Informatics (SCI), University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, April 2 -3, 2012‖.
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Determination of the End-To-End Delays of any Switched Local Area Network
M. O.EYINAGHO‡ Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria [email protected] ______
ABSTRACT In designing Switched Local Area Networks (Switched LANs), there is the inherent need of being able to compute all the end-to-end delays and hence, the average end-to-end delays of such LANs. The widely held notion in the literature is that, the ability to perform this computation is contingent on the formulation of an origin-destination traffic matrix of the network with respect to the hosts that are attached to it. We have shown in a previous paper that this notion does not seem to be correct. In this paper, we explain a methodology for enumerating all the end-to-end delays of any switched LAN and hence, of determining the average (or average of maximum) end-to-end delay of any LAN.
Keywords End-To-End Delay, Switched Local Area Networks
IJCIR Reference Format:
M. O.Eyinagho. Determination of the End-To-End Delays of any Switched Local Area Network. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1. pp 24-30. http://www.ijcir.org/volume6-numbe1/article 3.pdf
1. INTRODUCTION
In a previous paper (Eyinagho et al., 2011), it was shown that the widely held notion in the literature (for example, Kanem et al., 1999, Torab and Kanem, 1999) that to determine the average network delay of any switched Local Area Network (LAN), the origin-destination traffic matrix for all the hosts that are attached to the LAN has to be enumerated, does not seem to be correct. For example, in (Torab and Kanem, 1999), it was stated that, let Tij denote the information flow in packets per unit time between end nodes i and j of the network; we define the traffic matrix of the network to be the n×n matrix T= (Tij), where n is the number of end nodes. Moreover, Kanem et al. (1999) defined the average end-to-end delay of a switched Ethernet local area network, as the weighted combination of all end-to-end delay times; Elbaum and Sidi (1996) on the other hand, defined minimum average network delay as the average delay between all pairs of users in the network. A theory was, therefore, proposed in (Eyinagho et al., 2011) that, for any switched LAN, the hosts that are attached to the LAN cannot simply be enumerated in order to calculate all origin-destination end-to-end delays. The origin- destination end-to-end delays are usually needed for the purpose of designing upper bounded delay switched LANs, in efforts at solving the delay problem of this class of networks. How then should the end-to-end delays of any switched LAN be enumerated? This is the subject of this paper.
‡ Author‘s Address: M. O.Eyinagho. Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria. [email protected] "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IJCIR must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee." © International Journal of Computing and ICT Research 2012.. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, ISSN 1818-1139 (Print), ISSN 1996-1065 (Online), Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp.24-30, December 2012.
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2. DETERMINING THE END-TO-END DELAYS OF ANY SWITCHED LOCAL AREA NETWORK
Shown in Figure 1 is a switched local area network having 3 switches and 8 hosts. For host H1 to communicate with host H8, the data packets must go through switches S2 and S1. The same thing happens if either hosts H2 or H3 want to communicate with host H8. And hosts H1, H2, and H3 cannot simultaneously communicate with host H8; packets must wait for their turn to be sent to host H8. On the other hand, an host that is attached to switch S2 can be communicating with H8 simultaneously as another host that is attached to switch S2 which is communicating with an host that is attached to switch S3.This means that, no matter the number of hosts that are attached to switch S2 or the number of hosts that are attached to switch S1 for example, we only have one end- to-end delay (and hence, one maximum end-to-end delay) between the hosts that are attached to switch S2 and the hosts that are attached to switch S1. We can therefore, aggregate all the hosts that are attached to any of the switches in a switched LAN as shown in Figure 2. Then if all the hosts that are attached to any switch in a switched LAN simultaneously have packets that are destined for another (the same) host in the LAN, then we have a maximum switch delay situation (as the offered load to a network or network device is the aggregate sum of the data packet rates presented to the network or network device (Gerd, 1989, p.203)). This maximum switch delay situation can be seen as one of the reasons for the difficulty in uploading/downloading to and from the Internet at certain times of the day when many users that are attached to the LAN are trying to upload and download at the same time. We will use these ideas to develop a methodology for designing upper-bounded delay switched local area networks.
S1
H1 S2
H2 H8
H3 S3
H4
H7 H5
H6
Figure 1 A three (3) switch, eight (8) hosts switched LAN
Referring to Figure 1, assuming switches S1, S2, and S3, will be placed by the network designer (installer) as a result of the number of hosts and the locations of the hosts in a new LAN installation; we have been able to deduce that, if m = the number of switches in the LAN, p = the number of maximum end-to-end delays required for the design of an upper delay bounded LAN, m 1 then, p = (m x) (1) x 0 here, m =3, 3 1 then, p = (3 x) = (3-0)+(3-1)+(3-2) x 0 = 3+2+1 = 6 maximum end-to-end delays.
Eq.(1) is called the Monday Eyinagho‘s equation for calculating the number of end-to-end delays in any switched local area network.
We use Figure 2 (Figure 2 is Figure 1 redrawn, with all the hosts that are attached to a switch aggregated as a single host) to illustrate how to enumerate the end-to-end delays (and hence, the maximum end-to-end delays) International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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for any switched LAN. Our method (algorithm) for this enumeration which we call, ‗right-most, pre-order transversal‘ (method of growing the spanning tree of the switches in any switched LAN) has two steps: 1. Process the root switch, 2. Transverse the right-most sub-tree pre-order, until all the switches have been processed. Performing ‗left-most, pre-order transversal‘ (the opposite of ‗right-most, pre-order transversal‘) results in the same solution. The important thing is that, both methods cannot be mixed for the same LAN design.
S 1
H A
S 2
H B
S 3 H C
Figure 2 A Switched LAN, with the hosts that are attached to switches S1, S2, and S3 aggregated as HA, HB, and HC respectively.
Using the right-most, pre-order transversal, the required end-to-end delays are enumerated as follows (we take switch S1 as the root switch).
1. Switch S1 is placed as shown in Figure 3
S 1
Figure 3 Switch S1 is placed
2. Next, place switch S2 and connect S1 to S2. This is shown in Figure 4.
S 1
S 2
Figure 4 Switches S1 and S2 are placed and connected together
Now, for any host that is attached to switch S1 to communicate with any host that is attached to switch S2, data packets will experience delay in switch S1 and switch S2 and vice versa; this is 1 end-to-end delay.
(delay in S1 + delay in S2) = 1 end-to-end delay
3. Next, place switch S3 and connect to already placed switches as shown in Figure 5.
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S 1
S 2
S 3
Figure 5 Switches S1, S2, and S3 are placed and connected together
Again, for any host that is attached to switch S1 to communicate with any host that is attached to switch S3, the data packets will experience delays in switch S1, switch S2, and switch S3; this is 1 end-to-end delay.
(delay in S1 + delay in S2 + delay in S3) = 1 end-to-end delay
Also, for any host that is attached to switch S2 to communicate with any host that is attached to switch S3, the data packets will experience delays in switch S2 and switch S3; this is one end-to-end delay.
(delay in S2 + delay in S3) = 1 end-to-end delay
We now have 3 end-to-end delays already. It can also be seen that, for any host that is attached to switch S2 to communicate with another host that is attached to the same switch S2, data packets will experience delay only in switch S2; this is 1 end-to-end delay. This is illustrated in Figure 6.
H2 S2 H3
Figure 6 One (1) end-to-end delay through switch S2
We have a similar situation if any host that is attached to switch S3 wants to communicate with another host that is attached to the same switch S3. This is similarly the case with hosts that are attached to switch S1 (although Figure 1 shows that only one host (H8) is attached to switch 1 – which is just for illustration purpose). These three situations gives us 3 end-to-end delays, which added to the previous end-to-end delays gives us a total of 6 end-to-end delays, which is what is obtained from Eq. (1).
While the network shown in Figure 1 is quite simple, our method of enumerating the number of end-to-end delays and of calculating these end-to-end delays can be applied to any switched LAN, no matter how complex it is. We now illustrate the methodology with the hypothetical switched LAN that is shown in Figure 7 without going into detailed explanation.
Basically, associated with each of the switches S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S7, and S8 is an end-to-end delay as a result of a host that is attached to a switch wanting to communicate with another host that is attached to the same switch. This gives us 8 end-to-end delays. We now apply our right-most, pre-order transversal method to the network.
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S 1 H 1
S 8 S 6 S 2 H 2
H 17
H 16 H 14 H 13
H 3 H 15
S 7 S 5 S 4 S 3 H 4
H 12
H 5 H 11 H 6 H H 8 10 H 9 H 7
Figure7 An hypothetical Switched LAN having 8 switches (Si‘s) and 17 hosts (Hi‘s)
1. Switch S1 is placed.
2. Switch S2 is placed and connected to it; there is 1 end-to-end delay between switch S1 and switch S2. (delay in S1 + delay in S2) = 1 end-to-end delay
3. Switch S3 is now connected to switch S2; there is 1 end-to-end delay between switch S2 and switch S3. (delay in S2 + delay in S3) = 1 end-to-end delay
There is another end-to-end delay between switch S1 and switch S3. (delay in S1 + delay in S2 + delay in S3) = 1 end-to-end delay
4. .Switch S4 is connected to switch S2; there is an end-to-end delay between switches S2 and S4. (delay in S2 + delay in S4) = 1 end-to-end delay
There is an end-to-end delay between switches S3 and S4. (delay in S3 + delay in S2 + delay in S4) = 1 end-to-end delay
There is another end-to-end delay between switches S1 and S4. (delay in S1 + delay in S2 + delay in S4) = 1 end-to-end delay
By similarly adding switches S5, S6, S7 and S8 in that order to the network, we have the following end-to-end delays.
5. When switch S5 is connected to switch S2. (delay in S2 + delay in S5) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S4 + delay in S2 + delay in S5) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S3 + delay in S2 + delay in S5) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S1 + delay in S2 + delay in S5) = 1 end-to-end delay
6. When switch S6 is connected to switch S1. (delay in S1 + delay in S6) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S6) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S3 + delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S6) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S4 + delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S6) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S5 + delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S6) = 1 end-to-end delay
7. When switch S7 is connected to switch S6. (delay in S6 + delay in S7) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S1 + delay in S6 + delay in S7) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S6 + delay in S7) = 1 end-to-end delay
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(delay in S3 + delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S6 + delay in S7) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S4 + delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S6 + delay in S7) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S5 + delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S6 + delay in S7) = 1 end-to-end delay
8. When switch S8 is connected to switch S1 (delay in S1 + delay in S8) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S8) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S3 + delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S8) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S4 + delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S8) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S5 + delay in S2 + delay in S1 + delay in S8) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S6 + delay in S1 + delay in S8) = 1 end-to-end delay (delay in S7 + delay in S6 + delay in S1 + delay in S8) = 1 end-to-end delay
We have systematically enumerated all the end-to-end delays that are inherent in this LAN. The total end-to-end delays = 8+1+2+3+4+5+6+7 = 36, which is what is obtained by applying Eq. (1). Eq. (1) can therefore, be used as a check to ensure that all the end-to-end delays that are inherent in any switched local area network has been systematically enumerated using our right-most, pre-order transversal method.
With respect to Figure 2 therefore, if; end-to-end delay 1-1 = time for a data packet to cross S1 for any host that is attached to switch 1 that is communicating with another host that is attached to the same switch 1 end-to-end delay 2-2 = time for a data packet to cross S2 for any host that is attached to switch 2 that is communicating with another host that is attached to the same switch 2. end-to-end delay 3-3 = time for a data packet to cross S3 for any host that is attached to switch 3 that is communicating with another host that is attached to the same switch 3. end-to-end delay 1-2 = time for any data packet to cross S1 + the time for the same data packet to cross S2 for any host that is attached to switch 1 that is communicating with another host that is attached to switch 2. end-to-end delay 2-3 = time for any data packet to cross S2 + the time for the same data packet to cross S3 for any host that is attached to switch 2 that is communicating with another host that is attached to switch 3. end-to-end delay 1-2-3 = time for any data packet to cross S1 + the time for the same data packet to cross S2 + the time for the same data packet to cross S3 for any host that is attached to switch 1 that is communicating with another host that is attached to switch 3. Therefore, assume that the, maximum time for any data packet to cross S1 = x1 seconds, maximum time for any data packet to cross S2 = x2 seconds, maximum time for any data packet to cross S3 = x3 seconds,
Then, maximum end-to-end delay 1-1 = x1 seconds, maximum end-to-end delay 2-2 = x2 seconds, maximum end-to-end delay 3-3 = x3 seconds, maximum end-to-end delay 1-2 = (x1+x2) seconds, maximum end-to-end delay 2-3 = (x2+x3) seconds, maximum end-to-end delay 1-2-3 = (x1+x2+x3) seconds, the average of the maximum end-to-end delays of the whole network is therefore = x x x (x x ) (x x ) (x x x ) 1 2 3 1 2 2 3 1 2 3 seconds 6 Therefore, if y1= maximum end-to-end delay 1, y2= maximum end-to-end delay 2, y3= maximum end-to-end delay 3,…,yp= maximum end-to-end delay p respectively, and Davmaxnetdelay = average of the maximum end- to-end delays of the whole network, where p = no of end-to-end delays inherent in the network, then,
y1 y2 y3 ...... y p Davmaxnetdelay = seconds (2) p
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Eq. (2) is an enhancement (with respect to a switched LAN) of the network delay performance measures defined in (Elbaum and Sidi, 1996), where it was stated that the minimum average network delay is the average delay between all pairs of users in the network. What we think is meant here is that, the minimum average network delay is the average of the minimum end-to-end delay between all pairs of users in the network. Correspondingly therefore, following from this statement, the maximum average network delay is the average of the maximum end-to-end delay between all pairs of users in the network. But we have previously shown in (Eyinagho et al., 2011) that, for a switched local area network, it does not seems to be correct when all the users (hosts) that are attached to the network are enumerated for the purpose of end-to-end (for example, average end- to-end) delay computation.
We are thus able to know (using Eq. (2)) whether this average of the maximum end-to-end delay of the whole network is less than the maximum end-to-end delay that can be tolerated by any application that is to be deployed on this network. If it is less than, then we have designed an efficient network; if it is more than, then we can iteratively choose switches of higher capacities (high switching fabric data transfer rates) and hence, low switching latency (delay).
This method of specifying the switches in a switched LAN finds agreement with the switched network design problem as formulated by Reiser (1982), which, stated in words, is ‗design the switched network under maximum loading condition, such that the average network delay is less than or equal to a given delay bound‘.
Another way of looking at this switched LAN design methodology is to state the network design problem in this way: can we specify the switches in a switched LAN such that the maximum of the maximum (max-max) end- to-end delays of the LAN is less than the maximum tolerable delay of the applications to be deployed in the network? For example, Georges et al. (2005) asserted with respect to the deployment of switched Ethernet networks in an industrial environment that, the network calculus is used to determine the upper-bounded end-to- end delays of each packet; if all the end-to-end delays are less than the time-cycle of the programmable controller, then the network organization (arrangement of switches) is in accordance with the application constraint.
3. CONCLUSION Reiser (1982) has once averred that, the packet switched network design specification may be to obtain load values such that the mean network delay remains below a given bound. Relating this to switched local area networks, the design objective of a network will be to design the network such that the average maximum end- to-end delay is below an upper bound. This upper bound can be determined by the maximum delay constraints (requirements) of the applications to be deployed in the network. This paper has described a methodology for enumerating all the end-to-end delays of any switched local area network, and therefore, of calculating the average (or average of the maximum end-to-end) delays of such a network.
REFERENCES ELBAUM, R.AND SIDI, M. 1996. Topological Design of Local Area Networks using Genetic Algorithms. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 4(5), 766-778. EYINAGHO, M. O., FALAKI, S. O. AND, ATAYERO, A. A. 2011. Revisiting the notion of Origin- Destination Traffic Matrix of the hosts that are attached to a Switched Local Area Network. International Journal of Distributed and Parallel Systems (IJDPS), 2(6), 227-235. GEORGES, J., DIVOUX, T. AND RONDEAU, E. 2005. Confronting the Performances of a Switched Ethernet Network with Industrial Constraints by using Network Calculus. International Journal of Communications Systems, 18, 877-903. GERD, K. 1989. Local Area Networks. McGraw-Hill Book Co., New-York. KANEM, E., TORAB, P. COOPER, K. AND CUSTODI, G. 1999. Design and Analysis of Packet Switched Networks for Control Systems. Proceedings, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. Phoenix, AZ, 4460-4465. REISER, M. 1982. Performance Evaluation of Data Communications Systems. Proceedings of the 1982 IEEE Conference, 70(2), 171-194. TORAB, P. AND KANEM, E. 1999. Load Analysis of Packet Switched Networks in Control Systems. Proceedings 25th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, San Jose, CA, 3, 1222 – 1227.
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Application of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in M-Banking Adoption in Kenya
ISAIAH LULE§ University of Nairobi, Kenya [email protected]
Tonny Kerage Omwansa University of Nairobi, Kenya [email protected]
Prof. Timothy Mwololo Waema University of Nairobi, Kenya [email protected]
Abstract Mobile phones with Mobile Commerce technology are becoming more readily available in Kenya. Similarly many financial institutions and mobile phone service providers are teaming up to provide banking services to customers via the mobile phone. However the number of people who choose to adopt or use such technologies is still relatively low. Therefore there is need to assess the acceptance of such technologies to establish factors that hinder or promote their acceptance. This study applied Technology Acceptance Model to examine the factors that influence the adoption of M-banking in Kenya. The study specifically focused on the evaluation of M- Kesho, an M-banking application in Kenya. A survey was conducted to gather data which was coded in SPSS 16. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to analyze the data and Structural Equation Modeling using Analysis of Moment Structures was used to validate the research model. Out of a total of 450 questionnaires distributed to M-Kesho users, 395 were returned and validated. The analysis revealed that Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Self Efficacy and Perceived Credibility significantly influenced customers‘ attitude towards usage of M-banking. The results of the data analysis contributes to the body of knowledge by demonstrating that the above factors are critical in attitude towards usage of M-banking in a developing country context. The implications of the results form a good basis for providing practical recommendations to the banking industry, and directions for further work. Keywords: M-banking, Technology Acceptance Model, Adoption
IJCIR Reference Format:
Lule, Isaiah; Omwansa, Tonny Kerage and Prof. Waema, Timothy Mwololo. Application of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in M-Banking Adoption in Kenya. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6 Issue 1, pp 31-43. http://www.ijcir.org/volume6-number1/article4.pdf ______
§ Author‘s Addresses: Isaiah Lule, Tonny Kerage Omwansa and Prof. Timothy Mwololo Waema. University of Nairobi, Kenya. Emails: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IJCIR must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee." © International Journal of Computing and ICT Research 2012. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, ISSN 1818-1139 (Print), ISSN 1996-1065 (Online), Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 31-43, June 2012.
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1. INTRODUCTION Today‘s major technologies enable people to collect, send and receive information in minutes wherever they are. The area of wireless device to conduct Mobile Commerce or Mobile Business has emerged as a new communication network and become one of the major topic of research in the last few years particularly in developing countries. According to Keen and Mackintosh, 2001 technological features play an important role in the adoption of mobile value added services. In service use, mobile phones are no longer used as they have typically been used before. Though talking and text messaging (SMS) are likely to remain, different forms of usage are developing and expected to grow. Mobile banking, commonly referred to as M-banking, is an innovation which has been perpetuated by the wide spread of this mobile communication technology. M-banking is defined as the financial services delivered via mobile networks and performed on a mobile phone (Bangens and Soderberg, 2008). Research has shown that mobile communications has a potential of leapfrogging traditional infrastructure; M-banking has great potential to extend the provision of financial services to unbanked people through a technology that is both familiar and widespread. In Kenya, adoption of M-banking services is still very low compared to mobile operator led transfer services using mobile phones. Unlike mobile money transfer services operated by mobile network operators, M-banking promises a lot more to the users, including interest on funds saved, credit history and access to loans. This leads to questioning the banking sector as to whether the un-banked user has been well understood. There is a need to understand users' acceptance of M-Banking and to identify the factors influencing their intentions to use M- banking. This information can assist developers to build M-banking systems that consumers want to use, or help them to discover why potential users avoid using the existing system.
M-Kesho is one of the famous M-Banking products in Kenya. It was developed and promoted by the most dominant mobile operator (Safaricom) and the leading bank in terms of bank accounts (Equity Bank). ‗M‘ represents ‗Mobile‘ while ‗Kesho‘ is a Swahili word for ‗tomorrow or future‘. The service is geared towards reaching the unbanked population by enabling them to easily open bank accounts, save money into the bank account and enjoy the other benefits of a bank account while accessing it through their phone. M-Kesho is nevertheless used by both the banked and the unbanked. Though there are other M-Banking services in Kenya, M-Kesho promises to reach a much wider target considering the collaboration of Safaricom and Equity bank who have a customer base of over 17 million and 5 million respectively in a country of 40 million people. It‘s therefore worth studying M-Kesho as a representative of M-banking in Kenya.
2. RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESIS 2.1 Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) There are several models existing that have been used to investigate adoption of technology. Several studies focusing on adoption of mobile services have their roots in Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) originally proposed by Davies in 1986. The model is originally designed to predict user‘s acceptance of Information Technology and usage in an organizational context. TAM focuses on the attitude explanations of intention to use a specific technology or service; it has become a widely applied model for user acceptance and usage. There are a number of meta-analyses on the TAM that have demonstrated that it is a valid, robust and powerful model for predicting user acceptance (Bertrand and Bouchard, 2008). TAM, shown in figure 1 was also the first model that established external variables (shown as X1, X2 and X3 in figure 1) as key factors in studying technology adoption.
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Figure 1: Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) TAM model which deals with perceptions as opposed to real usage, suggests that when users are presented with a new technology, two important factors influence their decision about how and when they will use it (Davis, 1989). These key factors are: Perceived usefulness (PU) - This was defined by Davis as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance". Perceived ease-of-use (PEoU) - Davis defined this as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free from effort"
2.2 Limitation of TAM to Study M–Kesho Application TAM tries to explain the adoption process and underlying influencing factors in technology acceptance. The model has been used widely in IS research (Arbuckle, 1995). However, the model has a number of limitations in studying mobile based services (Nysveen et al, 2005). One of the limitation of TAM is that it was designed to be used in an orgarnizational context rather than in everyday life context making it not favorable to study mobile based technoogy. M-Kesho is an everyday life context application which links mobile telephony and banking industry therefore cannot sufficiently be studied by TAM. Besides, users incur a cost when transacting using M- Kesho, a parameter that could significantly influence usage. There are other variables which could influence M- banking adoption that are not present in the TAM and should be considered. TAM is also limited in explaining various forms of technology which is a common characteristic in the innovation in mobile telephony. M-Kesho is one such innovation. Therefore, to study mobile based services, TAM needed to be extended. This study address this issues, it investigates factors that enhance the acceptance of M-banking in Kenya using M-Kesho as a case study. The study adapts TAM and extends it in studying M- banking in Kenya. 2.3 Research Model Adoption Previous research has suggested that trust-related constructs and resource related constructs should be the critical antecedents of the behavioral intention to use information systems. Based on the information systems acceptance literature, especially the extended TAM by Luarn & Lin, 2004, this research adopts the research model indicated in Figure 2. The construct perceived Subjective Norms (SN) absent in the Luarn & Lin‘s (2004) model is proposed. This construct has been proposed as a determinant of M-banking adoption in several research such as: Fishbein, and Ajzen (1975) in the theory of Reasoned Action; Mathieson (1991) in the Theory of planned Behavior (TPB); Julio et al., 2010 in the study M-banking, proposition of an integrated adoption intention framework among other studies. The constructs added to the original TAM in this research are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Constructs added to the original TAM Variable Definition Source
Self The degree to which a Bandura (1982) Efficacy person‘s confidence in (SE) her/his ability to use banking. Perceived Perceived credibility is a Luarn & Lin (2004) Credibility determinant of (PC) behavioral intention to use an information system. Perceived credibility consists of two important elements: privacy and security Subjective Represent the degree to Taylor and Todd Norms (SN) which a person perceives (1995) that important others believe he or she should use banking Transaction The transaction cost of Luarn & Lin
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Cost (TC) using M-banking service. (2004)
As noted by Davis (1989), future research of Information System and Information Technology usage has to address the other variables which affect usefulness, ease of use and user acceptance. Consequently these two determinants may not fully explain the factors which predict the acceptance of a technology application such as M-banking. Prior studies have extended the original TAM by adding constructs, such as perceived playfulness (Moon & Kim, 2001), perceived enjoyment (Koufaris, 2002) and perceived credibility, Wang et al, 2003. Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Attitude The constructs Perceived Usefulness (PU), Perceived Ease of Use (PEoU) and Attitude towards Adoption (ATA) of M-banking were adapted from TAM. These constructs have also been maintained for studying the adoption of mobile services where results fairly well comply with the findings from TAM studies. TAM posits that a user‘s acceptance of information system is determined by that user‘s intention to use the systems, while perceived usefulness and ease of use can predict the usage intention, and perceived ease of use is hypothesized as a predictor of perceived usefulness. According to TRA, users‘ beliefs influence their attitude, which in turn influence behavioral intention. Both perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are beliefs. Thus, they will affect user‘s attitude. In addition, TAM states that perceived ease of use will have a direct effect on perceived usefulness.
We therefore make the following assumptions: H1: User‘s attitude to use M-banking has a significant effect on behavioral intention to use. H2: Perceived usefulness has a significant effect on attitude to use M-banking. H3: Perceived ease of use has a significant effect on attitude to use M-banking. Perceived Credibility Perceived credibility consists of two important elements namely privacy and security. Further, security refers to the protection of information or systems from unsanctioned intrusions or outflows (Nysveen et al, 2005). Fear of the lack of security is one of the factors that have been identified in most studies as affecting the growth and development of technology including M-banking adoption. Accordingly, perceived usefulness and ease of use may not fully explain behavior attitude to use M-banking. Wang examined the impact of perceived credibility on usage intention, and found that perceived credibility had a significant effect on intention (Nysveen et al, 2005). Considering the context of M-banking services this study extends TAM by adding perceived credibility to the model to explain user acceptance of M-banking. We propose the following hypothesis: H4: Perceived credibility has a positive effect on behavioral intention to use M-banking Normative Pressure This construct was promoted by Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975)]. It was also included in the extended TAM. Subjective Norm (SN) or Normative Pressure (NP) is defined as a person‘s perception that most people who are important to her or him should or should not perform the behavior in question (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). Previous studies have explored the importance of such construct in social science studies including in banking studies (Nysveen et al, 2005) who examined mobile chatting usage in Norway, and found that SN is an important driver for mobile chatting usage among the Norwegians.
In view of these studies, it is important to examine whether this construct is able to provide a clear direction as a key predictor for M-banking use.
Using the findings of the above mentioned studies, we propose the following hypothesis: H5: Normative Pressure will positively influence intention to use M-banking. Transaction Cost Transaction cost is an important factor for users considering whether to use M-banking services. If consumers perceive the transaction cost of M-banking service as acceptable, they are likely to adopt it and then use it. According to Mathieson et al. 1991, economic motivations and outcomes are most often the focus of IS acceptance studies.
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This variable was used in prior research on M-banking adoption (Luarn and Lin, 2004). The cost consideration may prevent many people from choosing M-banking service (Ibid). Moreover, hardware/software and financial resources are important for users of an Information System (Mathieson, 1991). Based on the literature transaction cost is likely to directly influence the user‘s intention to use M-banking.
The following hypothesis is then proposed: H6: Transaction cost will have a negative effect on behavioral intention to use M-banking. Self Efficacy Findings from previous studies (Wang et al, 2003, Nysveen et al, 2005, Mathieson et al, 2001) have confirmed the importance of appropriate levels of perceived self-efficacy in technology adoption decisions. Self Efficacy (SE) is the degree to which a person‘s confidence in her/his ability to use banking (Bandura, 1982). In their study found strong support for their hypothesis that domain-specific self-efficacy influence the perceived ease of use in two studies. Correspondingly, our research assumes that users with higher levels of perceived SE are more likely to adopt M-banking than those who perceive themselves to be lacking in such skills. Hence, we formulate the hypotheses: H7a: Self Efficacy positively influences the behavioral intentions to adopt M-banking. H7b: Self Efficacy positively influences the perceived ease of use of M-banking. 2.4 Research Model Based on the above arguments, this research integrates TAM with four additional variables shown in table 1 to investigate adoption of M-banking. The constructs of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude to use, and adoption were retained according to TAM. Perceived credibility, transaction cost and perceived self efficacy were included in Luarn & Lin, 2005 research. Perceived normative pressure was adapted from the study of Julio, et al, 2010. Figure 2 shows the research model used in this study.
PERCEIVED USEFULNESS
PERCEIVED EASE OF USE H2 H7b H3
PERCEIVED SELF H7a EFFICACY ATTITUDE TOWARDS H1 ADOPTION ADOPTION PERCEIVED H4 CREDIBILITY
6 H 5 TRANSACTION H COST
PERCEIVED NORMATIVE PRESSURE
Figure 2: The proposed research model.
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Measurement Instrument Development The instrument used in this research was questionnaire. Items selected for the constructs were mostly adapted from prior studies in order to ensure content validity. Items measuring perceived usefulness, ease of use, attitude and intention to adopt were taken from Davies (1989), items to measure perceived credibility and transaction cost were adapted from Luarn & Lin (2005), perceived self efficacy were measured by items adapted from Bandura (1982), and items of perceived normative pressure usage were taken from Taylor & Todd (1995). The items were modified to make them relevant within the context of M-banking services. A 7-point Likert scale with anchors ranging from ‗‗strongly disagree‘‘ to ‗‗strongly agree‘‘ were used for all questions. Questions on demographics characteristics, frequency of use, and length of use of M-banking were included at the end of the questionnaire. Pre-testing of these measures was conducted through selected M-Kesho users and the instrument was validated.
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3.2 Data collection Data used to test our research model were collected from a sample of respondents of M-Kesho users within Nairobi city. At the point of this study, M-Kesho was still being piloted with limited operations beyond the capital city, Nairobi.
We distributed 450 questionnaires and obtained 395 completed which was close to the 390 respondents projected in this research. The response rate of 87.78% was attributed to the eagerness of respondents in using this technology.
Table 2 shows the demographics of the respondents. There were more male (52%) than female; the age group 21 – 30 years had more users (47.60%) than any other, the married and un-married were almost equal; Diploma and high school graduates where the majority (over 60%), while over 75% of the respondents had an income level of below Kenya Shillings 50,000 (USD 625). Those who had not used M-banking for more than one year (63%) indicated that M-Kesho had had a significant impact on M-banking in Kenya. The result also indicates that most of the respondents use the services less than once per week (43.70%), an indication that M-banking adoption is still in its early stages in Kenya. Table 2: Demographics Characteristics
Variable Classification Frequency Percentage of Variables Male 204 52% Gender Female 190 48% Age 21 – 30 yrs 188 47.60% 31 – 40 yrs 154 39% 41 – 50 yrs 40 10.10% Above 51 yrs 13 3.30% Marital Single 181 45.80% Status Married 185 46.80% Other 27 6.80% Current Professionals 21 5.30% Occupation Manager 23 5.80% Senior 22 5.60% Executive Supervisor/Cler 66 16.70% ical Officer Skilled and 108 27.30% Semi skilled Other 130 32.90% Level of PhD 4 1.0% Education Masters 16 4.10% Completed Bachelors 88 22.30% Degree Diploma 160 40.50% High School 94 23.80% Qualification Others 23 5.80% Below 10,000 99 25.10% Monthly 10,001 - 20,000 123 31.10% Income 20,001 - 50,000 90 22.80% 50,001 - Range 31 7.80% 100,000 Above 100,000 10 2.50%
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4. RESULTS 4.1 Data Validity and Reliability We first analyzed the data for convergent and discriminant validity to examine the reliability of the scale as proposed by Straub et al., 2004. Convergent validity is shown when each measurement item correlates strongly with its assumed theoretical construct, discriminant validity requires an appropriate Average Variance Extracted (AVE) analysis. We tested to see if the square root of every AVE is much larger than any correlation among any pair of latent construct. The square root of each construct should be much larger than the correlation of the specific construct with any of the other constructs in the model (Chin, 1998) and should be at least 0.5 (Fornell and Larcher, 1981). Thus our data was acceptable. Table 2 shows the correlation between latent variables while table 3 the average variance extracted. The items in the table correlate to the questionnaire items used in this research; Perceived Ease of Use (PEoU) had four question items, Perceived Usefulness (PU) three question items, Perceived Self-Efficacy (PSE) had four question items, Perceived Credibility (PC) had five question items, Transaction Cost (TC) had three question items, Perceived Normative Pressure (PNP) had five question items, Attitude Toward Adoption (ATA) had five question items while Adoption (A) had two question items. There is high correlation between items on a particular variable compared to the other variables and the square root of AVE was greater than 0.5, therefore the data could be analyzed by factor analysis as depicted by tables 3 and 4.
Table 3: Correlation between Latent Variables
Ite PEoU PU PS PC TC PN ATA A m E P PEoU 0.6 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.2 1 7 9 8 6 0.09 0.08 0.25 3 PEoU 0.6 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.0 0.1 2 9 5 1 6 9 0.08 0.22 6 PEoU 0.6 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 3 6 4 1 6 5 0.11 0.14 3 PEoU 0.6 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.1 4 1 4 1 2 1 0.04 0.10 0 0.2 0.7 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.2 PU1 4 4 5 5 4 0.23 0.18 6 0.1 0.7 0.1 0.2 0.0 0.2 PU2 9 2 6 5 5 0.14 0.15 3 0.0 0.6 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.0 PU3 5 3 2 2 8 0.12 0.06 2 0.1 0.1 0.5 0.1 0.0 0.2 PSE1 5 5 2 4 2 0.21 0.18 4 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.1 0.2 0.1 PSE2 4 5 8 9 6 0.27 0.19 7 0.6 0.1 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.1 PSE3 3 5 4 8 3 0.01 0.07 1 0.2 0.1 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 PSE4 1 5 4 7 3 0.09 0.01 3 0.3 0.1 0.1 0.4 0.1 0.1 PC1 7 0 3 6 3 0.09 0.20 5 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.5 0.0 0.2 PC2 9 0 0 7 2 0.06 0.31 6 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.6 0.1 0.2 PC3 4 5 0 2 3 0.12 0.30 7 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.5 0.0 0.2 PC4 7 3 4 6 8 0.13 0.23 0 0.0 0.2 0.1 0.5 0.1 0.2 PC5 7 6 4 6 1 0.13 0.24 2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.7 0.1 TC1 7 8 3 3 1 0.14 0.04 0 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.7 0.0 TC2 9 0 6 7 1 0.21 0.11 5 International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.6 0.1 TC3 3 8 2 9 9 0.11 0.18 1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 PNP1 2 5 3 5 9 0.66 0.06 9 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.1 PNP2 5 6 6 9 6 0.66 0.10 4 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.5 PNP3 3 6 8 4 7 0.58 0.16 1 0.1 0.2 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.1 PNP4 0 1 6 2 5 0.58 0.20 5 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.2 PNP5 9 1 7 4 2 0.62 0.11 0 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.2 0.1 0.4 ATA1 9 5 7 7 1 0.11 0.58 4 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.4 ATA2 9 2 0 2 0 0.11 0.51 0 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.3 ATA3 3 0 3 6 6 0.11 0.53 0 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.3 ATA4 3 0 1 9 9 0.15 0.50 6 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.2 ATA5 0 9 6 3 1 0.15 0.54 5 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.2 0.1 0.7 A1 3 9 5 1 1 0.19 0.37 9 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.7 A2 4 5 9 2 6 0.09 0.33 9
Table 4: Average Variance Extracted Construct AVE Square Root AVE PEoU 0.5630 0.7503 PU 0.6180 0.7861 PSE 0.3944 0.6280 PC 0.4095 0.6399 TC 0.6235 0.7896 PNP 0.5015 0.7082 ATA 0.3773 0.6142 A 0.7551 0.8689
4.2 Model Validity and Hypotheses Testing To examine the research model validity and test the hypotheses, we used Analysis of Moment Structures 16 (AMOS 16). This is Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) software that uses Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to align the tested measures to the specific constructs and constraining the variances of each measure to the latent construct it should represent. In addition to assessing the degree to which each measure contributes to its latent construct, CFA also tests the separation between constructs by evaluating the fit in the overall model.
There are four groups of fit measures. The fit measures within each group give the same rank of ordering of models (Arbuckle, 1995). The first group is Root Mean-Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) and Tucker- Lewis Index (TLI), the second group is Comparative Fit Index (CFI), the third group is Chi-square, normed chi- square (CMIN) and Normed Fit Index (NFI), and the fourth group is goodness of fit index (GFI), and Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGFI). Among the many measures of fit, four popular measures are: χ2 /df, GFI, TLI and RMSEA. Figure 3 shows the result obtained when the initial model was fit to the data, the model fit indices obtained are indicated in table 5. The overall fit for the model is not good with Chi-sq/df being 3.401, at 416 df and is significant and P value 0.00.
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Table 5: Fit Indices for the Unmodified Model
Fit Standards Fit Model Measures Fit X2 ⁄df A value close to 1 and not 3.495 exceeding 3 indicates a good fit. IFI IFI values close to 1 indicate a 0.803 very good fit. TLI A value close to 1 indicates a 0.777 very good fit. NFI TLI values close to 1 indicate a 0.744 very good fit. CFI A value close to 1 indicates a 0.801 very good fit. RFI RFI values close to 1 indicate a 0.714 very good fit RMSEA A value should not greater than 0.080 0.1
0, 1.00 6.13 .56 erro1 pu1 1.43 0, 1.00 6.04 Chi - square = 1454 .93 1.22 0, 1.00 erro2 Degrees of Freedom = 416 pu2 0, 1.00 pu Level of Probability = 000 1.80 1.105.62 erro3 0, 1.00 pu3 0, 1.00 0, 1.00 erro28 6.06 0, 1.00 erro41 1 0, 1.00 err04 1.42 erro29 peou1 1 0, 1.00 5.93 1.25 erro30 .80 0, 1.00 5.83 1.27 0 1.44 erro5 peou2 5.98 .03.36 erro27 ata3 0, 1.00 1.09 1.36 0, 1.00 1.10 peou 5.88 peou3 0, 1.00 erro6 1.36 erro40 5.97.93 ata4 5.89 0, 1.00 .94 erro31 1.30 5.79 .86 6.04 peou4 0, 1.00 ata5 1 erro7 5.38 .22 .91 0, 1.00 .34 ata2 .81 0 ita1 1.83 .42 erro43.91.83 pc1 1 erro8 .26 5.36 .25 a .87 0 .76 5.81 0, 1.001.48 .83 6.00 0, 1.00 pse1 1.19 1.28 err014 ita2 1.06 pc2 0, 1.00 ata 0, 1.00 erro9 .551.34 1.445.95 5.19 0, 1.00 0, 1.00 .18 erro32 .88 pc 1.04 .13 pc3 pse2 1.89.130, 1.00 1.17 erro10 1.10 erro15 5.87 0, 1.00 5.69 .914.74 1.03 pse 1.33 0, 1.002.08 ata1 pc4 pse3 erro12 6.10 1.21 0, 1.00 erro16 1.06 1.10 .17 .09 0, 1.00 pc5 4.53 erro13 0, 1.00 2.16 erro26 0, 1.00 4.13 pse4 .07 1.55 erro17 erro18 TC1 .23 1.75 .42 4.38 0, 1.001.44 1.79 0, 1.00 0, 1.00 TC2 5.15 erro19 4.81 1.00 1.59 erro21 0, 1.00 TC pnp1 1.60 TC3 .18 1.95 0, 1.00 .97 5.31 erro20 1.94 0, 1.00 erro22 pnp2 4.94 0, 1.00 1.34 1.85 pnp pnp3 erro23 1.195.44 0, 1.001.75 pnp41.29 erro24 5.46 1.590, 1.00 pnp5 erro25
Figure 3: Graphical Representation of the Unmodified Model.
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PERCEIVED USEFULNESS
PERCEIVED 0. EASE OF USE 030 ** Ns 0 .2 0.255* 19 *
PERCEIVED SELF 0.1 EFFICACY 27** ATTITUDE TOWARDS 0.830* * ADOPTION 0.553 ADOPTION PERCEIVED CREDIBILITY Ns ** 87 0.0 s N ** TRANSACTION 30 .0 COST 0
PERCEIVED Ns – Not Significant; ** significant at 0.05; * significant at 0.001 NORMATIVE PRESSURE
Figure 4: Result of the Hypotheses Test
Hypotheses H1, H3, H4 and H7b were supported in that PEoU, PC had significant positive effect on attitudes toward M-banking. Altogether they account for 35% of the variance in attitude towards M-banking adoption. PC strongly determined the attitude toward M-banking adoption. PSE had significant effect on PEoU with a p value of 4.082. The relationship between PU and attitude towards adoption was insignificant, with a p-value of 0.688, similarly the relationship between attitude towards adoption and PNP was insignificant with p-value of 0.333, TC and attitude towards adoption was insignificant with a p-value of 0.223. This result is consistent with the finding of previous research on M-banking. The one possible explanation could be the lack of knowledge and awareness about M-banking in Kenya since the innovation has not been accepted by many people in Kenya.
Model Modification AMOS 16 suggests various modifications of a model by carrying out a separate analysis test for each potential modification using modification indices. Modification indices allow one to evaluate many potential modifications in a single analysis. They provide suggestions for model modifications that are likely to pay off in smaller chi-square values. After carrying out the initial analysis, we obtained the modification indices we used to validate the final model for this research. We present the standardized model obtained in this research in Figure 4 while table 7 shows the fit indices for the model. The overall fit for the model is good with Chi-sq/df is 2.704, at 409 df and is significant and P value 0.00.
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0, 1
erro1 pu1 0, 1 0, 1 Chi - square = 1174.70 erro2 pu2 Degree of Freedom = 414 pu 0, 1 Probablity Level = 0.000 erro3 0, 1 pu3 0, 1 erro28 0, 0, 1 erro41 1 0, 1 err04 peou1 1 erro29 0, 1 0, 1 erro30 0 erro5 peou2 erro27 ata3 0, 1 0, 1 peou erro6 peou3 0, 1 ata4 erro40 0, 1 erro31 0, 1 ata5 1 erro7 peou4 0 0, 1 ata2 erro43 ita1 pc1 1 erro8 a 0, 1 0 0, 1 pse1 err014 ita2 pc2 0, 1 ata 0, 1 erro9 0, 1 0, 1 erro32 pc pc3 pse2 0, 1 erro10 erro15 0, 1 0, 1 pse pse3 ata1 erro12 pc4 0, 1 erro16 0, 1 pc5 erro13 0, 1 0, 1 pse4 erro26 erro17 erro18 TC1
0, 1 0, 1 TC2 0, 1 erro19 erro21 0, 1 TC pnp1 TC3 0, 1 erro20 0, 1 erro22 pnp2 0, 1 pnp pnp3 erro23
0, 1 pnp4 erro24
0, 1 pnp5 erro25
Figure 5: The Standard Modified Model
Table 6: Results of the model goodness of fit Fit Standards Fit Model Measures Fit A value close to 1 and not 2 ⁄df 2.838 exceeding 3 indicates a good fit. IFI values close to 1 indicate a IFI 0.855 very good fit. A value close to 1 indicates a TLI 0.836 very good fit. TLI values close to 1 indicate a NFI 0.793 very good fit. A value close to 1 indicates a CFI 0.854 very good fit. RFI values close to 1 indicate a RFI 0.767 very good fit A value should not be greater RMSEA 0.068 than 0.1
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PERCEIVED USEFULNESS
0.244 PERCEIVED EASE OF * USE 0.230*
PERCEIVED 0.525* CREDIBILITY ATTITUDE TOWARD 0.730* 0.250* ADOPTION ADOPTION
** 0.116 PERCEIVED SELF EFFICACY ** 38 .1 0
TRANSACTION COST ** significant at 0.05; * significant at 0.001
Figure 6: The Proposed Model
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The framework presented in Figure 5 has been developed for assessing M-banking adoption in Kenya. This framework has eight constructs that were found to significantly influence the adoption of M-banking services. The framework can be used as a guide when assessing the adoption of an M-banking service. Some of the construct exhibited stronger significance than others. The framework is generic and can be used in any developing country.
The framework presented in Figure 5 has been developed for assessing M-banking adoption in Kenya. This framework has eight constructs that were found to significantly influence the adoption of M-banking services. The framework can be used as a guide when assessing the adoption of an M-banking service. Some of the construct exhibited stronger significance than others. The framework is generic and can be used in any developing country.
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Acknowledgement: ―This paper was presented at The First nternational conference on mobile money (AMMREC2012) whose theme was ‗Evidence of Financial Inclusion Through Mobile Technology‘, organised by the Africa Mobile Money Research (AMMREC) initiative of the School of Computing and Informatics (SCI), University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, April 2 -3, 2012‖.
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Development of a Real-time Customer Service System
I.O. AWOYELU** Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract
Good customer service is essential for business to grow. One of the major challenges facing most companies has been how to keep their customers satisfied and properly serviced. The existing customer service systems have limitations such as poor customer service and relations. Hence, a real-time customer service system is proposed. The system was developed by using incremental model development process. The front end was designed using Macromedia DreamWeaver 8.0, Macromedia Flash and Java server page. The business logic and the work flow was developed using Java Servlet and Apache Tomcat Server. MySql 5.0 was used as the back end.
Keywords: Customer service, e-commerce, customer support, help desk
IJCIR Reference Format:
Awoyelu, I. O. Development of a Real-time Customer Service System. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6 Issue 1, pp 44-51. http://www.ijcir.org/volume6-number1/article5.pdf
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1. INTRODUCTION Electronic commerce has gradually but steadily begun to replace the traditional commerce. It is transacting of facilitating business on the Internet (Khurana, 2011). Companies have also begun to appreciate and embrace the benefits derived by interacting with its customers via electronic means – specifically via the Internet. While some companies have found it a very convenient and cost effective way of interacting with the public, others have found it to be a method to announce their presence to their competitors and to their prospective customers. With the wide and ready acceptance of this form of interaction by both parties, it has become expedient for the development of powerful applications that meets the needs of these parties.
One of the major challenges being faced by most companies has been how to keep their customers satisfied and properly serviced. Over time, as a company begins to grow, its customer base is expected to expand also. How does a company keep track of information regarding its customer base, facilitate the proper documentation of company-to-customer interactions, as well as offer fast and personalized real-time interdependent customer support alternatives to service all possible needs of its customers?
Most customers have stopped patronizing certain companies on the basis of poor customer service and relations. It is usually very important to get the customer satisfied, before and after business has been transacted. Proper
** Author‘s Address: I. O. Awoyelu, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. E- mail: [email protected] "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IJCIR must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee." © International Journal of Computing and ICT Research 2012. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, ISSN 1818-1139 (Print), ISSN 1996-1065 (Online), Vol.6, Issue 1, pp. 44-51, June 2012.
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service delivery support should be included as one of the main priorities of the company. By service delivery support, one refers to ensuring the continued and sustainable use of a product by the support unit of the company long after being sold. Hence, there is the need to develop a real time customer service support system.
The organization of this paper is as follows: Section 1 gives a general introduction about the paper. Section 2 describes existing customer service systems. Section 3 discusses the proposed system while section 4 concludes the paper.
2. EXISTING CUSTOMER SERVICE SYSTEMS Customer Service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. According to Turban (2002), it is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation. Customer Service has always been interwoven with any form of business. Usually, before a transaction can occur, there must be some form of interaction between the customer and the seller. Over the years, customer personnel have been given the sole responsibility of interfacing with the outside world on behalf of its company. This method of interaction has evolved over the years. Spiller and Lohse (1998), in their study of 137 Internet online businesses, show that there is still a long way to go in meeting customer expectations. Less than 9% of the sites have a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section and 78% of them do not offer incentives to attract and retain customers. The existing systems can be divided into two broad categories. These are discussed briefly in the following sections.
2.1 Traditional Customer Service Support
This usually refers to all forms of contact before the advent of more sophisticated forms of communication, like the Internet. They are generally called help desks. These are: Face to Face customer contact The customer occasionally comes to meet a representative of the company for enquiries. However, this wastes time since physical contact between both parties has to occur before solutions can be proffered. Telephone Contact The company encourages the customers to call in order to make enquiries about information or complaints about products purchased. Extra communications skill is required from the customer service personnel. Also, the customer may go through several people before the ideal person who can help him is eventually reached. Paper Contact Contact is established via mailing magazines, brochures and catalogues to customers who subscribe. However, mailing via post is not real-time, and therefore it takes some time before contact is established between the customer and the company.
2.2 Electronic/Online Service Support
This is the most current means of communication between a company and its customers via the company‘s website. Some of the support options being used by some Nigerian companies on their websites are: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), Electronic Mail, and Electronic bulletin boards or notices.
2.3 Limitations of Traditional Customer Service and Electronic Support Systems At its best, e-support offers a customer an efficient 24-hour-a-day service. It also offers an enterprise a cost- effective means of improving customer relations. Another advantage that Electronic support has over the Traditional customer support is that issues of queuing at enquiry desks to get attended to by the customer relations unit is avoided, since access to the website is open to a large number of people at once. However, electronic support systems do not give customers the privilege of choosing from several interdependent options that will get them the fastest results. Lastly, most of the support systems on websites do not take into consideration the customer‘s opinion or reaction about the service he is receiving.
3. PROPOSED CUSTOMER SERVICE SYSTEM
The proposed Customer service architecture is as shown in Figure 1. The system was developed by using incremental model. The front end was designed using Macromedia DreamWeaver 8.0, Macromedia Flash, and Java Server Page. The business logic and the work flow was developed using Java Servlet and Apache Tomcat Server. MySQL 5.0 was used as the back end.
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Figure 1. Proposed System Architecture
3.1 System Design
The system design is considered under three sections namely: the front end, the business logic and the back end. These are as discussed in the following sections.
3.1.1 The Front End/Client Component
This presented the interface to interact with the application. This client component resides with the customer who is browsing through the company‘s webpage and it runs on a computer. The interface is user friendly since the customer will be interacting with familiar components such as: Checkboxes, Radio Buttons, Buttons and Password fields and Text fields. The functionalities of the system include:
Registration of customers and assigning usernames and passwords. Customer Help Desk: This is a service that provides technical help and support for customers. It navigates the customers through the following service options: Product Rating page: This allows the customer to rate a company‘s product. Feed Back page: This includes an on-line questionnaire about product failures and speed of company‘s response to customer request for support services. Download page: This interface presents the various hyperlinks that activates downloads of necessary resources for customers.
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Technical Support Request page: This allows the input of necessary information the customers might have to supply in order to request for the technical team to fix a problem. Chat page: This allows online interaction between a customer and a client for real-time assistance via instant messaging. Self Help page: This is a self help tool that a customer can use to fix a problem.
The tools used are Macromedia DreamWeaver 8 and Macromedia Flash. The web pages are saved as JavaServer page and compiled using Tomcat‘s Jasper, which automatically converts text-based document into a servlet and processes customer‘s request.
3.1.2 The Business Logic
The business logic considered the details and flow of the design of the Customer Service and Support Portal. Customer Registration was the first step to gaining access to other privileges available on the web portal. For every service available, a registered customer would need to key in his username and password created during registration in order to gain access to his account. However, an unregistered customer could be allowed to use a chat subsystem to communicate directly with the customer. This is similar to a prospective customer making enquiries with the hope of doing business with the company.
Chat Subsystem Customer interactions with the Customer Relations personnel via instant messaging were achieved using Servlets. Different Servlets handle specific tasks such as: Session initiation, launching of customers into any Chat room specified, handling posting of information between the two parties and saving information about Chat sessions. The Chat server is implemented as a single class with a single instantiation because it has a large amount of associated state and a fair amount of code that would otherwise have to be repeated. Implementing the chat server as a servlet provides a simple way for one object to make it available via Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) communication technique. By being an HTTP servlet, it has built-in HTTP support. HTTP chat clients post their messages to the server using the HTTP POST method. The servlet takes the new message from the Text Input component when the user hits Enter buttons, URL-encodes the message, and posts it to the servlet as a message parameter, as shown in Figure 2. A sample code of the Chat session listener is as shown below.
Chat Session Listener package classes.chat; import java.io.PrintStream; import javax.servlet. ServletContext; import javax.servlet.http.*; public class SessionListener implements HttpSessionAttributeListener { public void attributeRemoved (HttpSessionBindingEvent httpsessionbindingevent) { String s = httpsessionbindingevent.getName ( ) ; HttpSession httpsession = httpsessionbindingevent.getSession ( ); if ("nickname".equalsIgnoreCase (s) ) { String s1 = (String) httpsessionbindingevent.getValue ( ) ; if (s1 != null { ServletContext servletcontext = httpsession.getServletContext ( ) ; if (serveletcontext != null) { object obj = servletcontext.getAttribute ("chatroomlist") ; if (obj != null)
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{ ChatRoomList chatroomlist = (ChatRoomList) obj; ChatRoom chatroom = chatroomlist.getRoomOfChatter (s1); if (chatroom != null) { Object obj1 = chatroom.removeChatter (s1); String s2; if (obj1 != null) s2 = ( (Chatter) obj1).getName ( ) ; } } } else { system.out.println ("ServletContext is null");
} } } } public SessionListener ( ) { } }
Figure 2 UML Diagram for Chat Subsystem
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Other Design Considerations are the Product Rating, Service Request and Customer Feed Back subsystems. These are processed by Servlets and the results presented based on the Customers‘ input. Customer Training is also provided online via video tutorials, while software ‗demos‘ and other resources are made available by downloading them.
Online Self Help: This is designed as a dynamic FAQ, that produces solutions based on the ‗symptoms‘ identified by the Customer while using the Company‘s product.
3.1.3 The Back End
In order to ensure data persistence, MySQL was used as to manage and store all the information handled by the application. The system had 4 tables that stored Customer Registration Information, User names and Passwords, Schedules and Appointments, Product Rating, and Customers‘ opinion about service. Data persistence is of utmost importance because these data are essential for the application and need to be called up at any time even after the application has been closed and reopened.
3.2 System Implementation
The application was developed on a Microsoft‘s Windows XP operating system environment. After the coding process, each servlet is compiled with the javac command. These Servlets (which are java classes) are then mapped to various pages that are displayed in the course of running the application. This enables dynamic and flexible responses generated by the web server depending on the user‘s request. This web application is targeted at all personal computers. The server side application could be deployed on any web server, while providing the appropriate driver for the database-application connectivity. For this application to run on any system, the following requirements must be met. Hardware Requirements: Minimum of 20GB Hard drive, Minimum of Pentium III, Minimum of 256MB RAM. Software Requirements: Web Servers, Database Server, Java Runtime Environment
In order to deploy the application, the Servlets and JSPs were packaged. This was achieved by setting up a directory structure for packaging and creating a Web Archive (WAR) file for Servlets and JSPs. A WAR file is a web application archive that contains servlet classes, JSP files, HTML files, image directories, JAR files, XML configuration files, and other resources that a web application depends on. The WAR was deployed on the web container like Tomcat in order to make the web application available to the container's users. A WAR file is like a ZIP archive. One is able to deploy the web application into a web container by deploying the WAR. The interfaces of the system are as shown in Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Figure 3: Home Page
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Figure 4: Help Desk
Figure 5: User Account Page
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Figure 6: Appointment Scheduling Page
4. CONCLUSION
Customers over time have complained over the absence of proper customer service and support in most of the companies in Nigeria. This has been attributed to the mentality or background of the average Nigerian. However, other reasons stem from the fact that aside from the day-to-day deadlines that have to be met by the company in view of its sole goal: profit maximization, it becomes difficult to be able to prioritize or even take more seriously the opinions of the customers or their needs after they have purchased a product. The design and implementation of the project was successful. Users of the portal can be benefit from it, if fully implemented and customized to meet the business needs peculiar to different companies.
The strength of this system lies in the availability of a wide range of interdependent options which the customer can choose from and that give him the best possible solution. The components of this system aside Customer Registration are: Online Requests for Technical Support, Product Rating and Customer Opinion poll, Online Help Desk, Product Training, Resource Download and a Self help troubleshooter.
REFERENCES KHURANA A. 2011. What is Commerce? Available at: http://ecommerce.about.com/od/ecommerce-Basics/f/what-Is-Ecommerce.htm accessed on 17th November, 2011. SPILLER, P. AND LOHSE, G.I. 1998. A classification of internet retail stores. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 2(2): 29 – 56. TURBAN, E. 2002. Electronic Commerce: A Managerial Perspective. Prentice Hall.
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Mobile Phones as Mobile Banks and Credit Outlets: The Experience of Farming Households in Rural Southwest Nigeria
ISAAC B. OLUWATAYO†† University of Ibadan, Nigeria [email protected]
Abstract There is no gainsaying the fact that the increasing awareness and penetration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) into the developing world has transformed the economy of these countries. In fact, the banking sector in many of these countries is not spared. In Nigeria for instance, there has been a lot of awareness and transformation brought about by the ICTs‘ revolution. Notable among these is the introduction of mobile and e-banking especially into the banking industry. This paper was based on the study conducted to examine the extent to which mobile phones have aided financial services among farming households in rural southwest Nigeria. Data for this study were collected from a random sample of 360 farming households in Ekiti and Osun States. Descriptive analysis of socioeconomic characteristics of respondents showed their average age to be 45 years with only about one third (34.7percent) of them having tertiary education. While about 38.3 percent had no formal education, the rest had primary (15.8 percent) and secondary (11.2 percent) education. Distribution of respondents by the kind of services conducted through their mobile phones indicated credit acquisition in the form of transfer of recharge cards which are later converted into money as the most priotized. Next to this is getting information about personal account information (debiting and crediting) while making business transaction through mobile phones was the least patronised of all the services provided. A tobit analysis performed to ascertain the correlates of usage of mobile phones as mobile banks and credit outlets revealed age, years of formal education, membership of cooperative society/social groups, gender, poverty status, household size, location and access to power (electricity) as important determinants. While the coefficients of age (p<0.10), years of formal education (p<0.01), membership of cooperatives/social groups (p<0.01) and were positive, those of gender (p<0.05), poverty status (p<0.01), household size (p<0.00), location and access to power were negative. Thus, as the years of formal education increases, the more the usage of mobile phones as mobile banks/credit outlets and membership of cooperative society enhances the likelihood of farming households‘ usage of mobile phones for these services. However, as household size increases, income per-capita declines (poverty level soars) and this to a large extent reduces the likelihood of using mobile phones as outlet for financial transactions. It is therefore suggested that effort should be geared at building capacity of farming households through education. This is because education enhances earning potentials of farmers through adoption of modern farming practices and technologies. Also, cooperative activities should also be encouraged among farming households to increase awareness since cooperative societies and social groups provide avenues for training on new inventions and other technologies that can better enhance the living conditions of members.
Key words: Credit outlets, Farming households, Mobile banks, Mobile phones, Poverty, Southwest Nigeria
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IJCIR Reference Format:
Oluwatayo, Isaac B. Mobile Phones as Mobile Banks and Credit Outlets: The Experiences of Farming Households in Rural Southwest Nigeria. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6 Issue 1, pp 52-59. http://www.ijcir.org/volume6-number1/article6.pdf
†† Author‘s Address: Isaac B. Oluwatayo, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Ibadan, Nigeria E-mail: [email protected]. "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IJCIR must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee." © International Journal of Computing and ICT Research 2012. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, ISSN 1818-1139 (Print), ISSN 1996-1065 (Online), Vol.6, Issue 1, pp. 52-59, June 2012.
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1. INTRODUCTION
The demand for mobile phones across the African continent is huge and rapidly expanding everyday. Evidence abounds that less than 3 percent of the population had access to a telephone in 2001, but the number of mobile subscribers today has grown tremendously (ITU, 2004; The Economist, 2009b). In 2006 mobile phones became the first communications technology to have more users in the developing world than the developed world (CGAP/GSMA 2009), with more than 60 percent of all subscribers located in developing countries (ITU 2007). In fact, the story of the growth of mobile telephones in Africa is one of a tectonic and unexpected change in communications technology. From virtually no connectivity in the 1990‘s, over 60 percent of Africans now have mobile phone coverage, and there are now over ten times as many mobile phones as landline phones in use (Aker and Mbiti, 2010).
Mobile phones affect the lives of billions of people around the globe, including the poor. Changing mobile technology has revealed opportunities and allowed nearly three billion people without bank accounts (Christen, Rosenberg, and Jayadeva, 2004) to access financial services. This is not unconnected to the fact that mobile phones work easily, requires minimum investment and minimum training and they can perform a variety of functions. They are particularly valuable in rural areas where no bank branches exist and the prepaid system of low denomination scratch cards is perfectly matched to the economic situation of many Africans (poor households), and it is recognised that mobile phones offer potentially cheap means of communicating and transacting business. Another key feature driving growth in mobiles is that they are mobile, and inherently suited to remote areas with poor transportation and communication infrastructures.
Today, the advancement of mobile technologies has provided opportunities for financial service providers to introduce new financial innovations. This rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) has affected the banking industry globally. In fact, a number of studies have shown the usefulness and otherwise of mobile banking in facilitating financial transaction between banks and their customers. For instance, while Kleineen et al (2004) found perceived usefulness to be less significant in explaining the adoption of mobile financial services, Luarn and Lin (2005) however concluded perceived usefulness to be a significant factor in the adoption of mobile banking services. Also Matila, (2003) found risk to be a very significant factor in adopting mobile banking services. In general, mobile banking is a powerful way to deliver savings services to the billion people worldwide who have a cell phone but no bank account. It has a number of advantages over traditional banking methods as it breaks down geographical constraints; it also offers other advantages such as immediacy, security and efficiency (Mas and Kumar, 2008).
However, in spite of the rapid infiltration of mobile phones into the economy of many developing countries, a sizable number of inhabitants of these countries still do not have access to banking services. In Africa, the majority of the population has no access to banking services, with only 20 percent of African families having bank Accounts (Davi, 2008). According to CGAP (2010), around 50 percent of households in the world do not have access to banking services and a report by the Central Bank of Nigeria for instance, states that 65 percent of Nigerians lack access to credit facilities (CBN 2008). The limited access to financial services in Africa stems particularly from deficient infrastructure, physical-geographical isolation or inaccessibility, financial illiteracy, all of which culminate into exceedingly high cost of providing banking services. Also, sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest deposit institution penetration in the world standing at an average of 16.6 percent compared to 63.5 percent in developing countries (Financial Access, 2010). This level of penetration gives 166 banks per 1,000 adults for the region.
Meanwhile, rural households (especially farmers) need effective and efficient financial services because of emergencies, unexpected opportunities, and major life events like marriage or death and to smooth their consumption needs (Bass and Henderson, 2000). As accessibility to good financial services (banking services in particular) provide an important safety net for poorer households and plays a critical role in financing productive activities that can foster farm and non-farm rural enterprises, this paper therefore examines the extent to which farming households employ/patronise mobile phones as mobile banks and credit outlets with a view to unraveling benefits inherent in bringing financial services to the doorstep of these farmers so that the much clamoured financial inclusion of the rural dwellers becomes a reality in the study area
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
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The spread of mobile phones across the developing world is one of the most remarkable technology stories of the past decade. Indeed, across the developing world, there are probably more people with mobile handsets than with bank accounts (Porteous, 2006). Scholarly research on the adoption and socioeconomic impacts of m- banking/m-payments systems in the developing world is scarce (Maurer, 2008). Even less attention has been paid to the social, economic, and cultural contexts surrounding the use of these systems. A final crosscutting issue involves the introduction of ―trust‖ as a factor in the analysis of m-banking/m-payments use. Early evidence and intuition alike suggests that ―trust‖ plays a role in use (Ivatury, 2004; Porteous, 2007). For example. users feel more comfortable with at least some face-to-face contact and assistance while using an m- banking/m-payments system like Wizzit (Ivatury & Pickens, 2006). Luarna and Lin (2005) proposed a modified technology acceptance model that included a trust variable—perceived credibility—to predict m-banking adoption in Taiwan. Yet their modification also included another variable, self-efficacy, and a form of trusting one‘s self. Many researchers have investigated and agreed that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are valid constructs in understanding an individual‘s intention to adopt information system (Guriting and Ndubuisi, 2006; Luarn and Lin, 2005; and Wanget et al, 2003). Hence, there is a possibility that mobile banking remains unknown to and underutilised by bank customers. Moreover, perceived self-efficacy is also important in understanding behavioural intention to use information system as expressed or given attention to by Venkatesh (2000) and Compeau and Higgins (1995). Normative pressure is also found to be an essential variable in information system research (Amin et al. 2006 and Nysveen et al. 2005).
Earlier studies have also shown the usefulness of mobile banking in facilitating the financial transaction between banks and their customers (Kleijeen et al., 2004) found perceived usefulness to be less important in explaining the adopting of mobile financial service. Leishman (2009) showed that mobile money brings unbanked customers operating in a cash economy into the formal sector. Once they have developed trust in mobile money services, they start demanding traditional financial services, such as savings accounts (i.e. customers who are previously unbanked start to ask for savings after they have become sophisticated users of mobile money and can be handed over to banks and traditional banking services). Mobile money therefore has the important function of bringing unbanked customers into the formal financial system. From the foregoing, it is very clear that mobile money services in developing countries promote access to financial services and enhances the financial inclusion of the poor.
3. METHODOLOGY 3.1 Study Area, Data Sources and Sampling Method The study was carried out in Southwest Nigeria. Southwest Nigeria is one of the six geopolitical zones of the country. It is the region where one of the three major ethnic groups (The Yorubas) reside. Southwest Nigeria is made up of six states comprising Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo. The region is fairly urbanized but the larger part of the states are rural. Ekiti and Osun States were randomly selected for this study. Primary data were collected from a random sample of 360 households through administration of structured questionnaire. Respondents were however selected from 6 rural communities based on probability proportionate to size. Two local government areas were selected out of the sixteen local government areas in Ekiti State (Ekiti South West and Ifelodun/Irepodun) and four local government areas (Ayedaade, Atakumosa, Irewole and Ife North) were selected out of thirty local government areas in Osun State. Information collected include: a. Socioeconomic characteristics - age, gender, marital status, household size, years of formal education, primary occupation, income, participation in non-farm work, access to credit e.t.c. b. Mobile phones related data – mobile phones in use, network subscription, activities performed on phones and other communication facilities e.t.c. c. Infrastructure data – Data on available and accessible infrastructural facilities e.g. roads, water, schools, electricity, health care, post office, recreation e.t.c.
3.2 Analytical Techniques In addressing the objectives of the paper, both descriptive statistics and tobit regression model were employed in analyzing the data collected i. Descriptive statistics: This entails the use of statistical tools like frequencies, tables, mean e.t.c to analyse, describe and summarise respondents‘ socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. ii. Tobit regression model: The tobit regression model as in Greene (2003) was employed to ascertain the determinants of using mobile phones as mobile banks and credit outlets. The Tobit model employed takes the form; * Yi X i i
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Where, Y * is the index of respondent‘s use of his/her mobile phone and this is defined as; Y * = Number of uses into which each respondent puts his/her mobile phone All available means of banking money and accessing credit in the study area
Explicitly, the explanatory variables are as described below:
X1 = Age of respondents (years)
X2 = Gender (male = 1, female = 0)
X3 = Marital status (married =1, others = 0)
X4 = Years of formal education
X5 = Household size
X6 = Primary occupation (farm = 1, non-farm = 0)
X7 = Extension contact (yes = 1, no = 0)
X8 = Poverty status (poor =1, non-poor = 0)
X9 = Membership of cooperatives (yes = 1, no = 0)
X10 = Access to power (Naira)
i = Error term
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Socio-economic Characteristics of Respondents A number of socioeconomic characteristics of respondents were considered and the results were presented in Table 1. Respondents‘ distribution by age showed their average to be 45 years with more males (64.7 percent) than females (35.3 percent). This implies that a sizeable number of respondents are still very young and in their active working age. A closer look at the marital status of respondents showed that most of them are married with few that are single, divorced and widowed. Distribution of respondents by household size revealed mean household size to be 7 and this is a fairly large household size. The implication of this large household size is that income per capita will be low and this will invariably lead to increase in respondents‘ poverty level. Educational distribution of respondents showed that only about one-third of the respondents are educated up to tertiary level while about 38.3 percent had no formal education. On the poverty status of respondents, about 70.3 percent are poor living on less than one dollar daily with only about one-quarter belonging to the non-poor category. Meanwhile, occupational distribution of respondents revealed the relative importance of farming to other occupation in the study area. This is because about 86.4 percent are engaged in farming with only about 13.6 percent engaged in non-farm work. Also, distribution of respondents based on their membership of cooperative society showed that about 56.7 percent are members with about 43.3 percent non-members.
Table 1: Socioeconomic characteristics of respondents Variable Categories Frequency Percentage 1. Age < 30 41 11.4 31-40 105 29.1 41-50 92 25.6 51-60 77 21.4 > 60 45 12.5
2. Gender Male 203 64.7 Female 197 35.3
3. Marital status Single 69 19.2 Married 214 59.4
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Divorced 45 12.5 Widowed 32 8.9
4. Household size 1-3 54 15.0 4-6 206 57.2 7-9 43 11.9 10-12 37 10.3 > 12 20 5.6
5. Educational Status No formal education 138 38.3 Primary 57 15.8 Secondary 40 11.2 Tertiary 125 34.7
6. Membership of cooperatives Yes 204 56.7 No 156 43.3
7. Extension contact Yes 288 80.0 No 72 20.0
8. Poverty status Poor 253 70.3 Non-poor 107 43.5
9. Access to power (electricity) Yes 191 53.1 No 169 46.9
10. Primary occupation Farm 311 86.4 Non-farm 49 13.6
Source: Author’s computation from survey data
4.2 Usage of Mobile Phones in Rural Southwest Nigeria As depicted in Table 2, respondents were asked about the different kinds of services performed on their mobile phones and the responses obtained are as shown in the table. It is very clear that most of the respondents transfer credit through texting of recharge cards of different denominations to either friends or relations which are later converted into cash to perform some other transactions be it for the owner of the mobile phone or for the receiver. Closest to this is getting personal account information especially for those operating accounts in some of the banks either in their neighbourhood or in city centres. The reasons for this being that the banks are the ones sending these messages and this is more or less at little or no cost to the mobile phone users. However, those using mobile phones to send general messages are the next to those receiving information on their personal account and the least among them are those using handsets to transact business of buying and selling and this might be unconnected with the poor state of infrastructural facilities and the lack of enabling environment for this kind of activity to thrive. However, it must be noted here that the result presented in Table 2 do not include those using their mobile phones for multiple purposes. In other words, most of the mobile phone owners use their handsets for two or more of these services and what is depicted in Table 2 is the most priotized in terms of mobile money services.
Table 2: Distribution of respondents by services performed on mobile phones Variable Frequency Percentage Credit acquisition/transfer 146 40.5 Getting personal account information 77 21.4 Transacting businesses 11 3.1 Checking e-mails 19 5.3 International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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Networking 24 6.7 Photography 18 5.0 Sending general messages 49 13.6 Others 16 4.4 Total 360 100.0 Source: Author’s computation from survey data
Determinants of Usage of Mobile Phones as Mobile Banks and Credit Outlets The result of the tobit regression model performed to ascertain some correlates of using mobile phones as mobile banks and credit outlets are shown in table 3. From the table, it was revealed that age, years of formal education, membership of cooperative society/social groups, gender, poverty status, household size and access to power (electricity) are very important determinants. While the coefficients of age (p<0.10), years of formal education (p<0.01), membership of cooperatives/social groups (p<0.01) and were positive, those of gender (p<0.05), poverty status (p<0.01), household size (p<0.00) and access to power were negative. Thus, as the age of respondents increase and their years of formal education increases, the more the usage of mobile phones as mobile banks/credit outlets. This is because, as one grows in age, the more the experience and the exposure that one get and since education enlightens and broadens ones horizon, the higher the likelihood of respondents with tertiary education employ the use of mobile phones for these services as against those with no formal education. In the same vein, membership of cooperative society provides avenue for training and education which will invariably have a positive effect on respondents‘ usage of mobile phones for these services too. However, as household size increases, income per-capita declines (poverty level soars) and this to a large extent reduces the likelihood of using mobile phones as outlet for financial transactions. Also, lack of access to power (electricity) reduces the likelihood of respondents using mobile phones for these services. This is due to the fact that whenever, the battery of mobile phone is low or empty, it becomes very difficult to communicate or perform any function with it.
Table32: Tobit result showing determinants of usage of mobile phones as mobile banks and credit outlets
Variable Coefficient Standard error Age 0.1725* 0.1131 Gender 0.5448** 0.2507 Marital status 0.1685 0.2905 Years of formal education 0.1864*** 0.0706 Household size -0.4088*** 0.1560 Primary occupation 0.6102 0.5399 Extension Contact 0.2636 0.2501 Poverty status -0.3182*** 0.0725 Membership of cooperatives 0.0575* 0.0313 Access to power -0.1625 0.2496 Constant 0.6120 0.6716 Log likelihood = -97.244593, Number of Observations = 360, Prob > chi2 = 0.0007 *Coefficients significant at 10%, **Coefficient significant at 5%, ***Coefficients significant at 1% Source: Author’s computation from survey data
5. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS The paper focused on the extent to which mobile phones were being used as mobile banks and credit outlets among farming households in rural southwest Nigeria. Analysis of data collected from a random sample of 360 respondents showed that the average age of respondents is 45 years with more males than females. Educational distribution of respondents revealed that only about one-third were educated up to tertiary level with more than half of those surveyed having an average household size of seven, an indication depicting that most of the respondents are poor with low per capita income. Occupational analysis of respondents showed that farming is still the highest employer of labour providing livelihood for over 75 percent of those survey and this further depict the relative importance of farming in the study area. Result of the probit regression model however indicate age, educational status, household size, gender, membership of cooperative society as important correlates of respondents using mobile phones as mobile banks and credit outlets.
Also, on the services performed with mobile phones by respondents, transfer of credit in the form of sending recharge cards which are later converted into money (cash) is the most patronised and the least among these services is transacting business on phone and this might not be unconnected with the low level of education of International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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respondents the poor state of infrastructural facilities in the study area. It is therefore concluded that the use of mobile phone for these services are still very low is the study area and in order to enjoy the benefit inherent in the use of mobile phones for these services, the following recommendations are made: - Effort should be geared at building capacity of farming households through education. This is because education enhances earning potentials of farmers through adoption of modern farming practices and technologies. - Cooperative activities should also be encouraged among farming households to increase awareness since cooperative societies and social groups provide avenues for training on new inventions and other technologies that can better enhance the living conditions of members. - Government at the local level should intensify its effort at improving on the existing state of infrastructural facilities in the study area. This will help create an enabling environment for good service delivery and reduce transaction cost of performing these tasks.
REFERENCES AKER, JENNY AND ISAAC MBITI 2010. "Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa" Journal of Economic Perspectives. BASS, J. AND HENDERSON, K. 2000. The Microfinance Experience with Savings Mobilization (Innovations in Microfinance, Technical Note No. 3. Weidemann Associates). Available: http://www.microfinancegateway.org/files/23287_technical_note_3.pdf. CBN 2008. Annual Report and Statement of Accounts; Abuja: Central Bank of Nigeria. CGAP/GSMA. 2009. ―CGAP/GSMA Mobile Money Market Sizing Study‖ [as presented in GSMA. 2009. ―Mobile Money for the Unbanked: Annual Report 2009.‖Page 1]. CONSULTATIVE GROUP TO ASSIST THE POOR (CGAP) 2010. Financial Access 2010. The State of Financial Inclusion Through the Crisis. Washington D.C.: CGAP. COMPEAU, D. R. AND HIGGINS. C. A. 1995. Computer self-efficacy: Development of a measure and initial test. MIS Quarterly 19(2), 189-211. DOVI, E. 2008. ‗Boosting Domestic Savings in Africa‘, Vol. 22, No. 3, www.un. To invest more, countries must tap assets now outside the banks http//www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec. FINANCIAL ACCESS 2010. Sub-Saharan Africa Factsheet, CGAP-World Bank, www.cgap.org/financialindicators. GURITTING, P AND NDUBUISI, N. O. 2006. Borneo online banking: evaluating customer perception and behavioural intention. Management research news. 29 (1/2), 6-15. ITU (INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION UNION 2004. African Telecommunication Indicators (Geneva, Switzerland :International Telecommunication Union (ITU), www.itu.int/ITU- D/ict/publications/africa/2004/index.html). ITU (INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION UNION 2007. World Information Society Report 2007 (WISR) (Geneva, Switzerland: International Telecommunication Union (ITU), www.itu.int/osg/spu/publications/worldinformationsociety/2007/index.html).. IVATURY, G. 2004. Harnessing Technology to Transform Financial Services for the Poor. Small Enterprise Development, 15(4), 25-30. IVATURY, G. AND PICKENS, M. 2006. Mobile phone banking and low-income customers: Evidence from South Africa. Washington, DC: Consultative group to assist the poor (CGAP) and the United Nations Foundation. KLEIJNEN M. WETZELS M. AND DE RUYTER K. 2004. Consumer acceptance of wireless finance. Journal of financial service marketing. 8 (3) 206-217. LEISHMAN, PAUL 2009. ‗Understanding the Unbanked Customer and Sizing the Mobile Money Opportunity‘. In Mobile Money for the Unbanked, Annual Report 2009. LUARNA, P. AND LIN, H. H. 2005. Toward an understanding of the behavioral intention to use mobile banking Computers in Human Behavior 21(6), 873-891. Owen, John and Anna Bantug-Herrera (2006): Catching the wave technology: Mobile Phone Banking and Text-A-Payment in Philippines http://www.chemonics.com/projects/contect/GCash.pdf. MAS, I. AND KUMAR, K. 2008, ―Banking on Mobiles: Why, How, and for Whom?‖ QCGAP, No. 48. MATTILA, M. 2003. Factors affecting the adoption of Mobile banking services. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce. 8 (1) (Online) available at http:www.arraydev.com/commerce/jibc/os06-04.htm MAURER, B. 2008. Retail electronic payments systems for value transfers in the developing world. Retrieved 27 May 2008, from Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine: http://www.anthro.uci.edu/faculty_bios/maurer/Maurer-Electronic_payment_systems.pdf. NYSVEEN, H, PEDERSEN, P. E. AND THORBJORUSEN, H. 2005. Explaining invention to use mobile chat services. Moderating the effect of gender. Journal of consumer marketing 33 (5), 247-256. PORTEOUS, D. 2006. The enabling environment for mobile banking in Africa. London: DFID. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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PORTEOUS, D. 2007. Just how transformational is m-banking? Retrieved 10 January, 2008, from http://www.finmarktrust.org.za/accessfrontier/Documents/transformational_mbanking.pdf.
VENKATESH Y AND MORRIS, M. G. 2000. Why don‘t men ever stop to ask for direction gender, social influence and the role of technology acceptance and usage behaviour MIS Quarterly, 24 (1) 115-139. WANG, Y. S., WANG Y. M., LIN H. H. AND TANG, I. I. 2006. Determinant of user acceptance of internet Banking. An Empirical Study. International journal of services industry management 14 (5), 501-519.
Acknowledgement: ―This paper was presented at The First nternational conference on mobile money (AMMREC2012) whose theme was ‗Evidence of Financial Inclusion Through Mobile Technology‘, organised by the Africa Mobile Money Research (AMMREC) initiative of the School of Computing and Informatics (SCI), University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, April 2 -3, 2012‖.
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Obstacles in Bridging the Digital Divide in Tanzania
ELIAMANI SEDOYEKA‡‡ Faculty of Computing, Mathematics and Information Systems The Institute of Finance Management (IFM) Dar es Salaam, Tanzania [email protected]
Abstract
This paper presents the primary findings of a study carried out in Tanzania. The study aimed to investigate the main obstacles in addressing digital divide initiatives in this developing country. Data collection techniques such as questionnaires, group discussions and interviews were employed to gather data used in this study. More than 20 rural areas were also visited to study the state of communication facilities in the country. The aim of the paper was to investigate the digital divide initiatives from technical, economical, social, cultural, habitual and institutional perspectives. The results of the study suggest Low financial power to be the key source of the gap which results into blocking the bridging initiatives and ultimately impairs the technical ability to provide connectivity to users. The willingness of people to adapt the use of the Internet still remains a challenge. The move to bridge the divide will hugely rely on government initiatives and support. This paper gives the reader the current situation in Tanzania, pointing out different challenges facing the initiatives to bridge the divide. It explains the effects that financial differences in society have on digital divide. It also explains how a significant lack of technical means increases the gap to information access. Although the study was conducted in Tanzania, the findings may be generalized to other developing countries with similar economical, geographical and demographical settings/framework
Keywords: Digital divide, Tanzania, developing countries, rural connectivity, access challenges. ______
IJCIR Reference Format:
Sedoyeka, Eliamani. Obstacles in bridging the digital divide in Tanzania. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Special Issue Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp 60-72. http://www.ijcir.org/volume6-number1/article7.pdf
I. INTRODUCTION
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is an umbrella that covers many forms of technology related to information transfer. These technologies are now playing a key role in the modern world by processing and sharing information. However, developing countries are still far behind their developed counterparts in the way these technologies are being utilised (Shih et al., 2008). The old electronic means of communication transfer and ways of receiving data are now becoming inefficient to fulfil the world‘s rapacious demand for access to communication. The type of information being transferred via radios, televisions and magazines is only a one- way type of information. In television, for example, viewers can only watch and listen to what is being broadcast.
‡‡ Author‘s Address: Eliamani Sedoyeka, Faculty of Computing, Mathematics and Information Systems, The Institute of Finance Management (IFM), Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Email: [email protected] "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IJCIR must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee." © International Journal of Computing and ICT Research 2012. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, ISSN 1818-1139 (Print), ISSN 1996-1065 (Online), Special Issue Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 60-72, June 2012.
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At the moment, the developed countries are utilising the flexibilities offered by modern technologies to access the information they want. This is not the case for communities in developing countries. The number and type of communication options available in developing countries are limited, contributing to communication inequalities between the developed and developing countries (Brown, 2007). Connecting million users worldwide, the Internet is becoming the modern way of communication by facilitating the connections to a vast amount of information. The lack of access to the Internet service means lack of access to a large deposit of information and their associated benefits (Thomas and Parayil, 2007, Acilar, 2011). It is also viewed that, while the digital divide gap between developed countries and developing countries is increasing so is the gap between communities or social groups within countries (Talukdar et al, 2011).
The motivation behind this study was to examine the challenges faced by the initiatives aimed at bridging the digital divide in developing countries. The study aimed at understanding the key issues which act as obstacles in bridging the digital divide initiatives and the extent to which these issues emit the challenges.
Tanzania is an East African country located at the coast of the Indian Ocean with a population of nearly 40 million. The country has witnessed a slow economic growth rate of 6% in 2009 compared to 2009 where the economy grew by 7.5%. Since the country‘s population also grew, the per capital income was Tsh. 693,185 (USD 433)/- per day (USD 0.93). The communication sub activity recorded the highest economic activity in the past six years by growing by 21.9% in 2009 compared to 20.5 in 2008, contributing 2.1% in GDP (National Economic Survey, 2009).
Despite the growth in the communication sector, Tanzania is facing a number of technical and non-technical challenges. Sedoyeka and Hunaiti (2008) in their recent work on WiMax realized the importance of adopting the new technological approach with a modern technology. They pointed out a number of challenges that face ICT industry in Tanzania (fig 1)
Tanzania ICT Problems Causes
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literacy
that
public
service
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Figure 1. Major reasons of a low number of Internet users in Tanzania (Sedoyeka and Hunaiti, 2008) After the introduction (part I), this paper will discuss the concept of the digital divide by visiting relevant studies on the subject in part II. Later, the approach and methodology used to conduct the survey is explained (part III), which includes the key relevant findings in part IV. Challenges and opportunities uncovered by the study and proposal of their solutions are presented in part V. Part VI will conclude this paper.
2. RELATED STUDIES ON DIGITAL DIVIDE
The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) defines the digital divide as the unequal access to information and communication technologies. ―The Digital Divide separates those who are connected to the digital revolution in ICTs and those who have no access to the benefits of the new technologies‖ (WSIS, 2005). WSIS acknowledged that the digital divide happens across all levels of life, on the international level and at the community level. WSIS also puts emphasis on turning the digital divide into digital opportunities for all, especially for the marginalized communities who face the risk of being left behind even more. WSIS also identified a number of goals concluding with objective number 10, which is to ensure that more than half of the world‘s population has ICT access. This is because ICT has the potential to accelerate economic growth of a International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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country (Dound and Ho, 2012). WSIS names governments, the private sector, civil society and international and regional institutions as the key partners (WSIS, 2005).
Studies suggest that governments have a major role to play in bridging the digital divide. Even in developed countries, policies set by governments are more likely to address fundamental sources of inequalities than providing computers to low-income households or subsidizing Internet access in rural areas (Ono and Zavodny, 2007). In developing countries the role of governments is even bigger, especially in assisting ICT diffusion in these areas. Shih et al. (2008) argue that ICT diffusion in developing countries is highly linked with ICT investments in the areas, and that policies need to be changed with emphasis on increasing government loans and spending into ICT projects.
There are different ways in which governments can participate and influence the use of ICT. Governments can adopt mobile government (m-government), Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS), government call centres, public information kiosks and many other means to get closer to citizens. These will not only improve government efficiency, but also take information closer to citizens and directly help in reducing communication inequalities (Singh and Sahu, 2008). Governments can also invest in libraries and enable them to provide access to computer and Internet access for those who do not have those facilities (Aqili and Moghaddam, 2008). ICT also plays an important role in achieving sustainable social-economic development in transitional economies hence bridging the gap will also impact the economy (Odamtten and Millard, 2009, Acilar, 2011). However, all these possibilities often face a number of challenges which is what this paper addresses.
Although the theoretical account of digital divide is still lacking (Wei et al, 2011), digital divide is part of a larger developmental problem in which developing parts of the world are deprived access to ICT and the benefits that come with it (Thomas and Parayil, 2007, Yamin, C et.al., 2011). The perspective that digital divide is a technological access problem is a limited view of the actual problem since digital divide has different social, political, geographical and economical determinants (Nishida and Pick, 2011). In their study conducted in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala in India, Thomas and Parayil (2007) concluded that having access to ICT does not guarantee general community wellbeing. Presenting their six-step strategy to tackle the digital divide problem, Fusch and Horak (2008) also argue that digital divide cannot be solved only by tackling technological issues, but also by emphasising the societal need to change. They cited South Africa as an example with advancement in technology, yet the society is highly digitally-divided because of social-ideological issues. Kvasny and Keil (2006) looked into the issues (challenges) that arise even after access to the Internet is being provided. They looked at two case studies in two American cities, Atlanta city and LaGrange, that attempted to bridge the divide in their communities. They recommend that the prerequisite requirement should be made which should include general education like basic arithmetic and simple algebra. Both initiatives certainly help a number of people to get connected and they can be improved and adapted elsewhere.
The way that Internet materials are presented can sometimes become a source of divide to some marginalised groups (Wei and Hindman, 2011). The majority of web contents are mostly text-based, which becomes a barrier to people with learning disabilities (McKenzie and Clin, 2007). Even for those without disabilities, a lack of local content repels some users from the Internet. Local content would help to reduce the increasing gap between the rural and urban divide by giving information to schools, local NGO‘s, entrepreneurs and the community (Akca et al., 2007). In many developing countries, however, stakeholders miss out in many ways, as the reporters from developing countries do not have the means to participate in online reporting or creating local content (Brown, 2007). It has now been witnessed that digital inequality affects many areas such as healthcare, education, business and general wellbeing of communities (Denizard-Thompson et.al, 2011, Yamin et.al, 2011, Barth and Veit, 2011, Elzawi and Wade, 2012)
Initiatives and studies that aim to reduce communication inequalities and the digital divide often face opposing views. On one side, there are those who view the digital divide from policy studies. Kling (1999) observed that the policy study approach takes the system rationalist perspective, where the emphasis is on technical capabilities, cooperative adoption, computer skills and an understanding of the potential benefits of ICT. On the other hand, there are those who view digital divide as a collective subject involving cultural, social, political and historical factors (Nishida et al., 2011, Fero et al, 2011). Literature has shown that researchers and scholars view the digital divide problem differently. Kvasny et al., (2002) approach the subject from both technical and social perspectives. They argue that the digital divide cannot be adequately understood without taking into consideration social and cultural issues. Using Bourdieu‘s theory of cultural and social reproduction, they propose a model for examining digital inequality, which has five major dimensions: Technical Means – this refers to the connectivity and availability of physical access points, technical know- how and related hardware like computers and printers, telephones and other technical issues. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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Cultural Capital – this is the knowledge acquired through cultural expression learned from the family socialization and education institutions. Economic Capital – These are the issues that have financial implications in an attempt to get connected, for example the purchase of a computer. Social Capital – This refers to the social networking and relationships benefits one can get from participating in certain social networks. Institution Reform – These are the issues that mediate all of economic, political and social life. These include bodies that enable and support the initiatives to bring the Internet access.
A number of researches have pointed out that a multidimensional approach is needed to address digital divide (Fero et al, 2011). This paper takes a similar approach by looking into Tanzanian challenges using Kvasny‘s proposed framework and adds another dimension, habitus, into it. This is because it was discovered that individual or societal attitude towards ICT highly affects their interest and participation into ICT related activities. It was observed that that although Kvasny discussed the matter in her other paper (Kvasny and Keil, 2000), her model (Kvasny 2002) omitted the habitus issues. The author believes these issues are of great importance in addressing barriers of bridging the divide especially in developing countries. This study points out six main angles from which digital divide challenges in developing countries could be tackled. It gives the current situation in Tanzania underpinning the problems found on the ground with literature from a number of studies. It gives a picture of the effects the financial differences in society have on digital divide. It also explains how a significant lack of technical means increases the gap to information access. The study also examines cultural, social and habitual issues and their effects on Tanzanian local communities whilst emphasising the role of institutional reforms. Since the study was conducted in a typical developing country, it is believed that the findings are also relevant to other developing countries, which shares economical, geographical and demographical aspects with Tanzania. All the issues studied can be found in the majority of developing countries especially African countries.
3. METHODOLOGY
The study involved different data gathering techniques mainly questionnaires, group discussions, interviews and site visiting. The activities under this study are categorized in two phases and were conducted in four regions over a period of two months. Phase one started with public lectures, which introduced the issues regarding the digital divide. The lectures were followed by group discussions in which participants were encouraged to discuss issues which limited their access to the Internet. The issues discussed included availability and accessibility of the Internet services, price, level of quality they experienced and their desired quality. Other issues included helpline facilities, social and cultural issues. The participants also raised some issues and aired their opinions and suggestions. A total of 8 public lectures and 15 group discussions were conducted. Participants were also asked to fill the questionnaires, which gathered specific data about them, their experience with ICT and other issues. More than 800 people participated in this phase, most of them living in urban areas but originating from rural areas.
Phase two of the study involved travelling around the country to see the way ICT is being used in everyday life. It was necessary to see the extent of the digital divide mostly amongst Tanzanians. A researcher mainly visited Internet cafes as these are the service points for most Internet users in Tanzania due to lack of public places such as public schools or libraries to access the Internet. At these places, we conducted informal interviews with staff and customers. The respondents were asked about their experiences, motives, challenges and other things that affect them whilst accessing the Internet. The researcher also visited local government offices and interviewed government officials about their plans on ICT. Different qualities of service tests were also conducted on these areas to investigate the quality of service experienced in these areas. During this phase, the study opened doors to online community participants who joined and completed the online questionnaires. More than 200 participants participated in the second phase.
4. RESEARCH FINDINGS
Most participants of this study were hailing from Dar-es-Salaam, majority being students and professionals. About 72% of the participants were in their mid twenties with a monthly income of less than Tsh300,000 ($200) (fig 2 and 3). Of the 800 participants who filled the questionnaires, males were the dominant group comprising of 73%. This could have been caused by the nature of sample used where majority were computing and ICT students, the situation which is common in Tanzania.
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Figure 2: Participants‘ age Figure 3: Participants‘ income
The findings of this study are organised around the main issues considered to have been limiting factors to bridging the digital divide. The researcher analysed the challenges of the digital divide from a number of perspectives reflecting what were encountered in the field. This article approaches the obstacles from (1) economic capital, (2) technical means and (3) habitus, (4) social capital, (5) cultural capital, (6) institution reform perspectives. The findings are presented around these dimensions.
4.1 Economic capital Economical difficulties have a major impact on most Tanzanians‘ everyday lives. Most of the participants pointed out high costs as amongst the main obstacles hindering them from getting access to the Internet. Internet users in Tanzania are categorized into two major types with different cost challenges. The first category is comprised of users who get connected from homes or offices. The main, expenses of this category are the initial connection charges and service charges. The initial cost is equivalent to half a month‘s salary of a middle-class employee, and that does not include the cost of computer, which exceeds a monthly salary. The service charges can either be monthly or pay as you go. About 35% of the participants pay their service charges per mega byte (MB) monthly while the remaining 65% have opted pay as you go approach. When participants were asked about their perception on the prices, figure 2 reports that about 57% considered the prices to be either expensive or very expensive
The second and largest group are those who use Internet cafés for accessing the Internet. This group consisted of average and minimum wage persons, and students. Again when this group of participants were asked about the way they perceive the Internet service charges, 57% of participants found the prices to be expensive, the findings which are presented in figure 4
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Price Perceptions
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Figure 4: Public access participants expressing their views about the service prices
Participants who access the Internet at Internet cafés identified high computer prices and the initial cost for Internet connections as the main limiting factor for the access of Internet service from their homes. The study found a direct relationship between income and frequency of usage. For example, more than 90% of participants who earn more than Tsh500,000 per month access the Internet daily, compared to 12% of those who earn less than 100,000 per month (see figure 5). The study highlighted the financial constraints as one of the main reasons for communication inequality in Tanzania.
Figure 5: The relationship between income and frequency of usage
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4.2 Technical means Access to computer can be a vital factor to access into information pool (Gyabak and Godina, 2011). The state of the ICT infrastructure is one of the biggest challenge fuelling digital divide (Velaga et al., 2012). Internet connection requires a computer connected to the network which ultimately has an Internet connection. However, only a small number of the population in Tanzania live in areas where there is adequate ICT infrastructure. The main network operator, Tanzania Telecommunication Company (TTCL), provides connectivity to most of the urban areas, where less than 20% of the population reside. This leaves a good number of community members unconnected. As a result of the poor state of the network, many organisations rely on v-SAT links to get connected to the Internet. Previous studies such as Ngalinda and Mutagahywa (2005) report that, only 2% of all households in Tanzania had at least one working computer in 2005. Although the number of computers in households and those connected to the Internet has increased since then, their number is still negligible compared to the country‘s population. The old wired PSTN network poses economic infeasibility to many of the Internet service providers; hence they do not take the service to remote areas.
This study shows that most of the Internet users get access from the Internet cafés (76.2%), while only 16.4% access the Internet from home. There has been an increase in the number of people who access the Internet via their mobile telephones. With more than 11 million mobile phone subscribers, a good number of people have the technical means to get connected to the Internet. Figure 6 shows that more than 31% of participants access the Internet using their mobile phone. Although this can be viewed as a positive move, its impact to the actual use of the Internet is still under scrutiny since only a few applications can be run via a mobile phone. Most of the participants pointed out that they use their mobile phone for chatting and reading mails only. However, with the rapid change in Internet technologies, the computer is still the main tool for accessing the word‘s information through the Internet.
Means of Access
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Fig 6. Means of access to the Internet: Majority use Internet cafes.
The availability of Internet cafés varies with geographical location. Those who live in urban areas have access to these cafés when needed, unlike those who live in rural areas where there are no Internet cafés. This introduces the inequality caused by the lack of technical means based on geographical locations. Given the lack of the major tools (computer and connected network) for getting connected to the Internet, most Tanzanians are technically unequipped to face the communication challenges.
4.3 Habitus This refers to the individual or societal attitude towards ICT (Kvasny and Keil, 2000). Habitus is the willingness of an individual to engage in computer usage or any technological applications. Some of those who participated in the group discussions expressed a view that ICT was not for them. Some pointed out that they only use the International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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Internet for chatting and it does not have any strategic impact in their daily lives. When the age of the participants was considered it was learnt that the more mature and less ICT-literate participants, the higher their reluctance in learning computers. In face-to-face interviews, many participants expressed their fear of being seen as computer illiterate as a major factor which keeps them illiterate. Some perceive modern innovations such as mobile phone applications as specially designed for the younger generation. Some of the participants do not send text messages simply because they find the procedure complex, and they would rather make a phone call. The lack of local content on the Internet is considered by the older generation as another reason for not embracing the Internet. Since most of the contents accessed through Internet are from outside the country, and mostly the western ones, Internet is sometimes viewed as one of the pillars of westernization and moral decay of the local societies.
In Tanzania, there are few community centres where people can go to learn the basics of computer applications. Many rely on expensive commercial training centres and institutions, which brings the issue back to economics. The government in its daily operations has also contributed much in limiting the adaptation of ICT. Through interviews with the government officials, the study revealed that most of them do not even have e-mail accounts. Some of them pointed out that they simply do not see the need for them. This situation sends a negative message to the public, as the government is considered as the mirror. Despite these barriers, most of the participants expressed optimistic opinions after being told how ICT, and especially the Internet, could positively impact their lives. Most of the professional participants did not have a problem in recognising and appreciating the power of the Internet. Students were considered as the group of participants who reflected the most positive view about ICT. It came into the researcher‘s light that more than 85% of students often use ICT for research and education purpose as presented in figure 7 below.
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Activities on the Internet % Normal % Pro Others ______Virtual places (like second life)
Adult contents Social networks (hi5, MySpace)
Online news
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Education and research
Watching movies, video clips
Activities Listening to music
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Figure 7: Participants showing which activities they mostly do on the Internet
4.4 Social capital These are the social issues that would in one way or the other influence individual participation in ICT. These include social networks like a group of friends, church members, or members of a local football club. In their case study, Kvasny and Keil (2000) met participants who went to community computer centres to socialize with friends. Participants also shared knowledge, exchanged cooking recipes, job leads and other general information. Social networks introduce many people into computer centres and other public places (like Internet cafés). The social nature of these networks transforms these places into comfortable places for new comers (Liff and Steward, 2001).
However, since there are few Internet users in Tanzania, the impact of social networks that influence introducing new users to the Internet remain minimal. For example, many families do not even have a single member of their family using the Internet. Most of the people in the rural areas do not know what the ‗Internet‘ means. This situation leaves some networks without a ‗seed‘, which would introduce that network to the Internet community. This leaves some communities unaware of the Internet, therefore widening the inequality amongst local communities. Even amongst those who use the Internet, only a few use it as a social networking tool. This study shows that only 22% of our participants identified accessing a social networking site as one of the five main activities they perform on the Internet (fig. 7). This however can be viewed as a technological and awareness problem, since 70% of the participants use the Internet for chatting, which means they are connecting
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with friends. A total of 32% use the Internet to listen to music, while 27% watch video and music clips. Given time, more Tanzanian Internet users will engage in social networking and other social-related issues, raising the number of Internet users.
In the interviews conducted, many participants confessed that if it were not for their friends, they would probably not have known about the Internet. Some were introduced to computers, then to the Internet by members of their family. Social networks also introduce barriers into the spread of ICT, especially the Internet. Some churches, for example, view the Internet as a source of moral degradation and discourage their members from using it. Some participants pointed out that their church strongly disagrees with most of the content found on the Internet. Given the lack of local content, some of the arguments by these churches could not be ignored. Generally, it was noted that social capital introduces both the opportunities and challenges in addressing the digital divide.
4.5 Cultural capital This refers to the issues linked to an individual‘s background and social and economic class. It is a collective value of knowledge, skills and investments in education that influence success (Kvasny and Keil, 2000). Although it can be enhanced through education, cultural capital will automatically be generated in one‘s everyday life. Normally, culture is influenced by many things including economic and social factors and religious belief. It is normally passed from one generation to another through societal channels and values. Some cultures are born with time. For example, some families have a culture of watching television during and after dinner. In local communities in which ICT is still a new phenomenon, the ‗ICT‘ ways of doing things does not exist.
Although cultural capital was not pointed out frequently in this research, there was evidence that the participants did not have a culture of accessing the Internet. Even for those who have access at home, only 41% actually use the Internet on a daily basis, and 35% use it twice a week (figure 8).
Access at Home vs Frequency of Usage
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Fig 8: The frequency of use for participants who access the Internet from home
Adopting and blending the Internet into communities might take time. Some government officials, for example, confessed that they had not even switched on their computers in months. Cultural beliefs also play a role, as they define a way of life for most Tanzanian communities. Some participants believe that western countries invented the Internet for bad intentions. Some communities have colonial wounds still affecting them, and there are stories still being passed through generations about the dangers of embracing western ways such as music, lifestyle, attitudes towards other people, and now, the Internet. Although this could be used to the advantage of helping to bridge the divide, cultural capital still possesses some challenging questions on how to convince Tanzanians to adapt the Internet as an important tool in the modern world.
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4.6 Institution Reforms These are the positive changes that collectively affect the existence and growth of ICT in the society. They include socio-political and policy-making bodies which regulate ICT development. During the discussions, the study found that all the participating parties in ICT development require major changes in the way they participate in reducing information inequality. For example, the policies available do not stimulate the spread of ICT awareness in the country. Improving the policies so that they can support ICT initiatives will have a major impact on many communities. Participants pointed out that the policy change towards ICT adaptation should start with the government itself. If government departments were to improve their efficiency by becoming computerised with Internet connection, it may attract admiration from the public and local businesses and small organisations that will also want to be computerised.
Community Centres Most of the participants pointed out the importance of the government in playing a leading role in reforming and improving ICT. As the cost of computers and Internet connection is too high for the majority of citizens, community centres could be a big step forward. The few established community centres have proved to be a success. For example, Sengerema Rural Access Point is a telecentre initiated by the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to provide Internet access to a remote area called Sengerema in Tanzania. The telecentre is housed in a local community centre and staffed by volunteers from a local information technology women‘s group. The centre offers an Internet café, computer classes, typesetting, desktop publishing, and other services such as photocopying (Tan, 2007). Similar projects could be initiated to remarkably reduce the communication inequality between rural and urban communities.
Schools Most of the government (public) secondary schools do not teach students computer studies. Few private and expensive secondary schools teach computer studies (Sedoyeka and Hunaiti, 2008). The students graduating from both secondary schools are combined at the higher education level. At this point, there is a clear difference between those who learned ICT and those who did not. There could be a chain reaction relating to social and cultural capital. Those who are now computer literate and use the Internet will induce those close to them, mostly family members, to join the Internet society. Reforming these institutions by introducing computer classes to at least all secondary schools will remarkably improve the country‘s ICT literacy level. This will also create an understanding and a greater demand for Internet access, and more people will join the Internet community.
Government Departments and Private Organisations These organisations could afford the transformation into the modern offices that apply ICT in their operations. Participants pointed out that these institutions could set an example which could be followed by other small organisations, especially those in rural areas. The government could also engage fully in spearheading the activities to bridge the divide. This could even be in the form of public awareness campaigns to promote ICT, and especially Internet use.
5. CONCLUSION
Bridging the communication access divide between the developed and the developing countries is as challenging as bridging the divide amongst the communities. This paper has presented the challenges faced by the ongoing initiatives to bridge the digital divide in Tanzania. It has presented the primary findings from the study conducted in the country looking into the causes as well as the obstacles in bridging the digital divide in the society.
The study has found that there is a digital inequality amongst local communities, economical dimensions being the main reason. Whilst Tanzania is considered poor and digitally disadvantaged compared to developed countries, the study found that the digital inequality also exists because of the financial differences between urban and rural communities. This led also to the technical perspective, where some communities do not have the means to access the Internet because of their geographical location. This has some implications on availability of services. Financial issues also impact the technical means a community will have access to Internet. Individuals cannot afford the purchase of hardware like computers, or the installation of Internet services. This has led to many turning to Internet cafés in urban areas, whilst those in rural areas are completely unconnected.
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The willingness of people to adapt the use of the Internet is one of the challenges. At an individual level, there is still no desire to embrace ICT and opportunities that come with it. Although culture could be used in a positive way, some still have worries. Stories about the implications of accepting western ways of life are making some individuals sceptical about technology, especially the Internet. Social capital was found to be a positive factor as it has contributed in bringing new members to the Internet community. Social links are, and can be, used to introduce the Internet to the members of the society. All the discussed issues will have to be supported by government departments and all other institutions responsible for bringing about the ICT change. With generally low GDP, community centres can provide opportunities for people to get Internet access and basic computer trainings. Institutional reform, which includes the change of attitude, priorities and proper plans, is expected to be the backbone of bridging the digital divide.
Economic factors also pose a main challenge. The technologies used at the moment pose financial barriers to many due to their high cost requirements. Communities will have to take an active role in finding ways of accessing the Internet locally rather than waiting for network operators or the government to do it for them. To achieve this, a new approach utilising cheaper but robust wireless technologies like WiMAX will have to be considered. Another approach that can be incorporated with WiMAX is community mesh networks using Wireless Fidelity (WiFi). The combination of mesh networks and community centres will reach many in rural communities and will revolutionise the efforts to bridge the digital divide.
REFERENCES ACILAR, A., 2011. Exploring the aspects of digital divide in a developing country. Issues in Information Science and Information Technology. Vol 8. AKCA, H. et al. 2007. Challenge of rural people to reduce digital divide in the globalized world: Theory and practice. Government Information Quarterly, 24(2), pp. 404. AQILI, S.V., 2008. Bridging the digital divide: the role of librarians and information professionals in the third millennium.(Report). The Electronic Library, 26(2), pp. 226. BARTH, M. and VEIT, D. How Digital Divide affects Public E-Services: The Role of Migration Background. Wirtschaftinformatik Proceedings, 2011. BROWN, A.M., 2007. Bridging the divides of online reporting. Accounting Forum, 31(1), pp. 27. DENIZARD-THOMPSON, N et.al, 2011. The Digital Divide at an Urban Community Health Center: Implications for Quality Improvement and Health Care Access. Journal of Community Health Vol 30 (3) DOONG, S. and HO, S., 2012. The impact of ICT development on the global digital divide. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications. ELZAWI, A. and Wade, S. Barriers to ICT adoption in quality of engineering research in Libya: how to bridge the digital divide? In: Proceedings of The Queen‘s Diamond Jubilee Computing and Engineering Annual Researchers‘ Conference 2012 FERRO, E., HELBIG, N., GIL-GARCIA, J. 2011. The role of IT literacy in defining digitaldivide policy needs. Government Information Quartely, vol 28 (1) FUCHS, C. and HORAK, E. 2008. Africa and the digital divide.(Author abstract)(Report). Telematics and Informatics, 25(2), pp. 99. GILLWALD, A. 2005, Towards an Africa e-Index: ICT Access and Usage, Research ICT Africa p 154 – 160. GYABAK, K., GODINA, H., 2011. Digital storytelling in Bhutan: A qualitative examination of new media tools used to bridge the digital divide in a rural community school. Computers and Education KLING, R. 1980. Social Analyses of Computing: Theoretical Perspectives in Recent Imerical Research. Computing Surveys, 12 (1). KVASNY, L. and KEIL, M. 2006. The Challenges of Redressing the Digital Divide: A Tale of Two U.S. Cities, Information Systems Journal, Vol 16. No. 1, pp. 23-53 KVASNY, L. 2002. A Conceptual Framework for Studying Digital Inequality, Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMhiCIS), Dallas, TX LIANG, TAN, 2007. Rural Communication Access Centres in Tanzania Lessons learned from setting up and managing IICD supported RCA Centres, IICD LIFF, S., and STEWARD, F.,2001. Communities and e-Community Gateways: Networking for Social Inclusion, In Community Informatics: Shaping Computer-Mediated Social Relations, L. Keeble and B. Loader (Ed.), Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA, 324-341. MCKENZIE, K. and CLIN, D. 2007. Digital divides: the implications for social inclusion, Learning Disability Practice, 10(6), pp. 16. National Economic Survey, 2009. [Accessed April 2012] (http://www.tanzania.go.tz/economicsurveyf.html)
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NGALINDA, I and MUTAGAHYWA, B. Towards an Africa e-index, ICT Access and Usage Across 10 Africa Countries. 2005. NISHIDA, T and PICK, JAMES B., "Spatial Analysis of the Global Digital Divide" 2011). AMCIS 2011 Proceedings NORIS, P. 2001. Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide, Cambridge University Press. ODAMTTEN, T., 2009. Learning from others within the landscape of "transitional economies" and the challenge in ICT development for African countries.(Report). AI & Society, 23(1), pp. 51. ONO, H and ZAVODNY, M. 2007. Digital inequality: a five country comparison using microdata. Social science research, 36(3), pp. 1135. SEDOYEKA, E., HUNAITI, Z. 2008. WiMAX: A Breakthrough for Underserved Area, Tanzania Chapter, Info 10 (2) p 34-36. SHIH, E. et al. 2008. IT diffusion in developing countries.(Information Technology). Communications of the ACM, 51(2), pp. 43. SINGH, A. and SAHU, R. 2008. Integrating Internet, telephones, and call centres for delivering better quality e- governance to all citizens. (Report). Government Information Quarterly, 25(3), pp. 477. THOMAS, J and PARAYIL, G., 2008. Bridging the Social and Digital Divides in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala: A Capabilities Approach.(Report). Development and Change, 39(3), pp. 409. TALUKDAR et al., 2011. Home Internet Access and Usage in the USA: Trends in the Socio-Economic Digital Divide. Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 28. VELAGA, N. et al., 2012. Transport poverty meets the digital divide: accessibility and connectivity in rural communities. Journal of Transport and Geograph, vol 21. WEI, K. et al., 2011. Conceptualizing and Testing a Social Cognitive Model of the Digital Divide. Journal Information Systems Research Vol 22 (1) WEI, L., HINDMAN, D., 2011. Does the Digital Divide Matter More? Comparing the Effects of New Media and Old Media Use on the Education-Based Knowledge Gap. Mass Communication and Society, vol 14 (2) World Summit on the Information Society, [accessed May 2012] (http://www.itu.int/wsis/index.html)
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Near Field Communication (NFC) Technology: The Future Mobile Money Service for Kenya
LAWRENCE M. MURIIRA§§ Department of Computer Science and Business Information Kenya Methodist University
NIMROD KIBUA Mobile Application Developer Peponet Technology
Abstract
NFC technology allows two active devices embedded with chips transmit small pieces of data between each other via short range wireless connection and at low speeds depending on the configurations. It is a low friction process because of the close range that two NFC enabled devices can setup a connection. With the launch of wallet NFC payments by Google Wallet, Samsung‘s Nexus S/Galaxy II powered by Android Operating System and NFC features in Nokia‘s C9 & 6212 Classic NFC powered by Symbian Operating System (OS), this will turn the devices running on these platforms into mobile payment systems. Wallet NFC will allow Smartphone users to pay for their transactions and such payment solutions are seen by OS developers, handset makers, banks and telecoms as a money making transaction.
Different modes of mobile payments have been well adopted in many parts of Europe, Asia and African especially Kenya. Users of Smartphone and ordinary mobile phones in Kenya pay for a wide range of services, and digital and hard goods using the three most commonly used modes of mobile payments; the premium SMS based transactional payments, direct mobile billing, and mobile web payments.
The main objective of this research paper was a feasibility study of the common primary modes of mobile payments, that is, premium SMS based transactional payments, direct mobile billing, mobile web payments and most importantly for this paper - the future opportunities of NFC; and how with the adoption of the technology in mobile payment solution may affect the customer, banks and the telecommunication industry in Kenya.
IJCIR Reference Format: Muriira, M. Lawrence. Near Field Communication (NFC) Technology: The Future Payment Service for Kenya. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp.73--83 http://www.ijcir.org/volume6-number1/article8.pdf
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1. INTRODUCTION
§§ Author‘s Address: Lawrence M. Muriira, Department of Computer Science and Business Information, Kenya Methodist University. Nimrod Kibua, Mobile Application Developer, Peponet Technology "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IJCIR must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee." © International Journal of Computing and ICT Research 2012. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, ISSN 1818-1139 (Print), ISSN 1996-1065 (Online), Issue Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 73-83, June 2012.
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Near Field Communication more commonly known as NFC, a brainchild of Sony and NXP semi conductors, is at the bottom of the wireless totem pole (Brad Molen, 2011).
Figure 1: Shows the ranges of global wireless connections in meters and their connection speeds in bites.
In the launch and the demos of Nexus S smartphone (manufactured by Samsung) by Google, NFC was defined as a technology that allows two active devices embedded with chips transmit small pieces of data between each other when they are in close proximity of 1CM-4CM via short range wireless connection and at low speeds of 106-414 kbps, depending on the configurations. It is a low friction setup because of the close range that two NFC enabled devices can setup a connection.
Remember RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)? That‘s the baby that started it all, and it's been around the world since the 1990s. RFID microchips are installed in reader tags that can be found in a number of everyday items, they‘re found in supermarkets, supply chain equipment, luggage tags, and even ―smart‖ ID badges. There‘s a RFID chip installed on credit card that, when tapped on the point of sale, will complete your purchase without needing to go the ―old-fashioned‖ route. Since NFC is based on the same technology, it‘s easy to mistake it for RFID. It takes the same type of chips and bumps it up a notch by adding computing power. That‘s why putting it on a phone is so critical; NFC not only needs the proper hardware (an antenna and controller) but the right software (OS platform that support the apps) as well (Brad Molen, 2011).
History: A summarized history of RFID, NFC‘s Parent Technology as presented by Omosola O., Nadja R. and Ievirt G III of the Faculty of Computer Science at Stanford University.
1940-1950 World War II: Secret development of practical radar by the several nations 1940: Term RADAR coined by the US Navy (Radio detection and ranging) 1948: Invention of RFID by Harry Stockman in his paper, Communication by Means of Reflected Power, Stockmans vision was before its time — ―before the invention of the transistor (1950s), the integrated circuit (late 1950s), and the microprocessor (1970s)
1950-1960 Research and Development (R&D) exploration of RFID technology
1960-1970 Development of RFID theory. Emergence of RFID applications. Late 1960s: first and most widespread use of RFID by the Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS), which was used to prevent shoplifting or book theft from the library
1970-1980 Flurry of interest into RFID from inventors, companies, academia, and government labs.
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Early adopter implementations of RFID. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Northwestern University, the Microwave Institute Foundation in Sweden, Raytheon, RCA, General Electric
1980-1990 Mainstream commercial RFID applications, especially in transportation and tolls, animal tagging, and personal access. 1987: Norway tests RFID toll collection. 1989: Dallas North Turnpike and the Lincoln Tunnel (between New York and New Jersey) test RFID toll collection.
1990-2000 Standardization by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) RFID widely deployed. 1991: first open highway electronic tolling system opens in Oklahoma.
2003-2004 NFC became an acceptable standard for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). NFC became an accepted Information Communication Technology and Consumer Electronics (ECMA) standard. The NFC Forum is created by Sony, NXP Semiconductors, and Nokia. It is a consortium which works to define standards on top of the ISO standards to ensure maximum compatibility across all implementation of NFC technology.
Mobile payment systems have evolved and in Kenya there are three primary mobile payment modes used to pay for a wide range of services, and digital and hard goods; the premium SMS based transactional payments, direct mobile billing, and mobile web payments. Mobile manufacturers have started building their mobile phones equipped with NFC chips embedded in the devices especially United States, Europe, Asia and the main drive of this advancement is contactless payments through NFC technology.
Problem Statement
The existing mobile payment modes in Kenya - have challenges to the customers (in terms of usage – the apps are menu based (‗sub-menus‘ are deeply nested) and apathy in purchasing of hard goods using this mode of payment), banks and telecom companies especially in the development of the mobile payment applications and with the existing infrastructure.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this paper was to research on the common mobile payments modes in Kenya and the probable future opportunities of NFC technology as mobile payment solution in Kenya.
Research Questions
1. What are the common mobile payment modes? 2. What are the future opportunities of NFC technology as mobile payment system to the customers? 3. What are the future opportunities of NFC technology as mobile payment system to the banks? 4. What are future opportunities of NFC technology as mobile payment system to the telecom companies?
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
The world is headed towards a cashless society and focus is on true mobility and financial service evolution years ahead. Anciently proven business methods of lending money and gold, which investors had in excess, pioneered the profitable act to charge interest against loaning their money and gold. This system led to the birth of banking and finance system, and actual money coming to play. Then there was birth of government and institution bonds which were traded for valuable things such as gold and was referred as Fiat Money or greenback. These bonds were a necessity to uphold up something against large sum of money for trade, then later that saw the introduction of cheques. The time of fiat money and cheques has come and gone and now it seems that even the time of credit cards and allied business activities may just come to an end with the birth of NFCs. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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Figure 2: Concept of NFC phone. A graphic courtesy of NFC Forum
NFC, or Near Field Communication, allows consumers pay for goods and services on the go through their mobile phones simply by touching or passing them over another NFC-equipped device such as a register or terminal. The funds themselves are transferred from the user‘s credit card account stored through the mobile phone (see Figure 2). According to Lance Whitney of CBS‘s news.cnet.com, a variety of industry players have kicked off their own efforts to tap into the potential of NFC. Google recently announced its own mobile payments service called Google Wallet that would let owners of NFC-enabled Android smartphones pay for items from participating merchants. Financial companies, such as Visa and Intuit, have also jumped onto the NFC bandwagon as have mobile carriers, such as Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile in the US telecom industry; NTT DoCoMo, SoftBank Mobile, WillCom and Felica in Japan telecom industry. The main drive of NFC is contactless payments though NFC and according to Koichi Tagawa the Chairman NFC Forum Sony it is broken down into three type of category:
(1. Card Emulator Mode
Figure 3: Illustrates how card emulator mode in NFC is used to pay for parking. A picture courtesy of NFC Forum
This mode emulates a traditional smart card (such as Mastercard or Visa) and makes this mode convenient because of the already existing setup for the contactless payments by these smartcards companies. Thus NFC enabled mobile phones becomes a credit card.
(2. Peer to Peer (P2P) Mode
Figure 4: Illustrates how NFC's P2P mode offers interaction between two phones.
P2P offers interaction between two active NFC-equipped devices such as phones. Using this mode, one could make payments to another individual or business just by tapping the two phones together, for instance,
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‗Sambaza‘ credit to a friend‘s phone by tapping the two NFC enabled phones. As the name implies, P2P could also go a long way in creating an enhanced multiplayer gaming experience.
(3. Reader Mode
Figure 5: Illustrates NFC's reader mode allows phone to read passive RFID tags on posters. A picture courtesy of NFC Forum
This allows the phone to read passive RFID tags on posters, stickers, and other stationary objects that contain certain types of information on them. For instance, you could tap your phone on the reader tag in a movie poster and it would begin playing the movie trailer, provide theater times, locations, and so on.
Pairing Bluetooth with NFC
NFC technology works in a similar manner to Bluetooth because the two technologies rely on close-range and secure transmission although NFC is faster to connect two active devices together but it cannot transmit as far as Bluetooth. Nokia is the only manufacturer who has taken advantage of pairing Bluetooth and NFC. Nokia‘s recent Bluetooth devices, like the Luna headset and Play 360 external speaker, can be paired with a NFC- equipped Nokia phone with just a mere tap, sidestepping the old Bluetooth pairing process that often required users to find deeply hidden settings menus, execute searches for the device, and then enter PIN codes. Pairing Bluetooth and NFC by tapping on the phone to setup a connection is known as Wireless Nirvana.
NFC SIM Card
NFC hardware could be embedded on SIM cards or MicroSD that could allow the same kinds of contactless pay on NFC-less phones. But the problem with this method is that these chips are laying underneath multiple layers of metal and plastic which could down grade the quality of the antenna‘s signal.
NFC could be developed for the following work, if already out or ready to go:
1. Monitor health, for instance, in Germany the diabetic read their blood sugar and their testing kit is NFC enabled and the data is transmitted to a NFC enabled mobile. Then the data is send to the patient‘s doctor and stored in a database, 2. Kenyan tourist and residents could unlock doors of their hotel rooms, pay their entry fees at various national parks gates and for their transport using their NFC enabled smart phones, 3. Initiate a video chat or multiple player games or join conference call for Chamas and fun loving youth 4. Share file between mobile phones such as doc, video and music. Some key players of interest to Kenyans in the NFC technology are:
1. Google – They introduced Google wallet, added NFC hardware to its Nexus S (a venture with Samsung) and also into their Gingerbread version of their Android OS, 2. Nokia – They also incorporated NFCs to their phones a few years ago in US, that is, their 6,131 on T- Mobile and also in their latest C7 already in the Kenyan market, 3. Mastercard - MasterCard is one of the pioneers of mobile payments and was instrumental in setting up a thriving infrastructure with Paypass in the US market. Enough time has passed for consumers to become accustomed to the concept of contactless pay, and the costs of setting it up on NFC enabled phones are a lot lower thanks to existing infrastructure. 4. Samsung/Visa - Visa has already been hard at work rolling out its mobile payment system worldwide, but Samsung has partnered up with the company to get London hooked up for the 2012 Olympics. An Olympic and Paralympic Games mobile handset will be available complete with a Visa-enabled SIM card. The idea is so crazy it might just work -- so long as the handset is offered at an affordable price, that is. International travellers will rely mainly on prepaid SIM cards to communicate during their Olympic visit, and we think having an inexpensive phone to go along with that SIM is a no-brainer.
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The Keys to Truly Interoperable Communications a publication by the NFC Forum indicates that, NFC forum was an initial gathering of three companies and has swelled to over 135 members representing manufacturers, applications developers, retailers, financial services institutions, governments, transport organizations, and non- profits. Working together, the Forum promotes the use of NFC technology in consumer electronics, mobile devices, and PCs by providing a highly stable framework for extensive application development, seamless interoperable solutions and extraordinary security. To meet that goal, the NFC Forum develops standards-based specifications that define NFC device architecture and protocols for interoperability
1. Encourages the use of NFC Forum specifications 2. Works to ensure that products claiming NFC capabilities comply with NFC Forum specifications 3. Educates consumers and enterprises globally about NFC NFC Forum-compliant products designed to work in concert with other wireless technologies, will offer intuitive access to content and services, making it possible for nearly any consumer to pay for physical goods, enter controlled environments like stadiums or transit stations like the modern railway systems Kenya is planning to build, and access digital services anywhere, at any time, using any NFC-Forum-compliant device anywhere, at any time.
The NFC Forum mission statement is as follows:
The Near Field Communication Forum was formed to advance the use of Near Field Communication technology by developing specifications, ensuring interoperability among devices and services, and educating the market about NFC technology.
The Forum now has 140 members: manufacturers, applications developers, financial services institutions, and more all work together to promote the use of NFC technology in consumer electronics, mobile devices, and PCs. The Forum‘s membership spans the full ecosystem of industries from electronics to finance to security and beyond. By pooling their expertise and their understanding of individual markets, Forum members have been able to develop the best possible solutions for advancing the use of NFC. Members have worked closely to forge a comprehensive set of common protocols and specifications from which many types of interoperable products and applications can be developed. All decisions are vetted by the voting membership to bring a wide range of perspectives to bear on the development of common protocols for basic links between devices, standards for interoperability based on common data structures and formats, and specifications for device-independent service delivery.
In future many phones will have NFC support if the technology becomes the mainstream in the next two or so years. Since early 2010, there has been an outpouring of original equipment manufacturers (OEM) support for NFC tech in phones and OS. Samsung will sell a NFC-equipped version of the Galaxy S II by the end of 2011; RIM announced that their Blackberry Bold touch 9900 will equipped too with NFC, as well as any devices using OS7 going forward; HTC is working on embedded chips into its hardware within the next 12 months and Apple is adding NFC technology in the iOS5 and future hardware built into the next iphones. A news report from Juniper Research, forecasts that global NFC mobile contactless payment transactions will reach nearly $50 billion worldwide by 2014. Following on from the Orange Mobile Payments service launch in the UK, 2011 and 2012 are expected to be banner years for NFC service rollouts. In researching the new report, Juniper concluded that prospects for NFC have improved markedly in the last half year 2011. This has resulted in a vibrant sector with significant potential to make peoples‘ lives easier by simplifying lower value payments whilst also offering a range of exciting retail possibilities including coupons and promotional offers. Together these elements form a compelling consumer proposition that will help to drive transaction frequency and value. Juniper sees 2011 and 2012 as "banner years" for NFC deployments. As more industry players start to roll out the necessary devices and technologies, the research firm believes consumers will gravitate to NFC not just to make mobile payments but also to download coupons, promotional offers, and product information. That capability will offer not just convenience to the customer but also greater sales potential to the retailers, notes Juniper.
3. METHODOLOGY
This research study reviewed relevant literature published on the common mobile payment modes in Kenya. The goal of this methodology was to give a deeper understanding or description of the transaction charges and limits to stakeholders of different mobile payment services and NFC‘s future opportunities as mobile payment system in Kenya.
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4. FINDINGS
4.1 Premium SMS/USSD payments
This mode of mobile payment is the typical end user payment process where:
a) User sends SMS with Keyword and unique number to a Premium Short Code. b) User receive a PIN (User billed via the short code on receipt of the PIN) c) Finally user enters PIN to get access to content or services.
4.1.1 Cost of Transactions
Premium SMS/USSD Baud Transaction Payments
a) M-Banking using USSD as follows:
(i) *667# for MPESA Transactions CO-OPERATIVE BANK OF KENYA *667# M-PESA Account Customer Transactions Tariff (KShs.) Ledger Fees Nil Minimum Balance Nil Account Opening Nil Requests & All Bank Balance 5/= Alerts Mini Statement 5/= All Alert 30/= Cash Deposit Transfer to Bank Nil* Cash Withdraw from 30/= Withdrawals Bank Pay Bills A/C to A/C 30/= Transfer Orange Money Account Transactions Customer Tariff (KShs.) Cash Deposit Transfer to Bank 400/= - 500/= Table 7: Cooperative Bank's M-Banking Tariffs using USSD.
* For the cash deposit process the charges in Table 4 will still apply because the customer is withdrawing from MPESA account to deposit to the bank account.
(ii) *522# for MPESA Transaction KENYA COMMERCIAL BANK M-PESA Account Transactions Customer Tariff (KShs.) Ledger Fees Nil Minimum Balance Nil Account Opening Nil Requests & All Bank Balance 30/= Alerts Mini Statement 30/= All Alert 30/= Cash Deposit Transfer to Bank 30/= Cash Withdraw from 30/=
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Withdrawals Bank Pay Bills A/C to A/C 30/= Transfer Orange Money Account Transactions Customer Tariff (KShs.) Cash Deposit Transfer to Bank 400/= - 500/= Table 8: KCB'S M-Banking Tariffs using USSD.
(iii) *325# Pesa PAP Transaction FAMILY BANK M-PESA Account Transactions Customer Tariff (KShs.)
Ledger Fees Nil Minimum Balance Nil Account Opening Nil Requests & All Alerts Bank Balance 5/= Mini Statement 5/= Other Requests 5/= Cash Deposit Transfer to Bank 35/= - 140/= Cash Withdrawals Withdraw from Bank 35/= - 50/= Pay Bills A/C to A/C Transfer 30/= Orange Money Account Transactions Customer Tariff (KShs.)
Cash Deposit Transfer to Bank 400/= - 500/= Table 9: Family Bank's Pesa PAP Trariffs
b) Ringtones are transacted at a minimum KShs5.00 above SMS premium rates and different service providers will use different USSD.
c) Multimedia such as wallpaper, pictures, music and animation are KShs10.00 above SMS premium rates and also different service providers will use different USSD.
d) News alerts and information requests using USSD are transacted at a minimum of KShs5.00 above the SMS premium rates.
4.2 Mobile Direct Billing
The customer uses the mobile billing menu option during a transaction and the customer‘s mobile account is charged for the service.
4.2.1 Cost of Mobile Payment Services
Transaction Charges and Limits (Kshs) Transaction Type Min Max MPESA AIRTEL ORANGE YU TANGAZA ZAP MONEY CASH
Deposit Money 50 70,000 Free Free Free Free Free Cash Withdraw 50 100 5 15 25 N/A N/A 101 2500 25 25 45 20 25 2501 5000 45 25 75 40 45 5001 10000 75 75 75 65 75 10001 20000 75 145 145 130 145 International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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20001 35000 75 170 170 15 170 35001 50000 75 250 195 N/A N/A 50001 70000 75 300 225 N/A N/A 70001 100000 75 N/A 225 N/A N/A Cash Transfers 100 2500 60 5 30 25 30 2501 35000 30 25 30 25 30 5001 10000 60 25 30 25 30 10001 20000 250 25 30 25 30 20001 35000 N/A 25 30 25 30 35001 50000 N/A 25 N/A N/A N/A 50001 70000 N/A 25 N/A N/A N/A 70001 100000 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A ATM Withdraw Charges 2001 2500 30 40 40 N/A N/A 2501 5000 60 55 40 N/A N/A 5001 10000 100 80 40 N/A N/A 10001 20000 175 175 40 N/A N/A 20001 40000 N/A N/A 40 N/A N/A Information on Transactions 5 1000 0 0 0 0 5 Change PIN 20 20 0 0 20 Show Balance 1 0 5 0 5 Buy Air Time 10 20000 0 0 0 0 0 Register SIM 0 0 0 0 10 Register Phone N/A N/A N/A N/A 20 Table 10: Mobile Payment Tariffs and Limits from different Telecom Companies
4.2.2 Cost of Mobile Banking Transactions
4.2.2.1 Equity Banks’ M-Kesho Service
EQUITY BANK M-KESHO Account Transactions Customer Tariff (KShs.) Ledger Fees Nil Minimum Balance Nil Account Opening Nil Requests & All Bank Balance 5/= Alerts Mini Statement 5/= Insurance 5/= Request Cash Deposit Transfer to Bank Nil* Cash Withdraw from 30/= Withdrawals Bank Pay Bills A/C to A/C 30/= Transfer
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Orange Money Account Transactions Customer Tariff (KShs.) Cash Deposit Transfer to Bank 30/= - 50/= Cash Withdraw from 30/= - 50/= Withdrawals Bank Table 11: Equity Bank's M-Kesho Tariffs.
* For the cash deposit the charges in Table 4 will still apply because the customer is withdrawing from MPESA to deposit to the bank account.
4. 3. Mobile Web Payments
According to CCK, the total number of Internet subscriptions was at 12.53 million by September 2011 and the number of Internet users was estimated at 14.3 million, out of those statistics ITU estimates that Kenya has 5.4 million mobile phone Internet users. Though in mobile web payments, use of Visa or MasterCard‘s (Credit cards) were not utilized well in Kenya and in Africa generally, and no statistics were provided.
4.4 Opportunities for NFC in Kenya
4.4.1 Customers
According to CCK‘s quarterly report for October 2011/January 2012, Kenya has 18.4 million Mobile Money Transfer subscriptions totaling to KES 56 billion as amount deposited and those subscribers pay for a wide range of services, and digital and hard goods. In future if NFC tech services were rolled out, in transactions that goods or services have to be paid for using NFC enabled mobile phones, the customers of these mobile payment solution using NFC in Kenya will benefit by having choices of payment either being debited directly from their bank account, that is, if banks adopt this technology or from their mobile money transfer accounts such as MPESA if the Mobile Services Providers will adopt this technology too. This will eliminate the process and cost (see Table 3 and 5) of transferring money from mobile account to bank account and vice versa.
The current mobile payment applications are ‗Menu‘ based Apps and the process of navigating through the menu is quite a challenge to most users of these services but with NFC it is a ‗0-click‘ process that only prompts a security PIN for the transaction to be complete and secure. This will enable customers buy hard goods from supermarkets, boutiques, electronic shops and cars show rooms /car bazaars. Most merchants in Kenya have not adopted transacting at the point-of-sale using the current mobile payment modes because the process is long and tedious.
4.4.2 Banks
This will be a new business opportunities for banks because the RFID infrastructure already exist in the ICT industry USA, Asia, Europe and some African countries, and their customers with NFC enabled phones will take full advantage of the situation where they (banks) don‘t have to rely on the mobile service operators for the payment services – the NFC enabled mobile acts as a credit card (see Figure 3). The banks will not have to rely on the terms and conditions of any mobile service provider (telecom) in order to provide mobile payment services, thus banks will have their own independent mobile payment service.
4.4.3 Telecommunication Companies (Mobile Service Providers)
In the 1st Quarter 2011/12 of the CCK‘s report shows that, the Kenyan telecoms industry has grown to 26.2 million costumers and with around 18.4 million mobile payment accounts, while banks have around 7 million accounts according to Central Bank of Kenya. While with 18.4 million mobile payment accounts, NFC is good business opportunity and a strategy for telecoms to have a competitive advantage over banks because with the ease of using NFC enabled phones customers will be able to purchase hard goods such as items bought from a supermarket or rental services over-and-above purchasing digital and services.
5. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
NFC technology has come to its maturity with big ICT and telecom industry players such as Google, Samsung and Nokia having embraced the technology. We are headed to an era of Mobile Wallet where cash value that can be stored on a card, phone or other electronic device that may be topped up. The term wallet is used because
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the card or phone is considered a replacement for the cash carried in a person‘s wallet (Frost and Sullivan, 2009). Thus this will enable Users of Smartphone and ordinary mobile phones in Kenya to pay through a ‗0- click‘ process for a wide range of services, and digital and hard goods.
With around 26 million mobile subscribers and Kenya‘s population is 39 million, it shows that more than half of the population owns a mobile phone. The three human basic needs are food, water and shelter but in Kenya there is a fourth one and that is communication. Half of the Kenyan population will benefit from the NFC technology if implemented by banks and the telecom companies. It will be easy for NFC to be implemented because banks already have the VISA card and Mastercard infrastructure in place while Safaricom has already laid down a VISA infrastructure where their customers can top-up their M-PESA Prepay Safari Card. Interesting is that this is a VISA and KENSWITCH branded card that is accepted both locally and internationally on all VISA/KENSWITCH terminals. This will ease mobile payments especially for hard goods and some services such as transport, even though M-Banking, Mobile money transfer and SMS/USSD payment transactions still exist.
More research can be done in the use of NFC technology in the transport sector especially the new modern railway line for commuters that Kenya is building in the near future at Syokimau. Also Implementation of NFC in ‗Smart Bus‘, Taxi/Cabs (especially in the Nairobi‘s CBD and its environment) and airport terminal for domestic or East Africa flights.
REFERENCES
BRAD MOLEN 2011, Engadget Primed: What is NFC, and why do we care? Reterived from http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/10/engadget-primed-what-is-nfc-and-why-do-we-care/ COMMUNICATION COMMISSION OF KENYA, QUARTERLY SECTOR STATISTICS REPORT May 2011. 1stQuarter January2011/2012. Retrieved from http://www.cck.go.ke/resc/downloads/ SECTOR_STATISTICS_ REPORT_Q1_11-12.pdf ITU 2010, National survey shows Kenyan Internet market heading towards ―critical mass‖. Retrieved from http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/newslog/ National + Survey + Shows + Kenyan + Internet + Market+Heading+Towards+Critical+Mass.aspx LANCE W. 2011, NFC mobile payments could hit $50 billion by 2014. Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20070015-93/nfc-mobile-payments-could-hit-$50-billion-by-2014/ LOUISE R. 2011, Need To Know: What‘s This NFC Business All About? Retrieved from: http://community.phones4u.co.uk/need-to-know-whats-this-nfc-business-all-about OMOSOLA O., NADJA R. AND LEVIRT G III 2011, The History of RIFD. Retrieved from http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts//cs181/projects/2010-11/NFCChips/rfid.html Journal articles FROST AND SULLIVAN 2009, Mobile Money Transfer Services in East Africa, Forst and Sullivan plc, London, 8-9. Conference Proceedings KOICHI TAGAWA 2010, NFC Payment and Behond. NFC Forum Barcelona Spain Februry 15, 2010. KOICHI TAGAWA 2011, NFC: Evolution Continues. NFC Forum in Monaca April 21, 2011. MIKKO SAARISALO 2011, NFC Certification Program, NFC Forum Monaco April 21 2011. NFC FORUM 2009, The Keys to Truly Interopertable Communication. Revision Date October 31, 2009.
Acknowledgement: "This paper was presented at The First nternational conference on mobile money (AMMREC2012) whose theme was 'Evidence of Financial Inclusion Through Mobile Technology', organised by the Africa Mobile Money Research (AMMREC) initiative of the School of Computing and Informatics (SCI), University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, April 2 -3, 2012".
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Teachers’ Awareness of Nigeria’s Educational Policy on ICT and the use of ICT in Oyo State Secondary Schools
O.F. ADEBOWALE*** Department of Educ. Founds and Couns. .. Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife [email protected]
DARE, N. O Federal Government Girls College, Ipetumodu [email protected]
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Abstract This study is designed to investigate the level of awareness of primary and secondary school teachers invited for a capacity building workshop on ICT of Nigeria‘s educational policy on ICT as well as its possible influence on the use of ICT for classroom teaching and learning. Two hundred volunteers (out of the 250 participants invited from all the Local Government Areas of the state) at an ICT training workshop organized for Oyo state (Nigeria) teachers participated in this study. Data was collected using a self-constructed and validated questionnaire titled ―Teachers awareness of Nigeria‘s educational policy on ICT‖ and the data were analyzed using simple percentage, t-test and ANOVA. The study found that only a small percentage of the respondents possess a high level of awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT, in fact, a considerable proportion of the respondents (35.1%) of the respondents were either completely ignorant of the policy or possess poor levels of its awareness. previous training which some of these respondents attended had no significant influence on their awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT. The study also presented some implications of this to ICTs use for teaching and learning purposes in the schools.
Key words: ICT policy, awareness, teachers, schools ______
IJCIR Reference Format:
Adebowale, O. F. Teachers‘ Awareness of Nigeria‘s Educational Policy on ICT and the use of ICT in Oyo State Secondary Schools. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 84-93 http://www.ijcir.org/volume6-number1/article9.pdf
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1. INTRODUCTION The Nigerian Federal Government approved a national IT policy in 2001 with the establishment of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), charged with the responsibility of kick-starting, coordinating and implementing the provisions of the policy (Ajayi, 2003). It also set up the Nigerian National ICT for Development (ICT4D) Strategic Action Plan committee to develop a new ICT policy for development as the ICT action plan/roadmap for the nation. However, the objectives of the policy and strategies designed to achieve them are essentially political and mildly technical, as education was mentioned just in passing (NITDA, n.d.).
*** Author‘s Address: O. F. Adebowale, Department of Educ. Founds and Couns, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria , [email protected] and Dare, N. O., Federal Government Girls College, Ipetumodu, Nigeria.. [email protected] "Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IJCIR must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee." © International Journal of Computing and ICT Research 2012. International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, ISSN 1818-1139 (Print), ISSN 1996-1065 (Online), Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp.84-93, June 2012.
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Although, Yususf (2007) stated that ICT policy initiatives since 1988 have been targeted at ensuring the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the Nigerian school system, Agyeman (2007) posited that the Federal Republic of Nigeria has no specific policy for ICT in education and Achimugu, Oluwagbemi and Oluwaranti (2010) confirmed that although as the mission, general objectives, and strategies of the national IT policy recognized the importance of ICT in education, the document has no sectored (vertical) application to education. Even, the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in distance education programs in Africa has not been encouraging. The authors acknowledged the fact that the policy has no specific special application to education and that while there are sectored applications for health, agriculture, art, culture, tourism; and governance, education is subsumed under human resource development. Also, Yusuf (2007) noted that although computer entered into the Nigeria‘s education system in the late 70‘s and early 80‘s, no concrete policy was evolved for its entry into the nation‘s education system until the evolvement of the National Policy on Computer Education in 1988 (Federal Republic of Nigeria, FRN, 1988). This document contained information on the application of computer at various levels of the country‘s education, and with issues related to basic objectives, hardware and software requirements. The document also comments on teacher training, specifically, for the secondary school level.
In recognition of the prominent role of ICTs in the modern world, the Federal Government of Nigeria in the National Policy on Education (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2004), further stated that government would provide basic infrastructure and training at the primary school, at the junior secondary school, computer education would be a pre-vocational elective, and a vocational elective at the senior secondary school. Adomi and Kpagban (2010) noted that 2004 was not the first Nigerian government attempt to introduce computer education in schools as, in 1988, the Nigerian government enacted a policy on computer education to establish pilot schools and diffuse computer education innovation first to all secondary schools, and then to primary schools. Unfortunately, the project did not really take off beyond the distribution and installation of personal computers (Okebukola, 1997; cited by Adomi and Kpagban, 2010). This author concluded that computer is not part of classroom technology in more than 90 percent of Nigerian public schools.
Specifically, Okafor and Umoinyang (2008) recalled that the National Computer Education Curriculum (NCEC) was developed for primary schools in 2002 by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), representing the first deliberate attempt to provide guidance to teachers on what should constitute basic computer literacy concepts and, skills that could be acquired at the Primary School Level. They reported that 97.9% of primary school teachers in Ekwusigo LGEA are computer illiterate. They have not acquired basic computer skills for teaching some concepts outlined in the National Computer Education Curriculum for Primary Schools and consequently, almost all the sampled teachers request for in-service training. They also reported that many primary schools and teachers do not have computers to practice on their own. However, Owhotu (2006) in Adeosun (2010) claims that, Nigeria has been in the lead within her sub-region in the integration of ICT tools with a number of initiatives; through collaborations with the government, by development partners, NGOs (international and local) and private corporations. Adeosun (2010) further highlighted some initiatives implemented to integrate ICT into Nigerian educational concerns as follows: a. SchoolNet Nigeria: This is an affiliate of SchoolNet Africa, launched in Nigeria in September 2001 and funded by Education Trust Fund. SchoolNet is engaged in the effective and sustainable deployment and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to enhance teaching and learning in the primary and secondary education sector. b. Education Trust Fund (ETF): This fund was developed from 2% of companies‘ profit tax which is distributed by the Education Trust Fund for educational purposes. Besides working with SchoolNet Nigeria, ETF also works on the Education Resource Center project which aims to create science labs, ICT laboratories, libraries and multi-purpose halls in schools and institutions of higher learning. c. Computers-in-Schools project: The project was kick-started in 2002 with the major objective to develop computer and technological literacy through the introduction of computers in secondary schools. A programme similar to this was reported to have been established by the Lagos state government in 2005 (Adebowale, Adediwura and Bada, 2009; Adebowale, Adewale and Oyeniran, 2010) d. One-laptop- per-child (OLPC): This project was launched in Nigeria in September 2006 (Adeosun, 2010) by the one laptop-per-child (OLPC) initiative in collaboration with the Nigerian government which has resulted in the provision of 100-dollar laptop for the e-secondary school project in Nigeria. Nigerian software developers are concentrating on integrating local curriculum content into the project, covering every subject in the school system from JSS 1-JSS 3 and then SSS 1-SSS 3. However, its effort may have been hampered by a law suit instituted by Lagos Analysis Corporation, also called Lancor a Lagos, US-based Nigerians owned company against OLPC in the end of 2007 for $20 million, claiming that the computer's keyboard design was stolen from a Lancor patented device. In January International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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2008, the Nigerian Federal Court rejected OLPC motion to dismiss Lancor's lawsuit and extended its injunction against OLPC distributing its XO Laptops in Nigeria. OLPC appealed the Court's decision but the Appeal is still pending in the Nigerian Federal Court of Appeals (Wikipedia, 2011). e. Other initiatives that deserve mentioning include the National Infrastructure framework for Open and Distance Learning, Virtual Library project, Microsoft IT academies, etc. Adeosun (2010) commented that ICT efforts in Nigeria are majorly driven by private initiatives, are often piloted, short term, donor-funded projects which give no room for continuity and sustainability. According to her, they often show pockets of efforts with no coordination, resulting in poor distribution of resources, duplication of efforts and lack of meaningful results. She argued that, although, there are often data supplied to support the impact of these programs, the percentage of beneficiaries is small compared to the number of school age children that require such opportunities.
According to Agyeman (2007), electrical energy problem motivated the Nigerian government to embrace the US$100 XO laptop computer project for Nigeria‘s 24 million public primary school children. He also reported that the government has ordered one million of these laptops, which can be cranked and do not need external power supply, for the primary school children. The laptop has in-built wireless networking, uses a 512 MB flash memory without a hard disk, and has two USB ports to which more memory or devices could be attached. It has a new user interface known as Sugar, and comes with a Web browser and a Web processor, but he concluded that the laptops are yet to appear in the country. Agbatogun (2010) asserted that across the globe, teachers‘ roles and power of influence cannot be undermined in the successful implementation and sustainability of any innovation or national reform (also Albirini, 2004; Baylor & Ritche, 2002 in Agbatogun 2010). He further argued that, the level of success in ICT integration in schools cannot be dependent on quality or sophistication of the technology, but rather on the teachers‘ readiness and positive disposition (Deniz, 2007).
Even in Nigerian universities, Ololube, Ubogu and Ossai (2006) found that most lecturers (85.9%) do not know about the IT policy in Nigeria, hence cannot focus any of their teaching towards the goal of the policy as the teaching curriculum does not instruct so. Research to ascertain if such knowledge exists at the secondary school level is either non-existent or very scarce. Consequently, this study is focused at ascertaining if secondary school teachers are aware of some of the provision of the available policy on ICT as it relates to education, using Oyo state as the research field. It also explored the possible influence of the teachers‘ awareness of the policy on classroom use of ICTs. Given the important roles teachers play in the implementation of most educational policies and in particular, that of integration of ICT into teaching and learning the study is designed to investigate the level of teacher‘ awareness concerning Nigeria‘s educational policy on ICT and its influence on the usage of ICT in teaching and learning in Oyo state schools. Consequently, three research questions and two hypotheses were drawn to direct the study. The research questions include: 1. What is the level of the teachers‘ awareness of Nigeria‘s educational policy on ICT? 2. Does teachers‘ attendance at previous ICT workshops/ trainings have any difference on their awareness of the policy? 3. What is the teachers‘ response to the ICT use parameters considered in this study?
The hypotheses include: 1. There is no significant influence of the respondents‘ perceived level of ICT skills on their awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT 2. Teachers awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT will not significantly influence ICT use in Oyo state schools
2. METHODOLOGY This was an exploratory study using a descriptive survey design. Two hundred volunteers at an ICT training workshop organized for Oyo state (Nigeria) teachers participated in this study. They were 250 teachers in all, invited from all the 30 Local Government Areas of Oyo state. Out of the 200 questionnaires distributed only those of 188 respondents were usable and hence used. Others were either not returned, defaced or were returned blank. The characteristics of the participants are presented in Table 1
Table1: Characteristic features of the study participants Characteristics Level Frequency Percent Sex Male 100 53.2 Female 80 42.6
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No response 8 4.3 Total 188 100.0 Age less than 20yrs 2 1.1 20-30yrs 14 7.4 31-40yrs 64 34.0 41-50yrs 43 22.9 Above 50yrs 58 30.9 No response 7 3.7 Total 188 100.0 Educational NCE 62 33.0 Qualification HND 6 3.2 B.A/B.Sc./B.Tech 35 18.6 B.Ed/B.A.Ed/B.Sc.Ed. 70 37.2 M.A./M.A.Ed./m.Sc.Ed 9 4.8 No response 6 3.2 Total 188 100.0 Teaching Less than 5yrs 17 9.0 experience 5-10yrs 54 28.7 11-20yrs 39 20.7 More than 20yrs 69 36.7 No response 9 4.8 Total 188 100.0 School taught Primary 97 51.6 Junior secondary 76 40.4 Senior secondary 11 5.9 No response 4 2.1 Total 188 100.0
The instrument used in the study is a self-constructed questionnaire titled ―Teachers Awareness of Nigeria’s Educational Policy on ICT”. It consists of two sections – A and B Section A collected information on participant demographics on one hand and their views on the use of ICT on the other while section B are made of items about different policy provisions of the Nigeria‘s educational policy on ICT to which respondents are expected to indicate their level of awareness. The instruments have been earlier pretested on 30 teachers made up of an admixture of primary and secondary school teacher in a separate workshop centre. By so doing the instrument was validated and reliability (Alpha) value of 0.867 was obtained while the test-retest reliability yielded 0.812. The questionnaire were administered to the participant early on the third day of the workshop such that they would have been conversant with what is meant by ICT and then be able to properly attend to all the items over a period of 45 minutes. Respondents who needed more time were allowed to submit at the end of the day‘s activity about 5hrs later. The data collected were analyzed using simple percentages, t-test and ANOVA.
3. RESULTS
Research Question 1: What is the level of the teachers‘ awareness of Nigeria‘s educational policy on ICT? To answer this research question, the teachers‘ responses to the section b of the questionnaire was scored in such a way that when they respond ―Highly aware‖ to an item they are scored 2, but if the response is ―Fairly aware‖, they are scored 1 and 0 if they tick ―Not aware‖. The resulting scores for each respondent is then cumulated and used to build a measure of awareness. The resulting cumulative scores are now categorized in such a way that a cumulative score of 10 or less is used to depict ―Complete ignorant‖, when the respondent scores 11 to 20 , s/he is said to possess ―poor level of awareness‖, 21 to 30 is said to be moderate level of awareness while scores greater than 30 are said to belong to the category of ―High level of awareness‖. The awareness level is then given a descriptive analysis and the result is presented in Table 2.
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Table 2: Teachers Level of awareness of Nigeria’s educational policy on ICT
Frequency Percent Completely Ignorant 9 4.8 Poor level of awareness 57 30.3 Moderate level of awareness 94 50.0 High level of awareness 28 14.9 Total 188 100.0
Table 2 shows the teachers‘ level of awareness of Nigeria‘s educational policy on ICT. It can be seen from the table that most of the respondents are just moderately aware of the policy. In fact a considerable proportion of the respondents (35.1%) are either completely ignorant of the policy or possess poor levels of awareness of the policy. Only 14.9% of the respondents were found to possess a high level of awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT.
Research Question 2: Does teachers‘ attendance at previous ICT workshops/ trainings have any difference on their awareness of the policy?
To answer this research question, the respondents‘ scores on awareness was subjected to a test of difference on the basis of whether or not they have previously attended such training/workshops in the past few years using a t-test statistic. The result is presented in Table 3
Table 3: Test of difference in teachers’ awareness of the educational policy on ICT on the basis of previous attendance at such training/workshops Attendance at previous Std. df t p workshop N Mean Deviation Yes 60 23.3833 6.72736 178 0.388 0.699 No 120 22.9417 7.42389
Table 3 shows the result of test of difference in teachers‘ awareness of the educational policy on ICT on the basis of previous attendance at such training/workshops. From the table, it can be seen that the t-value obtained in the test is 0.388 at p = 0.699. Since the p-value surpasses the 0.05 threshold, it can be concluded that there is no significant difference in the level of awareness of the respondents on the basis of whether they have attended such workshops/training in the past. This can be interpreted to mean that the previous training which some of this respondents attended had no significant influence on their awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT.
Research Question 3: What is the teachers‘ response to the ICT use parameters considered in this study? To answer this research question, the respondents‘ responses to items 15 to 24 in the section A of the questionnaire were given a descriptive analysis and the result is presented in Table 4.
Table 4: Teachers‘ response to the ICT use parameters in their schools Frequency Percent Will you like to use computer in your classroom No 6 3.2 teaching? Yes 181 96.3 No response 1 .5 Total 188 100.0 Can you use your personal computer in your No 48 25.5 classroom teaching Yes 131 69.7 No response 9 4.8 International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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Total 188 100.0 Do you have the ICT curriculum in your school? No 105 55.9 cant say 11 5.9 Yes 69 36.7 No response 3 1.6 Total 188 100.0 Do you have computers for students‘ use in your No 150 79.8 school? Yes 35 18.6 No response 3 1.6 Total 188 100.0 If yes how many students are normally allocated 1 1 .5 to use one computer? 10 9 4.8 15 2 1.1 20 5 2.7 30 6 3.2 4 1 .5 5 4 2.1 All 1 .5 Total 29 15.4 Are computers used for teaching other subjects No 166 88.3 in your school? cant say 4 2.1 Yes 10 5.3 No response 8 4.3 Total 188 100.0 How frequently are students given ICT-based Never 106 56.4 assignments? Sometimes 47 25.0 Always 15 8.0 No response 20 10.6 Total 188 100.0 Are computer skills taught in your school No 88 46.8 Yes 94 50.0 No response 6 3.2 Total 188 100.0 How will you rate your students‘ attitude to Repulsive 24 12.8 ICT Indifferent 38 20.2 Enthusiastic 75 39.9 No response 51 27.1 Total 188 100.0 Do you have an email address? No 132 70.2 Can‘t say 4 2.1 Yes 45 23.9 No response 7 3.7 Total 188 100.0
Table 4 shows the teachers‘ response to some ICT use parameters considered in this study. From the table it can be seen that generally, virtually of the teachers sampled (96.3%) like to use ICT in their daily classroom teachings and mostly (69.3%) indicated that they could use their own (personal) computer system for this purpose. However, only 36.7% indicated that they have the National Computer Education Curriculum (NCEC) in their schools and only 18.6% have computers for students‘ use. Out of these, only 0.5% of the respondents reported that their schools have one computer for 1, 4 or 5 student(s) while 2.7% indicated that 10 students make use of one computer in their school and 3.2% indicated that 20 students make use of one computer. In fact, another 0.5% indicated that in their school, there is only one computer for all the students. Also 88.3% of the International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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respondents claimed that computers are not used for teaching other subjects apart from computer literacy. Most of the respondents (56.4%) reported that they never give students ICT-based or related assignment but despite that, a good percentage (39.9%) of their students commonly demonstrate enthusiastically positive attitude towards the use of ICTs for learning.
Research Hypothesis 1: There is no significant influence of the respondents‘ perceived level of ICT skills on their awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT
To test this hypothesis, the respondents‘ scores on awareness was subjected to a test of difference on the basis of their perceived level of ICT skills using ANOVA. The result is presented in Table 5
Table 5: Test of influence of the respondents’ perceived level of ICT skills on their awareness of the country’s educational policy on ICT Sum of Squares df Mean Square F p Between Groups 390.314 2 195.157 3.845 .023 Within Groups 9084.703 179 50.753 Total 9475.016 181
Table 5 shows the result of the test of influence of the respondents‘ perceived level of ICT skills on their awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT. From the table it can be seen that the F-value obtained is 3.845 at p = 0.023. Since the p-value fails to attain the 0.05 level of significance, the hypothesis stands disconfirmed and it can be concluded that there is a significant influence of the respondents‘ perceived level of ICT skills on their awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT. The researchers explored the source of the difference in the respondents‘ awareness level on the basis of their perceived level of ICT skills. Consequently, a multiple comparison test was conducted via Tukey HSD. The result is presented in Table 6.
Table 6: Multiple Comparison test via Tukey HSD Mean Difference 95% Confidence Interval (I) a9 (J) a9 (I-J) Std. Error p Lower Bound Upper bound Poor Fair -1.00431 2.68684 .926 -7.3543 5.3457 Very good -3.90086 2.60415 .024 -10.0554 2.2537 Fair Poor 1.00431 2.68684 .926 -5.3457 7.3543 Very good -2.89655(*) 1.14567 .033 -5.6042 -.1889 Very good Poor 3.90086 2.60415 .024 -2.2537 10.0554 Fair 2.89655(*) 1.14567 .033 .1889 5.6042 * The mean difference is significant at the .05 level.
Table 6 shows the result of a multiple comparison test to locate which of the groups significantly differ from each other in their level of awareness and on the basis of their perceived level of ICT skills. It can be seen from the table that the mean difference between those who rated themselves as ―very good‖ and ―fair ‖ is high and significant in favour of the ―very good‖ group (Mean difference = 2.89, p = 0. 033). However, difference exists between the ―Fair‖ group and the ―poor‖ group but the difference is not significant.
Hypothesis 2: Teachers awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT will not significantly influence ICT use in Oyo state schools
To test this hypothesis, different parameters of ICT use in Oyo state were subjected to a test of difference via ANOVA and the result is presented in Table 7
Table 7: Difference in ICT use parameters on the basis of teachers’ level of awareness of educational policy on ICT Sum of Mean Squares df Square F Sig. a15 Will you like to use computer in your Between Groups .144 3 .048 1.546 .204
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classroom teaching? Within Groups 5.664 183 .031 Total 5.807 186 a16 Can you use your own personal Between Groups 2.577 3 .859 4.618 .004 computer in your classroom teaching Within Groups 32.551 175 .186
Total 35.128 178 a17 Do you have ICT curriculum in your Between Groups 2.255 3 .752 .826 .481 school? Within Groups 164.739 181 .910
Total 166.995 184 a18 Do you have computers in your Between Groups 1.141 3 .380 .612 .608 school for students‘ use? Within Groups 112.373 181 .621
Total 113.514 184 a20 Are computers used for teaching other Between Groups .248 3 .083 .358 .783 subjects in your school? Within Groups 40.552 176 .230
Total 40.800 179 a21 How frequently are students given Between Groups 3.772 3 1.257 3.035 .031 ICT-based assignments? Within Groups 67.937 164 .414
Total 71.708 167 a22 Are computer skills taught in your Between Groups 7.963 3 2.654 2.718 .046 school? Within Groups 173.839 178 .977
Total 181.802 181 a23 How will you rate your students‘ Between Groups 3.742 3 1.247 2.175 .094 attitude to ICT? Within Groups 76.273 133 .573
Total 80.015 136 a24 Do you have an email address? Between Groups 4.409 3 1.470 1.989 .117 Within Groups 130.773 177 .739
Total 135.182 180
Table 7 shows the result of test of influence of teachers‘ awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT use in Oyo state schools. From the table it can be seen that it has significant influence on only three of the ICT use parameters considered in this study. Teachers‘ awareness was found to influence the use of their personal computers in their classroom teachings, how frequently the students are given ICT based assignments, and ability of the teachers to teach computer skills.
4. DISCUSSION In terms of the implementation of educational reforms, teachers have been described as indispensable stakeholders that need to be consulted and involved in the formulation and implementation of any reform policy (Yusuf, Ajidagba, Yusuf, Olumorin, Ahmed, Daramola, and Oniyangi, n.d.). In fact, research has established the fact that it is the actual level of teachers‘ awareness about an ICT policy that determines its integration for use in education (Tondeur, Van Keer, van Braak and Valcke, 2008) and Sang, Valcke, van Braak, Tondeur & Zhu (2011) found evidence that teachers‘ perception of an ICT school policy is a mediating variable in classroom use of ICT. Consequently, research question 1 was posed to determine the level of teachers‘ awareness of Nigeria‘s educational policy on ICT. The results shows that only a small percentage of the respondents were found to possess a high level of awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT, in fact, a considerable proportion of the respondents (35.1%) were found to be either completely ignorant of the policy or possess poor levels of awareness of the policy. This is consistent with what Ololube, Ubogu and Ossai (2006) found among lecturers that most of them do not know about the IT policy in Nigeria and hence cannot focus any of their teaching towards the goal of the policy as the teaching curriculum does not instruct so. Testing the first hypothesis however showed that respondents‘ awareness of the country‘s educational policy is influenced by how the respondents‘ perceive their ICT skills, with those who perceived themselves as very good being more aware of the policy.
The Nigerian government in its bid to ensure a diffusion of the ICT innovation into the nooks and crevices of its educational system therefore organizes workshops and training for teachers across its education system either as a sole sponsorship, in partner with donor agencies, international development concerns, NGO and so on. It is International Journal of Computing and ICT Research, Vol. 6, Issue 1, June 2012
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expected that these workshops, apart from developing the requisite computer skills in the teachers, will also acquaint them with the necessary awareness of the government policy concerning ICT use in schools. Consequently, the second research question was posed to find out if teachers‘ attendance at previous ICT workshops/ trainings would have any influence on their awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT. The results indicated that the previous training which some of these respondents attended had no significant influence on their awareness of the country‘s educational policy on ICT.
Research question 3 was targeted at finding out how ICT is being applied in the classrooms of the schools from which the participants in this study were invited. Their responses indicated that ICT is not available in most of the schools in agreement with the findings of Adomi and Kpagban (2010), that computer is not part of classroom technology in more than 90 percent of Nigerian public schools. Where it exists, its use can be described as gross misuse where up to 20 students are allotted to one computer system or just one computer is available for all the students in the school. Consequently, such computers cannot be used for teaching other subjects apart from computer literacy as indicated by the respondents. Also teachers were not able to give students ICT-based or related assignments. However, a good percentage (39.9%) of their students commonly demonstrate enthusiastically positive attitude towards the use of ICTs for learning. To determine if the respondents‘ level of awareness of the county‘s educational policy affects the classroom use of ICT for teaching and learning, the hypothesis 2, the results confirmed that it has significant influence on three of the ICT use parameters considered in this study. Teachers‘ awareness of the policy was found to influence the use of their personal computers in their classroom teachings, how frequently the students are given ICT based assignments, and ability of the teachers to teach computer skills. It did however not affect teachers rating of the students‘ attitude to the use of ICT in the classroom.
5. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION Given the acclaimed importance of ICTs to teaching and learning, the attendant effort of the Nigerian government to draw up a National Education Policy on ICT and the expressed influence of awareness of such policy on its implementation, there is a need to improve Nigerian teachers‘ awareness of any education reform policy and in particular, as it affects ICT in education. Future training, workshops or seminars designed for teachers across the levels of the Nigerian educational system should include the awareness, knowledge and understanding of this educational policy. It is expected that if the teachers are fully aware, they will be able to guide their learners to take full advantage of the provisions made by government, public spirited private individuals and Non-governmental organizations.
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