Leapfrogging in Emerging Nations: The Odds of Success and Its Impacts

Leapfrogging in Emerging Nations: The odds of success and its impacts

“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology”

Carl Sagan

In Mamelodi, the South Africans usually dwell in either brick houses or shacks, which are constructed from metal sheets. Yet, at every morning, students from the local Gatang High attend lessons conducted by their teacher, Ron Beyers who is several kilometres away from the school, at St Albans College. This is made possible using Motorola’s 5GHz Canopy technology, which enables a teacher to interact with students situated miles away through interactive whiteboards (SMART boards). The Mamelodi Broadband E-learning Pilot Project, a joint venture by the Department of Communications, Motorola and Omega Digital Technologies, is but one of the attempts at leapfrogging for developing nations, through installation of cutting-edge technology, which in this case specifically, Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Leapfrogging was originally introduced in the Schumpeterian forces of creative destruction: in cases where technological paradigm was replaced by radical innovations, the new companies will leapfrog ahead of old firms stuck in the technological cogwheel of the past. More recently, the term leapfrog was coined in a theory of development where developing nations may accelerate their progress by adapting modern technology directly, prior to installing sub-standard, inefficient systems that the developed world once did.

Perhaps the telltale example of successful leapfrogging would be the implementation of mobile phones from scratch, skipping entirely the generation of phone cords and fixed lines. Today, the predominant communication mode in low or middle-income nations is through mobile technology. According to Orbicom in 2007, there has been a 100-400% rise in the mean number of mobile phones per 100 inhabitants in Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), in just a span of five years. India and China’s mobile phone users alone now have exceeded the number of mobile phones owned by North America and Europe combined. In Africa, farmers now utilize mobile phones to keep tab on their crop’s market prices, while in South Africa, paying through phone balance is increasingly common. The role of such simple ICT in fostering interactions between investors from abroad and the huge untapped market potential, where three quarter of the population resides, indeed warrant the attention of the world.

However, one must recognize that mobile telephony itself is an excellent leapfrogger. Mobile phones operate using radio spectrum; hence the lack of infrastructure, which has been the headache of developing nations, does not act as a barrier in the diffusion of mobile technology.