The Prospects of Bridging the Digital Divide in Africa

The paper bridging the digital divide, review the multifaceted problem which has made Africa nations to lag behind the western developed countries. It traces the origin, causes and consequences which includes socio-economic factors, connectivity, technological access and literacy, and digital repositories. The efforts and initiatives by world leaders, international, regional, national, and non-governmental organizations, research Institutes and Industries to bridge the digital divide is examined. The author posit that African nations are a consuming nations historically and hence the continued flow of information from the west to the south resulting in low visibility of African research output. It is recommended that in addition to improvement on the technological infrastructures, telecommunications policies, infrastructures, as well as education and technology training in particular, the spread of digital literacy – are prerequisites for the transition to the knowledge based network society, the digital inequalities can be reduced through self-archiving in a net-worked Institutional Repositories (IR) to increase Africans research visibility on the global village