Modeling the Measurements of the Determinants of ICT Fluency and Evolution of Digital Divide Among Students in Developing Countries—East Africa Case Study

• Main Authors: Jean-Pierre Niyigena, Qingshan Jiang, Djemel Ziou, Ruey-Shiang Shaw, A S M Touhidul Hasan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-04-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: logistic regression; concentration index; digital divide; factors of ICT fluency; East Africa
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/7/2613

During the last decade, information and communication technology has brought remarkable changes to the education style of developed countries, especially in the context of online learning materials accessibility. However, in developing nations such as the East African (EA) countries, university students may lack the necessary ICT training to take advantage of e-learning resources productively. Therefore, the comprehension of the key factors behind ICT fluency is a significant concern for this region and all the developing countries in general. This paper applies the Concentration Index and proposes a Logistic Regression based model to discover the key determinants of ICT fluency and to explore the evolution of the digital divide among EA students within the four years of undergraduate studies. To identify the principal determinants, data composing of 1237 participants is collected from three different universities in EA within a one year period. The experimental results indicate that the digital divide among students decreases quite fast from the first year to the fourth year. Regression computational findings show that the key determinants of ICT fluency are the student urban/rural origin, computer ownership, computer experience, class year, and major. The findings provide heuristic implications for developers, practitioners, and policy makers for an improved ICT environment implementation in EA and the developing nations in general.