EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MOBILE CELLULAR SUBSCRIPTIONS AND INCLUSIVE GROWTH: SADC MEMBERS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2478/eoik-2024-0019Keywords:
inclusive growth, mobile cellular subscription, digitalisation, panel ARDL, SADC member statesAbstract
Inclusive growth had faced global challenges in social and gender
disparities issues, especially in the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) region, which affects its administrations and dis-
tributions in modern development contexts. Recognised international
institutions have used the term inclusive growth as a description of
growth that is formed through labor force and distributions focusing
on well-being. This study examines the relationship between mobile
cellular subscriptions and inclusive growth to improve the standard of
living using a panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach
from 2000 to 2020. The economic growth context studies applied were
unable to capture the demand for improving welfare and expectations
to lessen poverty, while promoting inclusivity for SADC. Moreover,
SADC economic growth partially dealt with the inclusive growth
challenges of network connectivity, poor household benefit sharing,
and a fast-growing population by applying non-validated methods
that were useful to measure economic growth but fail to respond to
inclusive growth. The World Bank (WB) and International Telecom-
munication Union (ITU) databases were used to identify that there
is a positive and statistically significant relationship between mobile
cellular subscriptions and inclusive growth in the long run. The find-
ings of this study contribute by clarifying and urging policymakers
and researchers concerned about equitable economic development to
incorporate this sufficient to the relevant upbringing of communica-
tion channels to embrace inclusive growth opportunities to expand
inclusive growth rapport and channels.
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