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EJISDC (2013) 56, 7, 1-17

ICT BARRIERS AND CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Almamy Touray
Department of Computer Science and
Information Systems,
University of Jyväskylä, Mattilanniemi, Agora,
40351 Jyväskylä, Finland almamy.2.touray@jyu.fi Airi Salminen
Department of Computer Science and
Information Systems,
University of Jyväskylä, Mattilanniemi, Agora,
40351 Jyväskylä, Finland airi.salminen@jyu.fi Anja Mursu
Salivirta & Partners,
Kauppakatu 28, 40100 Jyväskylä, Finland
Anja.Mursu@salivirta.fi

ABSTRACT
Since the early 1990s, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been perceived as a catalyst for development. However, the UNICEF State of the World’s Children Report 2011 acknowledges that the poor in many developing countries remain largely excluded from ICT and its benefits. This paper aims to address three issues. Firstly, identify ICT barriers in the literature from 2000 to 2011. Secondly, identify ICT barriers through empirical findings and thirdly, categorize these barriers into critical success factors. These aims are achieved by comparing the findings in the literature to our recent empirical results. Two methodologies are used in this study, namely, a systematic literature review and a case study; the empirical data for our case study was collected from The Gambia in autumn of 2012. The systematic literature review covers 1107 studies (2000-2011) published in the top five ranked ICT4D journals in terms of journal citation ranking. The paper identifies a total of 43 ICT barriers. Forty of them are common to both studies while the remaining three were revealed in the case study, namely, lack of Internet exchange points, micromanaging and invisible hands. The barriers in both studies are grouped into eight possible critical success factors and their degrees of severity are then compared. This paper argues that lack of Internet exchange points is an important ICT barrier that is overlooked in our review pool.
Keywords: Barriers, critical success factors; developing countries; ICT
1.
INTRODUCTION
Many researchers (Avgerou 2008; Bankole et al., 2011; Deliktas & Kok, 2003; Hicks & Streeten,
1979; Sahay & Avgerou, 2002 and Walsham & Sahay, 2006) perceive ICT as a platform for creating an information-intensive society. Other researchers argue that ICT has turned the world into an information-intensive society and it is considered as the nerve of growth that can tremendously transform the economic, political, cultural, and social conditions in many developing countries (Deliktas & Kok, 2003 and Hicks & Streeten, 1979). However, the achievement in today’s ICT domain cannot exclude the tremendous role of the Internet because it provides the platform for any meaningful web-based application. The Internet is one of the
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technologies required to support information processing in order to execute applications and deliver services (Mofleh et al,. 2008; Raji et al., 2006). However, the UNICEF State of the
World’s Children Report 2011 acknowledges that the poor in many developing countries remain largely excluded from ICT and its benefits. Research has shown the existence of such exclusion in terms of Internet access (Internet World Statistics Website 2011 and ITU 2011) which is the driving force of today’s ICT domain. For instance, the Internet penetration rates in Africa and
Asia are just 11.4% and 23.8%, respectively (Internet World Statistics Website 2011); they are both less than the world average of 30.2%. Furthermore, only 1.2% of the population in the least developed countries has access to Internet. Conversely, Internet users per 100 inhabitants in these regions are just 3.0 which is about one-tenth of the corresponding world average of 30.1.
The digital divide between developed and developing nations also extends to bandwidth available to end-users. For example, while a 2 Mbps (megabit per second) ADSL (asynchronous digital subscriber line) link in the United States costs approximately 40 USD per month, a 2
Mbps broadband connection in Pakistan costs approximately 400 USD per month (Saif et al.,
2009). Dada (2006) underscores that this wide disparity in access to technology implies that a solution in a country with high levels of connectivity will not necessarily work in a country with extremely low levels. Even if the income levels in these countries were the same, the Pakistani version still represents ten times the cost of the American region; it is worth mentioning that actual income would be even less favorable in the case of Pakistan. This study aims to synthesize the ICT barriers found in the top five ICT4D journals based on Heeks’ (2010) journal citation rankings and compared them to our empirical findings in order to find out missing barriers. The identified barriers in both studies will then be categorized into critical success factors and compare the results from the systematic literature review to our empirical findings obtained through a case study.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 explains the key concepts used in this study and Section 3 provides an overview of our research methodologies. Section 4 covers the data analysis while Section 5 entails our study results. Section 6 focuses on discussion while Section 7 concludes the paper and states the future of research.
2.
KEY CONCEPTS
For conceptual clarity, we have defined the key concepts used in this paper, namely, ICT, developing countries, critical success factors, barriers, Es and Ms. The concept of ICT could generally relate to those technologies that are used for accessing, gathering, manipulating and presenting or communicating information. The technologies could include hardware (e.g. computers and other devices), software applications and connectivity (e.g. access to the Internet, local networking infrastructure, videoconferencing, etc.) (Lloyd 2005). The term developing countries simply refers to countries that are typically found in the lower levels of different taxonomies (Nielsen 2011). Several definitions of the concept of critical success factors (CSFs) exit. One of the most frequently cited definitions is represented as follows:
“Critical success factors… are… the limited number of areas in which results, if they are satisfactory, will insure successful competitive performance for the organization. They are the few key areas where “things must go right” for the business to flourish. If results in these areas are not adequate, the organization’s efforts for the period will be less than desired” (Laosethakul and Boulton 2007, p.3).

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It is worth mentioning that the aforementioned definition of CSFs can be extended beyond an organizational level. Hence, in this study, we define the critical success factors as categories of barriers (not individual barriers) that must be addressed in order to guarantee ICT success in developing countries. In our analysis part, we focus more on the critical success factors than the individual barriers. A number of researchers (Laosethakul and Boulton 2007;
Feindt et al., 2002 and Brunn et al., 2002) have used the critical success factors approach to identify the key drivers of a particular phenomenon they have studied. A barrier is defined as
“any condition that makes it difficult to make progress or to achieve an objective” (Schoepp
2005). A number of synonyms to barriers are used in ICT literature, namely, constraints, challenges, obstacles, impediments and difficulties. However, for the sake of simplicity, we refer to all these terms as barriers. The terms Es refer collectively to a set of applications that enable people to use electronic devices like computers and 3G phones to access, store, transfer information such as eCommerce, eBanking and eHealth, while the Ms perform similar function but with mobility, for example, m-banking, m-payments, m-transfer and m-finance (adopted from Donner & Tellez, 2008).
3.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES
This paper encompasses two methodologies, namely, a systematic literature review (SLR) and a case study. The SLR enables us to synthesize the ICT barriers from 1107 studies published from
2000-2011 in the top five ranked ICT4D journals in terms of journal citations rankings according to Heeks’ (2010) ranking. The empirical data was collected through a case study methodology which helps us to identify the overlooked ICT barriers. The barriers from both studies are then categorized into critical success factors and their degrees of severity are compared.
3.1
Methodology for the Systematic Literature Review
The methodology we employed herein is based on systematic literature review (SLR), which is one of the common research methods used in identifying critical success factors of a particular phenomenon (Amberg at al. 2005). "SLR is a specific research methodology developed in order to gather and evaluate the available evidence pertaining to a focus topic" (Biolchini et al., 2005).
Kitchenham (2004) defined SLR as means of identifying, evaluating and interpreting all available research relevant to a particular research question, topic, or phenomenon. Our review procedure follows a similar pattern to that of Kitchenham et al. (2009), namely, research questions, research process, inclusion and exclusion criteria, quality assessment, data collection, data analysis, results, discussion and conclusion
3.1.1 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria (IExC)
This study employs two levels of inclusion and exclusion criteria, namely, IExC for journal selection and IExC for study selection. We limited the scope of this study only to ICT4D journals because they have a rich database when it comes to ICT studies in developing countries.
This basis conforms to the study selection criteria in a systematic literature review (Kitchenham
2004). We included the following top five ICT4D journals according to Heeks’ (2010) ranking based on the citation rates:

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Table 1: Review Pool
Source

Acronym

Information Technology for Development
Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries
Information Technologies & International Development
Asian Journal of Communication
African Journal of Information & Communication

IT4D
EJISDC
ITID
AJC
AJIC

We considered a number of studies based on our adopted inclusion criteria: studies that are either research papers or articles, published from 2000 to 2011 and relevant to our research questions (see Kitchenham 2004 for more information). Based on these inclusion criteria, we excluded the following studies: practitioner reports, commentaries, special issues in the form of an introduction, editorial introductions, discussion papers and concept notes. The decision to include or exclude a study was based on four criteria, namely, study title, abstract, results or findings and conclusion. This helped us to reduce the time of the entire review process considering the huge amount of studies in the included journals.
3.1.2 Review Process
In order to maintain a clear level of consistency during the review process, we adopted a threeway recursive approach:
1. We accessed the online archive of each of the included journals.
2. We accessed the studies in their respective publication order, starting from the year 2000 through 2011.
3. We then looked at the title of each paper. If it seemed directly related to our research objective or question, it then formed part of the included studies and was marked selected
(see Table 2). If not, we scanned through the abstract, results or findings, and the conclusion especially in search of the following key words, namely, barriers, challenges, obstacles, impediments, constraints and difficulties. Based on the scanning, we decided whether or not the study qualified as one of our selected studies.
These steps were repeated until all the studies in the included journals were exhausted. Table
II shows the number of studies selected from each journal. The term total in this table refers to the number of studies in the archive of each of the included journals. The highlighted part of
AJIC figures indicates that the included studies were published in 2009/2010 and 2010/2011, respectively. Out of the 253 studies reviewed from the ITID journal, only 36 of them were selected as part of our review pool. For the EJISDC, 237 studies were selected out of 332, 40 out of 202 from the IT4D journal, 28 out of 76 studies from the AJIC journal and 13 out 244 from the AJC as part of our review pool. This implies that the ITID and EJISDC account for 10.2% and 66.9%, respectively out of the selected studies in our review pool. IT4D accounts for 11.3%, while AJIC and AJC each account for about 7.9% and 3.7%, respectively.

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Table 2: Sources Searched for Years 2000 – 2011
Journal/Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 TOTAL
ITID (Total)
0
0
0
16
54
13
25
19
16
24
55
37
253
ITID
0
0
0
1
1
5
1
4
5
3
4
12
36
(Selected)
EJISDC
(Total)
EJISDC
(Selected)

20

14

27

37

24

16

45

29

21

33

33

33

332

18

12

20

5

16

8

35

23

19

33

17

31

237

IT4D (Total)
IT4D
(Selected0

19
9

0
0

0
0

22
9

0
0

25
7

23
2

26
6

26
5

24
6

26
4

11
1

202
40

AJIC (Total)
AJIC
(Selected)

4
0

6
2

6
5

5
2

6
5

9
5

9
1

8
1

6
4

14
1

18
0

21
1

31
2

33
2

31
5

AJC (Total)
0
0
0
AJC
0
0
0
(Selected)
Total number of studies reviewed
Total number of studies selected

9
9
33
0

8
3
35
0

28
2

76
28

244
13
1107
354

3.2
Case Study Methodology
A case study methodology was used in identifying the overlooked ICT barriers in an empirical form. This type of methodology is defined by Yin (1994) as an “empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within a real-life context: when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident, and in which multiple sources of evidence are used.” Case study is a valuable method of research with distinctive characteristics that make it ideal for many types of investigation. Tellis (1997) considers it as a triangulated research strategy which could be used for a single or multi-case.
3.2.1 Brief Background of the Case Country
The Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa with a population of about 1.8 million people and an Internet user percentage of just 7.6 (US Census Bureau 2012). The country is surrounded by Senegal on all sides except to the west where it borders the Atlantic Ocean. It is about 30 miles (48.2 kilometers) in width and about 149.1 miles (240 kilometers) in length. The
Gambia is divided into seven administrative regions: Banjul City Council, Kanifing Municipal
Council, West Coast Region, North Bank Region, Lower River Region, Central River Region and Upper River Region. The country had a real GDP growth average of about 6.5% a year from
2008 to 2010 (IMF 2012). The same report indicates that it recorded the best GDP growth from
2007 to 2010 among all Sub-Saharan African countries except for South Africa and Namibia.
The Gambia is expected to experience an annual growth of 5.5% (IMF 2012).

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EJISDC (2013) 56, 7, 1-17

Figure 1: Map of The Gambia

Source: worldatlas.com
The Gambia currently has six Internet Service Providers. A total of 10 Internet access technologies have been deployed in the country, namely, 3G, GPRS, DSL, ISDN, fiber, VPN, dial-up, CDMA, air-span and WCDMA. The Gambia is also the headquarters of the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable which is one of the most ambitious telecommunication projects in the sub-region. The project was launched on December 20th, 2012 and the total design capacity of the submarine cable is 5.12 terabytes. The 17,000 kilometer long submarine cable will provide direct cable connectivity to Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Mauritania, Guinea, Sao
Tome & Principe, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.
3.2.2 Data Collection
We used a case study methodology to identify the barriers to Internet diffusion adoption in The
Gambia as a single case. The data was collected from September 19th to November 12th, 2012 in collaboration with The Gambia Public Utilities and Regulatory Authority (PURA) as the host institute. We administered a total of 200 questionnaires related to Internet adoption at the user level. Our sample was drawn from students of the University of The Gambia. In order to seek the consent of participants and also minimize the problem of non-return questionnaires, we first visited each class from all selected faculties and enlightened the participants about the research.
Since the study aims to generalize the results, the country was divided into clusters based on existing administrative demarcation. Those students interested in participating in the research were then asked to voluntarily write their names under the administrative region they came from in the country. The students were then randomly selected from each administrative region based on the students’ voluntary information. This approach helped us to include participants from every region as we had planned earlier. We sampled the population using a simple random sampling method because the number of students who were willing to participate in the research was more than our target of 200 participants. The randomly selected faculties are Information
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and Communication Technology, Law, Business Administration and Arts & Sciences. Each randomly selected student was then given a questionnaire to complete within a maximum period of one week. A total of 179 out of 200 questionnaires were successfully completed and returned
(about 90% return rate) to the faculty office of each selected faculty. The Dean of each faculty identified two to three students who helped the researcher in collecting the data.
Table 3: Distribution of Research Respondents
Gender
Age range
Total number of participants
Female
Male
≤ 20
4
6
10
21 - 25
48
47
95
21 - 25
2
no gender specified
26 - 30
4
30
34
26 - 30
2
no gender specified
31 - 35
3
16
19
36 - 40
1
6
7
41 - 45
0
1
1
46 - 50
0
0
0
51 - 55
0
1
1
56 - 60
0
0
0
≥ 61
0
0
0
5
3
8 no age range specified
Total number of participants
65
110
179
Five interviews were also administered at the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) level each lasting for at least forty-five minutes. The participating ISPs were GAMTEL, Netpage, Unique
Solutions, Africell and Lanix. A formal written request of participation was sent to the CEOs of all ISPs prior to data collection. This communication was mainly channelled through The
Gambia public utilities and regulatory authority but a personal follow-up was also conducted by the researcher. Upon receipt of acceptance to participate in the research, a formal visit was also made to all the ISPs in order to further educate them on the research before scheduling the respective interviews. The participants in the interviews were CEOs, technical directors, senior managers and managers. The managers and senior managers were drawn from two departments: technical and marketing or customer services departments.
4.
DATA ANALYSIS
All the interviews were type-recorded and manually transcribed based on transcription schemes of direct type recording (Miles and Huberman 1987). The data was then analyzed using open coding and non-hierarchical axial coding (Strauss and Corbin 1990). These coding schemes were also used in the systematic literature review study. In the first phase of the analysis, we used the open coding technique (Strauss and Corbin 1990) to identify the main ICT barriers brought up in the selected articles of our review pool. This technique was conducted by sweeping through the results and conclusion of each of the studies. Different authors used different terminology like challenges, impediments, constraints, difficulties, etc. in describing ICT barriers. However, we simply refer to these different terminologies as barriers. Each identified barrier in both studies is essentially synonymous to one of those illustrated in Table 4. The barriers are then categorized
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into critical success factors (see Table 5). However, the case study reveals three more barriers that were not explicitly captured in the systematic literature review study. They are lack of
Internet Exchange Points, micromanaging and invisible hands (see Section 5).
Table 4: ICT Barriers in Both Studies
Common ICT Barriers
Overlooked ICT Barriers lack or inadequate fixed insufficient use or nonlack of Internet exchange telephone lines existing universal service fund points (IXPs) corruption lack of research and micromanaging development lack of investment political instability invisible hands insecurity lack of language skills low income lack of relevant local content lack of software and complex technology hardware lack of political will lack of access monopoly limited sustainability of networks lack of cultural knowledge or low Internet bandwidth limitations obsolete technologies unreliable Internet connection high cost inadequate or lack of electricity supply low returns on investment perceived lack of privacy high risk for investment lack of maintenance culture unnecessary bureaucracy lack of proper planning and coordination resistance to change lack of incentives inappropriate technologies poor network reception poor regulation lack of ICT skills high taxes fear of technology lack of regional initiatives high illiteracy lack of proper legal scarcity of technical personnel framework In the second phase of analysis, we employed the non-hierarchical axial coding technique
(Strauss and Corbin 1990) to group the identified barriers into eight categories that we called critical success factors. The frequency of occurrence per category was then identified for both studies (see Figure 4). Researchers proposed that success or failure of ICT projects can be understood in terms of several critical factors (Best & Kumar, 2008). However, this paper limits the scope of critical success factors (see Figure 3) to refer to the category of barriers that must be overcome in order to achieve success. For contextual clarity, we provide a brief explanation of the eight critical success factors.

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 Political & Leadership (PL): most developing countries do not have ICT policies to guide the provision and usage of ICTs. It is, however, difficult to record progress in the absence of clear policies and the determined implementation of such policies. The role of government and good leadership is imperative in this process.
 Socio-Cultural (SC): this mainly encompasses language barriers, societal attitudes towards ICTs and the scarcity of local ICT content, particularly in developing countries.
These factors hugely hinder access to ICT services in these regions.
 Infrastructural (IF): the success of ICT greatly depends on good infrastructure that enables the availability and accessibility of ICTs. Availability refers to the presence of infrastructure that delivers ICT services while accessibility denotes the freedom to use such services with minimum or without limitations. Rangaswamy & Nair (2010) underscore that the success of ICT requires large infrastructural investment.
 Technical (TN): this denotes the types of barriers that impede smooth delivery or implementation of ICTs. It essentially refers to the technological limitations associated with ICTs which include poor network reception, slow Internet connection, system integration problems, etc. Technical constraints differ from infrastructural in the sense that the latter do not entail technological limitations of ICTs. Instead they focus on the availability and accessibility of ICTs. Technical barriers essentially comprises of technology related barriers.
 Educational & Skills (ES): this mostly refers to the human capacity to understand, use and manage ICTs. It includes topics like illiteracy, lack of ICT skills and poor educational systems in developing countries.
 Economical (EC): this refers to the financial aspects involved in ICTs. It includes the ability of ICT users, services providers and investors to accommodate ICTs in terms of per capita income. It essentially denotes the cost factors of ICTs which include costs of
ICT equipment, services and networks.
 Security & Safety (SS): this refers to the uncertainty associated with the use of ICTs. It includes the conditions of safely being able to use ICT and the freedom from danger that
ICTs pose to individuals and societies at large.
 Legal & Regulatory (LR): ICT, especially in the developing world, is often impeded by laws and regulations. The legal and regulatory framework governing ICT in these countries is often not proactive. It essentially hinders individuals in using ICTs and deters potential ICT service providers. Regulators in developing countries are generally weak, dependent and often part of a system in which the legacy operator captures the regulatory and political process (Proenza 2006).

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Table 5: Barriers Grouped into Critical Success Factors
Socio-Cultural Economical Security
Legal &
Imfrastructural
& Safety
Regulatory

Political &
Leadership

Technical

corruption

obsolete technologies lack of political will unnecessary bureaucracy inappropriate technologies complex technology lack of cultural knowledge or limitations resistance to change fear of technology high taxes

low Internet bandwidth lack of relevant local content

lack of regional initiatives unreliable
Internet
connection

lack of maintenance culture

political instability poor network reception lack of language skills lack of proper planning or cordination monopoly

low income lack of investment low returns on investment high costs insufficient use or nonexisting universal service fund limited sustainability of networks lack of incentives perceived lack of privacy insecurity

lack of proper legal framework

lack of or inadequate fixed telephone lines

poor regulation

lack of software and hardware lack of access inadequate or lack of electricity supply lack of Internet exchange points

high risk on investment invisible hands micromanaging The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries www.ejisdc.org Educational
& Skills scarcity of technical personnel high illiteracy lack of ICT skills lack of research and development

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The frequency of occurrence of each critical success factor was then determined. The results from the systematic literature review and the empirical data from our case study were then presented (see Figure 2). A comparison of the degree of severity of the critical success factors in both studies is shown in this figure.
5.
RESULTS
We identify a total of 43 ICT barriers in developing countries. Forty of them are common to both studies while the remaining three were revealed in our case study. However, the identified barriers can be essentially categorized as being economic socio-cultural (SC), infrastructural
(IF), political and leadership (PL), legal and regulatory (LR), economical (EC), educational and skills (ES), technical (TN) and security and safety (SS) as shown in Figure IV. We refer to these terms as the critical success factors (CSFs) which represent varying degrees of severity. The frequency of occurrence of these CSFs shows that infrastructural and economic constraints are major problems in both studies. However, our results show some significant difference in the prevalence of the remaining ones. For instance, political and leadership constraints are minimal in The Gambia compared to the literature. Similar results also show that the literature review study has a much higher frequency of occurrence for legal and regulatory constraints. This is also true for security and safety. However, the remaining critical success factors still pose a problem in both studies, namely, educational and skills, socio-cultural and technical.
Figure 2: Frequency of the CSFs in Both Studies

Our empirical data reveals three more barriers that are not explicitly captured in the systematic literature review study. They are the lack of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), invisible hands and micromanaging. The lack of IXPs came up in all the five interviews and it
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was highlighted as a single factor responsible for the high cost of Internet in developing countries. The participants argued that their Internet traffic is never local even for communications at national level, i.e., from one ISP to the other. Some of the highlights related to the overlooked ICT barriers from the systematic literature review study are quoted as follows:
 Lack of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs): “[The] high cost of Internet in Africa as a whole depend[s] on the lack of continental, regional, cross-border and local IXPs. In
Europe, America [as well as in] other developing countries, every state, city and town has an IXP. This is missing in Africa and until this happens, the cost of Internet will never be affordable” (Abraham Simon, CEO of Netpage Gambia limited).
 Micromanaging: “This has been a major problem [for] us. We delegate responsibility without the relevant authority to enforce it. Responsibility without authority is useless.
Leaders should be able to say this is what I want and it has to be done; engage the right people to work on how it will be done and how much it will cost; engage someone who is able to sell the idea to someone who can finance or approve it. Once the selling is done and bought, it must not be subjected to further approval” (Pa Modou Gassama, former director of technical planning, Gambia Telecommunications Company Limited).
 Invisible hands: “One of the main barriers we have been facing relates to foreign government/investors who fund development projects in developing countries and eventually force them to give contracts to their home companies regardless of the cost”
(Respondent X).
6.
DISCUSSION
The literature review included 66 different countries (see the APPENDIX). The studies included in the systematic literature review used a wide range of data collection technique. The main ones are online survey, interview (face to face, focus group, in-depth interview, expert interview), hyperlink analysis, questionnaires, content analysis observation, personal reflection, document and literature reviews. Conversely, the main methodologies used were case study (narrative, explorative and interpretive), literature review, ethnography, longitudinal, dramatism, survey and action research.
The empirical data from the case study is very unique in the sense that studies focusing on The Gambia are hard to come by in ICT literature. Despite being the smallest mainland country in Africa with a population of about 1.7 million people, The Gambia has huge potential in terms of ICT. The country has a more favorable open market policy compared to other neighboring countries and Africa as a whole. For example, The Gambia has six Internet Service
Providers compared to only two in Senegal with a population of about 13.3 million people. The
Gambia Public Utilities and Regulatory Authority (PURA) is a very active institute in terms of regulation and consumer protection.
It is important to equally highlight that at the moment, Gambians are very sensitive to issues relating to the role of government in general ICT dispensation. This has to do with citizens’ individual perceptions that any negative statement they say about government is tantamount to sabotage and could warrant prosecution; this situation is completely different in developed countries. This particular attribute of fear and reservation greatly affect the entire data collection process within this research. People are completely afraid to discuss issues related to government’s role. This makes it very difficult to conduct research in The Gambia. Another unique attribute of the country is that almost everyone is related and that people are hesitant to
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decline a request. These social attributes have their advantages and disadvantages and will have an important impact on any research conducted in The Gambia. However, this research will serve as a catalyst for future studies in The Gambia.
This study acknowledges the significant contribution made by the research community towards achieving an information society through the use of ICT. However, there is room for further research, particularly in developing countries. For instance, the research published in the journals included in our research pool focuses more on ICT applications such as the Es and Ms at the expense of accessibility to Internet. It must be acknowledged that the effective use of the Es and Ms greatly depend on Internet access. Therefore, future research in developing countries should strive to have a balance between the Es and Ms and that of Internet access, particularly the last mile. Several studies have underscored the high cost of ICT in developing countries as one of the main factors impeding technology diffusion and adoption in these regions. However, the studies in our review pool neglect to explore the main factor responsible for this which is lack of Internet Exchange Points. This phenomenon has resulted to exorbitant cost of Internet service in developing countries compared to the developed nations.
7.
CONCLUSION
Many researchers (Avgerou 2008; Bankole et al., 2011; Deliktas & Kok, 2003; Hicks & Streeten,
1979; Sahay & Avgerou, 2002 and Walsham & Sahay, 2006) perceive ICT as a platform for creating an information-intensive society. However, in order to achieve this, ICT barriers must be effectively addressed. This paper shows that ICT barriers in developing countries do not differ to a great extent. We identify 43 ICT barriers in both studies that are grouped into eight possible critical success factors, namely, socio-cultural, infrastructural, political and leadership, legal and regulatory, economical, educational and skills, security and safety and technical. The frequency of occurrence of the critical success factors shows that infrastructural and economic constraints are major problems in both studies. However, our results show some significant difference in the prevalence of the remaining critical success. For instance, the empirical findings show that political and leadership constraints are minimal in The Gambia compared to the literature.
Similar results also show that the literature review study has a much higher frequency of occurrence for legal and regulatory constraints. This is also true for security and safety.
However, the remaining critical success factors still pose a problem in ICT diffusion and adoption in both studies. They are educational and skills, socio-cultural and technical.
This paper concludes that a lack of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), micromanaging and invisible hands are very important factors that need to be explored in future studies.
Micromanaging is a situation where responsibilities are given without the authority to enforce them. This phenomenon can greatly affect the implementation of ICT projects. Another identified ICT barrier from our empirical data is invisible hands which has been described by one of the interviewees as foreign governments or investors who fund developmental projects in developing countries and eventually force them to give contracts to their home companies regardless of the cost. This implies that ICT barriers go beyond the boundaries of developing countries. The availability of Internet Exchange Points can change the poor ICT status in developing countries mainly through affordable Internet service provision. Several studies have identified the high cost of Internet service as one ICT barrier. However, they neglect to explore the main factor responsible for this which is Internet Exchange Points. This study argues that future research in developing countries should focus on these overlooked ICT barriers

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particularly, the lack of Internet Exchange Point. The main limitation of this paper is that it compares the result from multiple studies to that of a single case study result.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to the Graduate School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences (COMAS) and the department of Computer Science and Information Systems of the University of Jyväskylä for jointly sponsoring the PhD data collection visit to The Gambia. We would also like to extend our immense gratitude to The Gambia Public Utilities and Regulatory Authority. As a host institute for the research visit, they provided the researcher with a car, fuel and a dedicated driver at the company’s expense for the entire duration of the data collection visit. We are also thankful to
Mr. Edrissa Jobe, the CEO of the host institute and his entire staff for their exceptional support during the data collection period. Last but not least, we would like to thank Professor Timo
Hämäläinen of the Department of Mathematical Information Technology at the University of
Jyväskylä for his useful comments on the structure of this paper.

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Almamy Touray is a PhD research student in Computer Science at the Department of Computer
Science and Information Systems at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. He obtained a master's degree in Computational Engineering (Digital Transmission) from Friedrich-AlexanderUniversität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany and a Bachelor of Science degree (Honors) in
Computer Science from Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Nigeria. Almamy worked for The
Gambia telecommunications company limited (GAMTEL) in capacities of Manager of Networks
& Systems Security and Network Administrator, respectively. He was also an adjunct lecturer at the University of The Gambia.
Airi Salminen is a Professor of Digital Media in the Department of Computer Science and
Information Systems at the University of Jyväskylä, in Finland. She has been the head of several research projects where research has been tied to ICT development efforts in major Finnish companies and public sector organizations. Long-term research collaboration with the Finnish
Parliament and Government has produced a great number of research articles as well as practical results in the information management environment of the Parliament and Government. She has worked for three periods at Canadian universities: first as a Visiting Research Associate at the
University of Western Ontario and later as a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Waterloo and Toronto. Her current research interests include ICT for development, enterprise content management, structured documents, and e-government.
Anja Mursu works currently as an advisor for the consultancy company Salivirta & Partners in
Finland. She obtained her PhD in Information Systems in 2002 at the University of Jyväskylä,
Finland. She worked for the research projects (at the University of Eastern Finland) first as a researcher and then as a research leader for nine years. Her research interests were in activity driven information systems development, and sustainability and usability of information systems.
Her research partners came from Nigeria, South Africa and Mozambique (INDEHELA-project).

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EJISDC (2013) 56, 7, 1-17

APPENDIX
Africa
Benin
Botswana
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Chad
Cote d’Ivoire

Countries Covered in the SLR Study
Asia
Europe
Middle East
Bangladesh
Croatia
Bahrain
China
Estonia
Iraq
India
Poland
Jordan
Indonesia
Romania
Kuwait
Malaysia
Russia
Lebanon
Maldives
Oman

Egypt
Ethiopia
Ghana
Kenya
Liberia

North Korea
Pakistan
Singapore
South Korea
Sri Lanka

Malawi
Mali
Mauritius
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Nigeria
Rwanda
Senegal
South Africa
Sudan
Tanzania
Tunisia
Zimbabwe

Taiwan
Thailand
The Philippines
Uzbekistan
Vietnam

Palestine
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Syria
United Arab
Emirates
Yemen

South America
Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Dominican
Republic
Ecuador
Mexico
Peru

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