reveal that about 76 percent of the population lived in the capital, Djibouti city, while 24 percent lived in the regions.

The survey integrates several themes including, among others, recent data on household consumption and living conditions, to monitor and evaluate social development and poverty alleviation policies in the country. The survey also adopted current best practices in several aspects of questionnaire design and the analytical work subsequently done on welfare and poverty measurement. While the adoption of such changes led to a non-comparability with earlier surveys, the DISED used this survey as a new baseline from which indicators of well-being will be monitored in the future.

Using data from EDAM4, it is estimated that an important share of Djibouti’s population is poor and vulnerable. As of 2017, an estimated 21.1 percent of the Djiboutian population lived in extreme poverty, spending less than DJF 117,783 per adult equivalent per year (equivalent to US$2.17 per person per day in 2011, PPP). Rural areas showed significantly higher rates with extreme poverty estimated to be 62.6 percent. The goals of eradicating poverty and boosting shared prosperity will be significantly more difficult to achieve without ensuring affordable broadband access for all, and fully embracing the transformative powers of ICT.

# Provision of digital services in Djibouti

The sluggish development of the ICT sector and limited availability of digital services have differential effects across the income distribution. The subgroup of the population that is most affected by the sectoral environment is expected to be the (mostly poor) rural population of Djibouti. Despite having one of the highest proportions of urban population among the LMI countries in MENA and SSA (with about 85 percent of the population<sup>6</sup> ), mobile broadband coverage in Djibouti in 2018 remains below the regional average (at about 76 percent), and far lower than many MENA or SSA countries which have a smaller share of urban population (Figure 3).<sup>7</sup> This low national coverage rate implies that the vast majority of the rural population (which account for 23% of the total population) has no mobile broadband coverage in Djibouti.

Further evidence of the disparities of access can be found in EDAM4 conducted in 2017. Results from the survey show the extent of the digital gap between the richest population and the poorest population. Eighty-nine percent of the households in the richest quintile (the top 20 percent of the households with the highest consumption levels) own at least one mobile phone, a figure similar to the households in the third quintile, where 81 percent own at least one mobile phone. However, the figure drops at 70 percent for the fourth quintile, and 41 percent for the poorest quintile (i.e. the bottom 20 percent). The discrepancy is higher in relative terms for computer ownership: whereas 27 percent of the households in the top quintile own a computer, there are virtually no households in the bottom 20 percent that own one (Figure 4). As the richest households are mostly located in urban areas and the poorest households are mostly located in rural areas, there is a

> 6 World Bank, World Development Indicators.

> 7 Incidentally, the number of fixed broadband subscriptions in Djibouti is also low. In 2017, there were 2.54 broadband subscribers per 100 people (World Development Indicators [accessed January 6<sup>th</sup> 2019]).

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