economic benefits such as when sellers use mobile phones to inform buyers about product availability. Furthermore, researchers such as Liu et al. (2019) explore the cost-saving potential of using digital platforms, specifically e-hailing apps in the New York City taxicab market. The authors suggest that the implementation of search and match technology accompanied by GPS tracking could result in yearly savings of over $11 million per year just by reducing unnecessary detours from rides departing from La Guardia airport.

Competition reforms are a cost-efficient way to reduce prices, alleviate poverty and improve the living conditions of the poor (Purfield et al., 2016). For instance, Goldfarb and Tucker (2019) discuss the changes in costs associated with digitization. The authors claim that lower search costs driven by digitization reduce both prices and price dispersion, increase the variety of products, and facilitate the matching processes, especially in service markets (the costs included are related to search, replication, transportation, tracking, and verification). Recent studies rely on simulation methods to show that increasing competition in the mobile telecommunications sector in African countries could help alleviate poverty and, in some cases, consumption inequality (Rodríguez-Castelán et al., 2020; Malásquez et al., 2021). Moreover, emerging literature shows that the reduction of communication and search costs provided by mobile phone adoption increases consumer welfare as well as producer welfare. For instance, Jensen (2007) shows how the adoption of mobile phones by fishermen and wholesalers reduced price dispersion and increased profit in the South Indian fisheries sector. Aker (2010) finds a positive effect of mobile phone adoption on the reduction of price dispersion in the grain market in Niger. More precisely, mobile phone adoption explains a 10 to 16 percent reduction in grain price dispersion between 2001 and 2006, through a reduction in search costs (i.e., mobile phones reduce price dispersion). Similarly, Aker and Mbiti (2010) highlight the magnitude of the effects in rural areas, for example, in Ghana, farmers in the countryside are now using mobile phone services (e.g., text messages) to learn about the prices of corn and tomato in Accra.

Mobile broadband has also allowed the dissemination of technologies such as mobile banking that have the ability to promote inclusive development (Baabdullah et al., 2019) through a decreasing effect of poverty and income inequality (Asongu and Nwachukwu, 2018). By using data from 93 developing countries for 2011, Asongu and Nwachukwu (2018) find that mobile banking has a significant and positive correlation with the Human Development Index (HDI) with the magnitude of the association varying among different country income groups (low, middle, upper). Mbiti and Weil (2016) analyze the Kenyan mobile banking M-Pesa and conclude that the success of M-Pesa has decreased the prices of money-transfer competitors, increased transactions among individuals, served as a saving mechanism, and increased the probability of being banked.

Finally, to foster significant welfare and development gains, ICT adoption should be accompanied by increased digital literacy. Gebremichael and Jackson (2006) discuss the concept of “information poverty” and claim that to foster development and to not fall behind the developed world, SSA countries and other developing nations should bridge the digital divide and alleviate information poverty. To do so, governments should focus on targeting the determinants of ICT adoption such as the education level of the household head (Mwanthi, 2009).

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