Mobile Phones, Mobile Internet and Poverty- Unemployment Nexus in Awka South Local Government Area

Abstract

Nigeria pays a high price for its inadequate infrastructure in lost opportunities for growth, for poverty reduction, for employment generation and for access to services that improve people's lives. This study examined the effect of mobile phone and mobile internet on poverty-unemployment reduction in Awka South Local Government Area of Anambra State, Nigeria. The specific objective of this study is to identify the effect of mobile phone and mobile internet on poverty-unemployment in Awka South Local Government Area. The Keynesian theory of povery formed the framework of this study. The population of this study is 10, 250 households in the Local Government Area. The sample size of this study is 285 from the filled and returned questionnaire of 385. The analysis was carried out using Pearson Product Moment Correlation. The results show that electricity provision has positive and significant effect on health services in Awka South Local Government Area. The result showed that mobile phone and mobile internet services have positive and significant effects on poverty-unemployment reduction(employment generation) in the Local Government Area(B = 0.537, P = 0.000). This implies that a 1% increase in the effectiveness of mobile phone infrastructure services by the providers and operators leads to 53.7% increase in employment generation in the Awka South Local Government Area. The coefficient of determination which is 0.783 indicates that 78.3% of the variations in the employment generation in the Local Government Area are explained by the independent variables mobile phone and mobile internet. The p-value of 0.000 which is less than 0.05 indicates that mobile phone infrastructure services have significant effects on employment generation in Awka South Local Government Area. This study concluded that mobile phone and mobile internet has positive and significant effect on poverty-unemployment reduction in Awka Local Government Area. This study recommended as follows: More license should be given to more providers as this strategy would no doubt make GSM/mobile communication much cheaper and accessible to the grass root populace.