This chapter looks at Zimbabwe, a developing country in Sub-Saharan Africa that aspires to reach an upper-middle-income economy by 2030 through digital inclusiveness. Digital transformation (DT) and digital innovation (DI) may be the fundamental foundation to attain economic growth and productivity. To transit to Society 5.0, nations should develop robust technological systems, powerful, knowledgeable human resources, and a strategic direction policy by harnessing (DT) and (DI). A qualitative stance is applied using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Digital innovation identifies issues characterizing marginal communities in Zimbabwe that must be addressed to ensure that digital transformation targets rural areas, border posts, the informal sector, smallholder farmers, artisanal miners, vendors, and women (rural). The chapter then climaxes with a framework that if implemented may usher in Society 5.0, which may ensure that people, things, and technologies are all interconnected and intersect in the cyber and physical spaces.
TopIntroduction
...we live in a divided world: between rich and poor, healthy and sick, literate and ignorant, democratic and authoritarian, and between empowered and deprived. All the technologies that we developed in the past centuries and all the policies we enacted from enhancing human development have not wiped out these glaring disparities. (Tongia 2005, p 15).
The above quotation appears to suggest that not all novel digital technologies will help the digital transformation (DT) agenda in any way. Neither will it close the gulf between the haves and have-nots, no those from marginalised communities who are excluded in the digitalisation processes. In simple terms, Tongia seems to contend that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and associated digital tools are simple mirrors that reveal what is obtaining in the social strata and even exacerbate the naturally existing divides. However, chief proponents of Information and Communication for Development (ICT4D) concepts like (Avgerou, 2017; Heeks, 2014; Musungwini, 2016; Musungwini & Zyl, 2017; Pade-Khene & Lannon, 2017; Pfavai Natasha Nyajeka, 2018; Series, 2008) have circumvented such negative view of ICTs and are extensively ballyhooing these tools and wedging a promotional agenda to harness them to realize positive vistas of development. This promotion has been waged since the 1990s (Venkatraman, 1991), but became a focal point in the genesis of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The positives yielded by ICT in the MDGs era gave impetus to the ICT4D research agenda as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework 2016 to 2030 development framework was premised on the need to harness digital technologies for transformational processes to attain the world we want (inclusive development leaving no one behind). These authors also subscribe to this notion of ICTs for inclusivity and development agenda.
This is because ICTs have brought a multidimensional aura of possibilities to the modern-day era, this, coupled with the entrance of the Internet has amplified the ICTs’ capabilities to significantly enrich people's lives in a short period across different economic and social strata. Empirical research has been carried out which shows that ICTs have been applied and are leaving an indelible mark on many socio-economic aspects including health (Zhou, Herselman, & Coleman, 2015), education (Mohamad, Idrus, & Ibrahim, 2018), mobile banking (Journal, 2020), e-commerce (Munyoka, 2022), smallholder agriculture (Musungwini, 2018), and vending (Musungwini & Zyl, 2017) among other areas. However, in tandem with the quotation in the introduction, there is also an increasing volume of empirical data of late, which is showing that they are also gaps that exist in the implementation of ICT programs, platforms, and tools and these have the potential to amplify the gap between the haves and have nots thereby damaging and controlling people especially the marginalised. This includes work by Musungwini, Zyl, and Kroeze,, (2022) which looked at mobile phone underutilization by smallholder farmers, Mahlangu and Ruhode, (2021) who looked at IT service gaps in e-government services, Tsokota, Musungwini, and Mutembedza, (2020) among others.
While ICTs afford access to vital state-of-the-art information and knowledge in real-time to all people, allowing for social and economic involvement by making vital services more prevalent, available, and accessible on digital platforms. In many developing contexts, ICTs have been found to exacerbate the problems in marginalised communities like smallholder agriculture, especially in developing countries including sub-Saharan Africa (Agyekumhene et al, 2018). This is mainly because the benefits of ICTs, as well as the Internet, cannot be guaranteed for all the citizens in a developing context especially those in marginalized rural and remote areas and the economically disadvantaged members of society. The currently existing socio-cultural and economic disparities are found to be illumined and aggravated by digital technologies. Authors like Mahlangu and Ruhode, (2021) and Steinke et al, (2020), argue that marginalised groups are not well represented or even considered in the design and application of digital technology.