The Impact of E-Services on Socio-Economic Development in South Africa Research Paper

The Impact of E-Services on Socio-Economic Development in South Africa - Research Paper Example Accessibility to e-services has a high potential to add value to marginalized communities (Heeks, 2010), reduce poverty (Cecchini and Scott, 2003) and spur development. However, accessibility is not enough. Other factors must be put into account when making decisions on information technology developments for optimal benefits to all stakeholders and de-marginalization of marginal groups. E-services have revolutionized the global market to levels never imagined before; however, the true impact has not been quantified since the concept is new and has not been widely adopted, nor has it stabilized. Background The World Bank classifies the economy of South Africa as an upper-middle income economy, being the largest economy in Africa in terms of GDP per capita. However, over a quarter of South Africans are unemployed and a similar number lives on less than 1.25 US dollars per day; it is this population that e-services target most since they are primarily unbanked by the conventional comme rce systems. The economy is an amalgamation of primary, secondary and tertiary industries, though it has shifted in the recent years towards being a tertiary economy, an industry that contributes about 65 percent of GDP (OECD, 2010). Despite the continuous growth of the online industry, the country still lags behind the world’s leading economies in terms of volumes and amounts spent in online transactions. Laws and policies passed and implemented in the recent years have increased access to e-services by the population mainly by increasing competition among service providers, which results in reduced prices for accessing and using e-services. For instance, the Telecoms Amendment Act of 2001 introduced a competing network provider for Telkom, such that for the two to attract and retain customers, they had to reduce the costs of their services (Z-Coms, 2002). Elimination of monopoly was the first step towards liberalization of the telecommunications sector, which was achieved b y the Electronic Communications Act (ECA) of 2005. Finally, the Electronic Communication and Transactions Act of 2002 that was aimed at facilitation of e-transactions, e-governance, and other services introduced reliable and universal access to e-services. Context Cieslikowski et al. (2008) state that the world has seen exponential growth in coverage by mobile networks for both developed and developing countries; hence the impact of use of these devices cannot be ignored. For instance, money transfer services whereby money is sent through a mobile network and collected from a local retail outlet, have changed how the low-income communities transfer their money. Before the introduction of services like these, the poor had little or no access to banking and money transfer services, mainly because of high rates or the location of the banking institution in cities. In this case, ICT enabled the rural folk to have access to services that were previously a preserve of the rich. Further ch anges are expected on migration to digital terrestrial television migration, as digital signal will include all communication services bundled. Therefore, everyone will be able to access services with relative ease, and the government will use these channels to communicate matters on policy and development (Gupta and Shah, 2012). However, for these benefits to be enjoyed by the common citizen,

Chose one Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Chose one - Essay Example A child must get familiar with a language sample. Then subtle samples are used to detect whether a child can identify the segments as a part of the initial segment. Children try to develop an understanding of ambiguous instructions which in most cases are designed to have a grammatical choice. Infants detect statistical properties of co-occurrence. This means they segment a group of novel words in a gradual manner. The thesis of this essay is to give information on how children acquire language. As children advance in age, they start to detect the probability of syllables to predict each other. They start to detect word boundaries by considering syllable pairs. Infants as young as 8 months can perform these computations within a span of two minutes. Infants are able to soak up the meaningless events and to structure linguistics rapidly to make relevant meanings within units. During this stage, infants are said to develop the capability to detect musical tones that are used for word s egmentation. This includes the ability to track the structure of statistics within a sequence of absolute pitches. This helps in developing the tone structure. The next stage of acquiring language is establishing the distribution of elements and grammatical endings. They get introduced to the use of connectors. This helps in establishing the meaning of combinations in the process of utterance. This enables children to use the grammar meaningfully and to determine with actions of other people within each statement when there is need. Parsing process is used at this stage to ensure that children comprehend language by assembling strings. Rational conceptions and computed through assembling of language strings. The next stage in the process of linguistic development between birth and language maturity involves discovering the raw materials of gestures and sounds of the language being learnt. This entails learning how the sounds and gestures are assembled and try to map them onto usable meanings. This is said to happen simultaneously. The children start to integrate their learning capacity. They also start to crack the code communication codes. When the children are between 18 to 30 months old, they start to progress from first words. They become sensitive to grammar. This happens as the content of word vocabulary tends to increase at a faster rate. Some words start to be acquired depending on the frequency of their use. Children attach function to words in a gradual manner. This introduces children to the use of interrogative words like ‘who’. Parents are known to provide the initial information that leads to word production. Language development is tied to brain development. Children develop meanings from the familiar words. This involves neural arrays and patterns in the process of developing complex meanings in the human mind of a child. The brain of the children at the stage plays a central role in the process of ensuring words and meanings are i nterconnected. The neural grammar that exists is used to recognize the new words that are expected to build the language of a child. The late stage of acquiring language entails acquiring the structure of sentences. This stage is followed by comprehension. Children at their stage can respond to utterances and patterns of normal speech. This includes differentiating between meaningful and non meaningful sentences. This happens because children can understand sentence structures even before they can