The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Exploring the Determinants of Internet Access in Emerging Economies

With the rapid developments and changes in technology in the Fourth Industrial Revolution being witnessed everywhere, this study aimed to investigate the factors that influence access to the internet by households in emerging economies with a direct focus on South Africa one of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Access to broadband facilities by individuals, households and consumers is one of the critical components of the economic growth and prosperity of a country. It is generally believed that the access to broadband technologies by a community or nation helps to increase productivity which assists a lot in fueling economic growth which will have an impact on the levels of poverty. Using the logistic regression, the study found out that race, access to telephone landline, access to a cellular cellphone, access to electricity, owning a house, gender, age of the household head, net household income per month, and household expenditure were the significant variables in influencing the demand for internet access by households in emerging economies. The factors that were more important in the influence on access to the internet were the availability of electricity and access to a cellphone. Therefore, the study concludes that to improve the quality of life of the people, it is imperative that the governments across the world, do invest more in improving access to quality internet, but one of the prerequisites is that households should have a stable electricity supply and they have access to cellphones.