ICT, Sustainable Development and Job Polarization: Evidence from ECOWAS

This paper assesses the contribution of information and communication technology (ICT) to sustainable development and job polarization in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Panel pooled mean group models are used to assess the role of ICT in sustainable development whereas changes in employment shares of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO08) occupations are used to investigate the changing employment distribution in the labor markets in the region. The results show that all measures of ICT had a positive and significant impact on sustainable development. The paper also finds that the West African countries are lagging in terms of ICT adoption and ICT infrastructure. The pace of adoption is slower compared to developed countries thus minimizing the pace of job polarization. The results obtained found no u-shaped employment distribution in the countries to indicate job polarization. Significantly however, there is a decline in the share of employment of the agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors. The decline in the share of employment is however offset by rising employment shares of most middle-skilled occupations in the region.