Digital health: ICT and health In Africa

This study examines the relationship and causality between ICT and health in Africa for the period 1995–2015 using panel generalized method of moments (GMM) and Toda-Yamamoto causality tests. The empirical results show that ICT has a positive and statistically significant relationship with health, showing that the higher the levels of ICT, the higher the level of health. There is also a bi-directional causality between ICT and health. This indicates that ICT spurs health which, in turn, boosts ICT usage even further. Moreover, health expenditure has significant positive effects, suggesting that the higher the scale of health expenditure, the higher the level of health. Unemployment rate has significant negative effects, meaning that the higher the level of unemployment, the lower the level of health. The level of education, measured by adult literacy rate, has significant positive effects, depicting that the higher the level of education, the higher the level of health. On the contrary, environmental pollution, measured by carbon dioxide emissions per capita, has significant negative effects, indicating that the higher the level of environmental pollution, the lower the level of health.