Telecommunications impact in Afghanistan

Abstract

Afghanistan telecommunications rapidly expanded from almost nonexistence in 2002 to all 34 provinces throughout the country, there was a continuous rise in tele density and active mobile subscription and internet users. T he industry was considered as the largest contributor to the country’s GDP, and the Afghan government and foreign investors invested a huge amount in this sector, but the poverty and the unemployment rates were regularly reported high by the World Bank and other credible agencies. In this paper, the focus will be on the impact of telecommunications in Afghanistan, especially on GDP growth, through a mixed methodology (descriptively and empirically) performing correlation and regression analysis on variables of GDP, mobile subscription, GDP per capita, and internet users from 2006 to 2020 in line with concerns in the literature review. T he results of the study show that mobile subscriptions positively influence GDP and DGP per capita, while the internet user has positive correlation but not significant impact on country GDP. However, the impact of telecommunications is broader and not limited to only economic growth. The study concludes that telecommunications strongly influence GDP and economic development, and in order to direct it toward sustainable economic growth, it requires joint efforts of government and private sector for better results from proper policy formulation and implementation.