© 2004 JITI Journal of Information Technology Impact Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 67-74, 2004 A Comparative Study Of Information and Communication Technologies at Higher Educational Institutions in Africa: Case Studies from Nigeria & Mozambique Adebayo Peter Idowu 1 Abimbola Olubukola Idowu 2 Emmanuel Adagunodo 3 Obafemi Awolowo University Nigeria Abstract The Internet has emerged as arguably the most visible component of the dynamic developments of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The rate of adoption of the Internet exceeds that of all technologies before it. Its uses range from communication and publishing to research. It has impacted, albeit differentially, every sector, from manufacturing and services to education. Higher education is particularly crucial to long running economic growth because it is the source of knowledge workers and an important source of inventive outputs. The role of universities as centers of research and diffusion of findings will become increasingly important in the 21st century. The focus of this paper is on the usage of ICTs on the higher education sector, particularly the impact of the Internet. Relatively little is known about the impact of ICT on the higher education sector of the developing world. This research is focused on how undergraduate students of Nigeria and Mozambique use ICT, in particular the Internet and what the Internet is used for among the students. Keywords: Internet, information and communication technologies, educational sector, developing world, diffusion Introduction Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have impacted the educational sector of the world, though it is accepted that the rate of deployment of new technologies has been lower in developing countries, especially those of sub-Saharan Africa. Naidoo and Schutte (1999), state that there have been fundamental differences in the way educational change towards technology has been approached and implemented between developed and developing countries. For the latter, emphasis has largely been on the physical infrastructure, such as telecommunications sector development, purchase of hardware, developing electronic networks and so on. There has been less emphasis on training of educators, the development of appropriate content, and especially on the maintenance of the educational technology infrastructure. There are three different ways in which the Internet might affect teaching and research in universities: