Causality test of ict growth and economic development in human development index perspective

This paper applied Granger Causality test to examine the relationship between ICT (information and communication technology) and economic development with human development index (HDI) as a proxy for economic development. This is accomplished by using time-series data of ICT growth contribution to economy and HDI, which covered time period of 19 years (2000 - 2018).The causality test revealed a high level of causal relationship between the dependent and independent variables, and the time series data for the covered time period are stationary. The result of the causality test also revealed that all the three variables (number of internet users, number of mobile cellular telephone subscriptions, number of fixed telephone subscriptions) collectively do not Granger cause the dependent variable (human development index); also the dependent variable HDI does not Granger cause all the independent variables respectively. It is then concluded based on the achieved results that the proxies for ICT growth in this study can be utilized to predict future Human Development Index values as indicated by the granger causality of the first lap.