Impact of Trade Barriers
Mobility assistive technology is difficult to access in developing countries, particularly in rural areas, where there are significant institutional voids.
Institutional voids refer to underdeveloped political and economic systems, trade policies, and product, labor, and capital market deficiencies that imply the absence of specialized intermediaries, regulatory systems, and contract enforcing mechanisms. They create higher transaction costs for doing business and are commonly found in developing countries
The overall aim of the work is to explore the trade and other economic barriers in restricting access to Mobility assistive devices and technology in low-resource settings. As a first step, we investigated the business environment for mobility assistive products in Africa. Our preliminary investigation to understand how the key providers of AT in four African countries, Kenya, Togo, Congo and Rwanda, have been able to provide AT in their countries despite high transactions costs prove that this is an area that should be looked into if fair access to assistive technology is a priority. Information deficits, irregular tariff structures, and regional peculiarities lead to disparities in the implementation of well-intentioned global guidelines.
We are currently expanding this work to look at low-resource settings across the world.
Our Key Research Paper
Barriers to accessing assistive technology in Africa
Tolulope Olarewaju, Aoife Healy, Nachiappan Chockalingam. The Official Journal of RESNA Volume 35, 2023 - Issue 1doi.org/10.1080/10400435.2021.1985011