Internet

Mike jensen*


Trends in the



 DIGITfL



 DIUIDE



 in f RICHI

 M ost countries in Africa have lagged behind in their
 progress towards an Information Society, large-
 ly because of their low-income levels and lack of
 Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
infrastructure. As a result the majority of rural Africans today still do
not have access to basic telephony, let alone to Internet by December
2007, only 5 per cent of the African population had an Internet con-
nection and broadband penetration was below 1 per cent. Nevertheless
there have been some significant improvements recently which suggest
that the continent is now making significant progress tojoin the global
networked economy.
Mobile telephony is now the primary mode of ICT access in Africa,
where mobile phones outnumber fixed lines by almost ten to one.
Mobile growth rates are the highest in the world, led by countries with
more recent market entrants, more competitive pricing and improving
coverage.
While ICT access on the continent is generally very low, the wide vari-
ation in income levels, population size and telecommunication infra-
structure policies has made uneven levels of uptake. For example, over
75 per cent of fixed lines are found in just 6 of the 53 African nations.
Similarly, four out of the 53 countries in Africa account for almost 60
per cent of Internet users in the region, and only 22 of the 53 countries
have broadband. Countries with Internet populations over of over 1 mil-
lion people are located in (in order of size): Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt,
South Africa, Sudan, Kenya, Algeria, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.
One of the major reasons for the low levels of ICT access on the con-
tinent has been the large rural populations and the limited terrestrial
telecommunication infrastructure (satellite links are expensive and rela-
tively slow). The period leading up to the 'dot-com bubble' in 2000 saw
billions of dollars of investment in new fibre-optic cable in developed
countries, while Africa was left out of this trend due to their smaller
markets. Since then demand has grown and there is a major increase
in the number of fibre-optic projects. A recent African survey found


the largest build-up of long-distance telecommunication infrastructure
recorded to date. By the end of 2007, over $lbn in contracts had been
issued for about 30 000 km of optic fibre in 17 countries, with loans
from China Exim Bank for about two-thirds of the value.
At an international level, fibre optic infrastructure is critical to bringing
in sufficient bandwidth for a networked economy, and various African
agencies have been working to help bring this about. Among the first
major international projects to get off the ground was the East African
Submarine Cable System (EASSy) which aims to establish a fibre
backbone along the world's largest unconnected coast, running between
South Africa and the Sudan, with six landing points along the way. In
addition, other similar competing private projects have emerged, such
as SEACOM, LION and FLAG, and the West African Cable System
(WACS). M
* Mike Jensen is an independent consultant with experience in more than 30 countries in
Africa assisting in the establishment of information and communications systems over the
last 15 years.

 Keywords
 Internet; Africa; Information and Communication Technology (ICT);
 mobile; East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy); fibre-optic.


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