Africa - Offline And Waiting for the Web

The nytfeed provides us with an article about the current state of internet connectivity on the African continent. Only 4 percent of Africa's population has regular access to the internet, with most of those people living in North African countries, or the country of South Africa. This might seem like a market ripe for development, but the article explains that there are numerous difficulties involved getting an infrastructure project off the ground. "Africa's only connection to the network of computers and fiber optic cables that are the Internet's backbone is a $600 million undersea cable running from Portugal down the west coast of Africa. Built in 2002, the cable was supposed to provide cheaper and faster Web access, but so far that has not happened. Prices remain high because the national telecommunications linked to the cable maintain a monopoly over access, squeezing out potential competitors. And plans for a fiber optic cable along the East African coast have stalled over similar access issues. Most countries in Eastern Africa, like Rwanda, depend on slower satellite technology for Internet service." The good news is that, of course, progress is being made. Just ... slowly.

Worry not...

OLPC is already supporting Africa with all of the internet porn that it needs.

Not africa's biggest problem

Yeah, the internet is one of the last things Africa needs.

I'd say that Social, Political, and Agricultural reforms are FAR more important to the average African than the good old WWW.

Africa is living proof that imposition of a foreign structure and hierarchy followed by throwing fists-full of aid money is not enough to improve the lives of a people.

Re:Not africa's biggest problem

Uh, the SAT3 fiber cable wasn't built with any aid money, it was built with tax income from a previously nationalised and now privatived telecomms utility using income from mainly businesses and residents in South Africa itself. Those businesses forked over for it - and continue to do so - because there's a genuine need for it, so get a clue.

Re:Not africa's biggest problem

Umm... They already are. Picking a few random African countries from the CIA World Fact Book, agriculture accounts for 60% of exports from Ethiopia, Niger is exporting onions and livestock, Cote d'Ivoire is one of the largest exporters of coffee, cocoa, and palm oil, and if you take a look at other African countries, you'll find many more examples where people are sensibly using their comparative advantage to grow products for export (and hard currency) and, if necessary, import other food stuffs. If these people are able to get better prices for what they export, they will be able to buy more of the food they would need to import.

Re:Not africa's biggest problem

I see that your previous post has been modded flamebait and judging by your posting history, I am at this point probably just feeding a troll, but I will entertain one more reply as it is a good question. I would point to specialty coffee auctions such as Cup of Excellence, Q Auctions, and eCafe as rather high profile examples where the Internet has allowed better prices for the seller. Granted, these do not require Internet access in the countries of origin, however Internet access would have been greatly beneficial, particularly in that last example (eCafe) in communicating the results of these auctions to the growers. Had participating cooperatives in Ethiopia had the communications infrastructure to see just how well they had done in the first auction, they would have participated in the second. Better communication infrastructure may have also helped the logistical nightmare that plagued the second auction. In that case, the coffees were under the control of Sidama Union, whose member cooperatives took more than half of the auction total, yet they were refusing to release the coffee for export. Had the member cooperatives been able to learn that inaction on the part of the cooperative union was delaying a rather large final payment and had there been sufficient communications infrastructure to pressure the union, I believe this process would have been sped up considerably instead of requiring visits from three board members and eventually transferring control of these lots to Yirgacheffe Union (which did then release the coffee in a timely manner, though by that time the delay had been so great that an otherwise good program has been suspended until a way to prevent such an issue from recurring is found).

This is not necessarily just about selling over the Internet, and it should be clear by now that I see Internet access as part of the larger problem of communications infrastructure, however I believe there are numerous examples throughout the world where Internet access has provided significant economic benefits. If it were otherwise, why would the Internet have spread throughout the world?

Re:Not africa's biggest problem

Honestly, lets think about food, water, AIDS, and regular communication before we think of internet connections

Communication is a basic need. The internet is not always used for chat rooms and games. Here are some basic need uses:

• Publishing: news, info, blogs, editorials, research, statistics, etc
• Political commentary and organization
• Directories of phone numbers, businesses, professionals, resumes, jobs, etc
• Maps and yellow pages
• Email, telephone, video conferencing
• E-Commerce & trading
• Government services, taxes, forms, etc
• Online courses: particularly useful in rural African towns
• Technical support for machinery, computers, software

Africa needs the internet.

Re:Not africa's biggest problem

Yeah, the internet is one of the last things Africa needs.

I'd say that Social, Political, and Agricultural reforms are FAR more important to the average African than the good old WWW.

Africa is living proof that imposition of a foreign structure and hierarchy followed by throwing fists-full of aid money is not enough to improve the lives of a people.

Interesting viewpoint. A few points immediately sprang to mind though:

Firstly, access to better information via the internet can play its part in improving social, political and agricultural conditions in Africa.

Granted, there are other problems, such as infrastructure, to overcome but that doesn't negate the benefits that internet connectivity could provide to developing world nations.

Secondly, the "imposition of a foreign structure and hierarchy followed by throwing fists-full of aid money" can work... in the right circumstances. West Germany after the Second World War is one example. Clearly today's Iraq isn't though.

The keys would seem to be honesty and acceptance: if you genuinely care about improving the situation on the ground and can convince people of your sincerity then you can make huge changes for the better. However, if your help is poisoned by political or economic rhetoric then you're doomed to failure and/or accusations of attempting to profit from the situation.

Forcing HIV/AIDs-related programmes to teach abstinence rather than educating them about the benefits of using a condom, even though you know that the abstinence message will fail but that condoms will save lives, because of religious pressure is crazy.

Similarly, pushing African mothers to use powdered baby milk rather than encouraging them to breastfeed, which is a healthier option, just to sell more of your product is exploitative at best.

Put another way, if developed nations really wants to help less fortunate nations then perhaps thinking about themselves and what's in it for them should disappear from the equation.

Lastly, Africa is a pretty big place. It's not homogenous, and what might be a problem in one place might have already been solved somewhere else. Anything that helps disseminate knowledge can only be a good thing, especially in rural areas.

Imagine how much and how quickly you can find help online when your PC's playing up compared to how little and how slowly you can find it offline. Now imagine that information on something more essential to your everyday life, like basic healthcare advice, how to repair a vital piece of machinery, or how to save a crop.

Even something as simple as knowing what the average shopper 10,000 miles away will pay for your produce could make a huge difference: knowing that might help you secure a fairer, more beneficial price for your harvest, which in turn could dramatically improve the standard of life for you and everybody around you.

The possibilities are limitless.

Rejoice!

I heard, Nigeria is about to be connected. I received mail from my new business partner down there today. If all overdue money transfers go through well, fiber optic broadband for the people is just around the corner. Or so I'm told.

Fortunately

Those parts that are connected are using it to fight corruption. Why just yesterday I got my third e-mail from the widow of a former government employee who needed my help to move some funds out of Nigeria so that the corrupt government couldn't get its hands on it. All they needed was my bank account number.

Bigger picture...

Truly enough, the traditional monopolies of the telecom companies are what's keeping the prices high up. To talk about the case I know best, the Moroccan telecom company IAM (Maroc Telecom) abuses its monopoly in so many ways that citing them would require a whole article. The people benefiting from that are, of course, the political and business elite. It wouldn't surprise me that the government is purposely keeping the masses off the Web to keep them blindfolded. Aware citizens would certainly demand change from the dictatorial regimes Africa's infested with.

Re:Bigger picture...

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that the populace can demand all the change it wants, but there are many other parties who have a keen interest in maintaining the status quo."

The treatment Hamas has recieved from the EU & US clearly demonstrates what western leaders think about the spread of democracy. They don't mearly fail to recognise "the right of Hamas to exist" they actively seek to destroy it, the US has recently gone so far as to arm and train Fatah militants in order to maintain the status quo via the good ol' divide and conquer routine.

The odd thing is that Hamas has kept it's word and has not used suicide bombers for over 3 years (yes, they stopped BEFORE they were elected by ~70% of the popular vote), this self-imposed "restraint" is despite the fact many of it's elected officials have been assasinated or kidnapped by Isreal during the last 3yrs. Even more curioius is the fact that the suicide bombers during that time have come from the Fatah group, the same group that the US have recently armed and trained to fight Hamas.

Just to remain on topic you can see the same strategy in Africa, during the 70's-80's the SLA were considered an "evil" in the heart of Africa, apparently now that China has control over Sudan's oil, ...err...I mean....influence over Sudan's rulers...., the SLA are the "good guys" who require our assistance to protect their ancestral homeland [abc.net.au].

Of course the prime example of hypocricy in our time is the fact that - 25yrs ago OBL & Saddam were both "good guys" fighting the commies with our "generous" financial and political support. I could rant forever with similar examples, $2B worth of attack choppers donated to Burma's nut-job rulers in '97 anyone? /rant

Disclaimer: None of this makes "the other side's" actions any better, but if anyone thinks I have my facts about Hamas all fucked up, read this [theage.com.au], and double check the information for yourself.

Infrastructure?

How would we build an internet infrastructure? What processes can we use to build fiber optics? Or what sort of PCBs and connectors would we need to make the "last mile" work? This looks like a project just waiting for some interested individuals to get some big plans together.

Re:Infrastructure?

Africa has 200 million cellphone users [tmcnet.com] (about the same as the number of US cell phone users [azcentral.com], and 10x the number of fixed phone lines in Africa). To me that seems like the obvious answer for last mile connectivity. Some might hook those phones up to computers with bluetooth, but maybe they should just skip that step and use smartphones without computers. Already Africa is using cellphones to increase productivity, such as cell phone banking [usatoday.com].

market ripe for development?

Doesnt he mean 'ripe for commercial exploitation'?

Re:market ripe for development?

Yeah, my Internet service provider commercially exploits me every month. What a ripoff. I get high-speed Internet and they want to get paid for it!!?!?

Why would anyone in Africa want that? High speed internet -- who needs it! Someone might make some money by providing it to people. Money! They should work for love! They should make fiber optic cables out of their own altruism and power the routers with the self-satisfaction they get from doing good.

What evil thing will those exploiters do next? Commercially exploit hunger by selling good, healthy food at a small profit? Better to starve than allow such exploitation!

Don't you want YouTube?

"Don't get me wrong, I love that video with that weird dancing Indian midget. Although, I could really go for some drinking water, AIDS medicine, and less raping."

-A Nigerian Prince

Typical cost - for those who might not know

I was in Uganda on a Technical Advisory mission in 2002 and was outraged by the cost of internet connections down there. For a 128Kbps (down) and 32 (up) link, the organization was forking US$275 per month. This was for unlimited use.
 

A bit off-topic here: I also got educated in a way...that is...I realized that it is actually hotter in USA (Texas) than in some of these African countries that we think are way too hot. Temperatures never went above 86 degrees F, in the capital (Kampala)...compared to the 113 degrees in some parts of the US lately.

Irony?

I love the irony that there is a thread also on the front page about the few OLPCs that are being sent to Africa are being used to surf porn. How can you rich westerners downloading your terrabytes of porn just stand by while the poor children of Africa are smacking it to dial-up?!

The Internet May Not Be a Top Priority,

The internet may not be a top priority (food, medicine, etc). But, bringing the internet to people may help with these things. What if poor farmers could learn new agricultural techniques using the internet? Or what about spreading better disease awareness? Not to mention the potential freedom it could bring once people realize there are alternative forms of government. Instead of just throwing fistfulls of money and medicine at these countries, open internet access could help them start doing more for themselves. No, I wouldn't say bringing the internet to third world countries is the top priority, but it certainly won't hurt.

Online and waiting to migrate to the West

And once they get to internet, guess what Nigerians search for on Google? Check what country comes on top:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=united+states [google.com]
http://www.google.com/trends?q=united+kingdom [google.com]
http://www.google.com/trends?q=germany [google.com]

This situation sounds familiar...

OK, now that we have the silly "OH NOES!!! More Nigerian 419 romance spyware scamz!!1!1eleven!" posts out of the way, this article in summary seems to be like this:

1) Some millionaire who made a fortune during the tech bubble and who has never set foot on African soil, promises the telecom equivalent of the sun to Rwanda. Him and his company, Terracom, fails to deliver. Blames government and network infrastructure (that of course said millionaire never could've imagined!).

2) Governments get pissed off at the bait-and-switch. One fines Terracom "for failing to comply with its licensing obligations, failing to provide information about its operations and failing to pay several fees." Governments, however, can't do anything about schools and locations not having electricity...or can they?

3) Enter new CEO of Terrecom. Promises the sun again. They're a totally different company, they promise!

4) Government is fed up, starts hooking up telecom infrastructure themselves. Terrecom "welcomes the competetion" and whines (somewhat rightly) about infrastructure yet again.

Winners: dudes who took the government/Venture Cap money and ran.
Losers: anyone waiting and trying to get affordable and accessible Internet access.

The sad thing is, strike out Terrecom and replace AT&T and you have roughly the same situation (if only a tenth as bleak) in the USA (and I live in the USA).

Just wondering: why is it so hard to get Internet access to (central) Africa, but the water-locked continent of Australia is, or seems to be, humming along just fine?

waste of time and money

The last thing africa needs, is another distraction. food, clean water and stable government are the only things they should be focusing on right now. faster internet, is wayyyy down on the fucking list ok.

the internet affords them nothing tangible, which is what they need.

So What

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....nope. There, I tried, still can't give a damn.

Africa has soooooooo many other problems that worrying about the internet doesn't even make the top ten. Certainly their corrupt government and military must have some connection - how do they wire transfer all the money they're laundering?

I'm sure some rich dumbass will make it their pet project though, since you know everything can be fixed if only some (media whoring) artist or actor gets behind the problem.

Africa

Offline and waiting for peace.

home sweet home

Prices remain high because the national telecommunications linked to the cable maintain a monopoly over access, squeezing out potential competitors.

Sounds like another country I know of that starts with an A. Well, Africa is a continent but you get the idea....

Africa - Too many problems to list

I'd urge anyone even thinking about trusting Africa with something like Interwebs to read up on a project called "Biketown Africa." Basically, Some companies tried to give African governments bikes in order, ideally, to help people like medical workers. Alas, after taking the bikes, they'd keep them locked up oftentimes, except for wonderfully beneficial purposes such as physical training for armies... Yeah, I'm worried about more scammers coming onto the internet. Because these people, if they scam even 100$ off a US person, that is a substantial amount of money for them, so of course they're going to consider doing such full time.

An old project seems to have gone away

What happened to the Joko Clubs in Senegal?

OLPC, anyone?

They're putting them in the hands of kids in Africa and elsewhere, but the OLPC and other pervasive technologies are going to be a big part of education-driven social and political reform in 3rd world countries. And that reform will have to take place before wired telephone and internet connections are available everywhere...

The fact that children in Africa are accessing porn is a good sign. It's f*cking AMAZING! Why? Because that means that for the first time these children are reaching out and interacting with websites and other people across the globe. If they are connected, then can receive information and they can SEND information.

Africa has huge issues with corruption. Africa has huge issues with genocide, rape, tribal warfare, dictatorships... and the list goes on. But the really great thing about technology is that while it can enable people to have guns and bullets and other tools of war, it can also give them cell phones and tiny laptops.

If more and more villages in Africa have access to technology that is not dependent upon the grid for power or for an internet connection (solar or manual power, satellite or some kind of ad-hoc network for Internet access), then that will enable communities to unite, it will enable people to be educated about relevant health, political, and social issues, and it will (hopefully) enable groups of spread-out people to push through reform of governments and pave the way for new infrastructure.

If you see a homeless person on the street, giving them a few cents might help them for a day, but the best thing you could do for them is to help them find the right path for them to take to earn money and become a contributing member of society.

There are a number of possible ways that we in the Western world could help starving children in Africa. The best way for us to help people in 3rd world countries is to give the individual people tools which enable them to organize their communities, reform their governments and companies, and build up their countries from the inside out. A generation of children communicating through small, portable, rugged computers seems like an excellent tool to jumpstart the organize-reform-build process.

And then when they are a first-world country they can have spiffy fiber-to-the-premises broadband for all, just like we do in America. Oh wait.

Hmmm... perhaps we need to start encouraging OUR kids to do some social/political reform as well!

Yeah...

...and millions of rural Americans have no Internet, no computer, no high speed / cable connections, and no cell phone coverage. While I admit that Africa desperately needs help, so do your rural and poor neighbors. There are thousands of U.S. children that cant read, or write, have no heath care, and have never had a full and balanced meal. Before we solve the worlds problems, shouldn't we clean our own ass up first?

I am not looking forward for it

I am managing a website with 700,000 users and we had to ban most of African IP ranges due to spam, scamming or other abuse. So did PayPal for example. You can mod me down for not being PC, but that's a fact.

Only x percent has . . .

Only 4 percent of Africa's population has regular access to the internet

And what percentage of Africa's population has regular access to electricity? To clean water? To abundant food? To peace and security? To a regular job? To education (ok, this one might come for free with Internet access)?

Regular access to the Internet will be important for Africa's future, but regular access to a few other "minor" necessities are a bit more important in the present.

Pearls for Pigs!

Let Africa concentrate on clean water, stable government, and a controllable birth rate. Internet access is the least of their problems. Hell, look what happened when the Nigerians got it.

The concept of thought crime.

I don't think the fact that you are Black, or White have has anything to do with whether your civilization is progressive or reactionary. The problem is idea and thought. The ideas and thinking people in Africa have to change en masse before things will really change. I don't know if its entirely colonialism's fault. You should look in the mirror before you blame yourself.

Or, perhaps...

Or maybe it's because they have bigger problems than not being able to surf porn and MySpace. Maybe, just maybe, they should work on things like stable governments and, you know, food and water first. Just an idea, anyways.

Africa: Susceptible to Scams?

I've started wondering about how well the people of central Africa will handle the internet. Obviously there's a lot of problems there, as described in the above posts... what happens if they start throwing everything they've got into hopeless scams that prey on their destitution and strife? I'm not sure their culture is geared to handle it in quite the same way ours is, and I can't help but wonder if Africa is where we will first start to see cultures seriously undermined or destroyed by the Internet.

Wireless for Africa: The only way forward

Counting on fixed intfastructure for Africa is wrong: The people are scaterred around in a vast continent. Ever seen Africa from Google Earth? It's full of small villages everywhere, even inside deserts and jungles. We should aim to potentially connect the whole of the African population to the Internet, not just those living in cities, and therefore we have to account for those in remote villages. Fixed cables are probably sufficient for the biggest of the African urban centres, but we need a wireless solution to connect the rest of the people. Furthermore, there are people in Africa who don't like staying in the same place much time, they are accustomed to move around (nomads or descendants of nomads). Other Africans may be so dependent on a specific kind of job that they may move whenever they have to change employer, just to have access to a job. Mobile phones do have some kind of penetration in the African continent and some people are used to them. These are all additional reasons why we need a wireless Internet solution,preferably something that could work with their mobile phones. 3G, WiFi, WiMax, and for the most remote of the villages, GPRS and satellite access are good candidate technologies for bringing more Africans to the Net. That's all about the technology. But the biggest problem is not technological, but rather economic and societal: People just don't have much to pay and even those who do are victims of monopolies, and nobody who has the power to help them thinks about them. Some people think that because Africa lives in poverty it should focus solely on covering its basic needs (food, shelter, peace). I think non-basic needs like access to information must not be overlooked. Many times better access to information can help one to find better ways to cover their basic needs. For example, farmers in Africa could benefit from the Internet by learning about agricultural technology and finding out information about new plants that they could grow. The fact that Africa missed the industrial revolution doesn't mean that it has to miss the information revolution as well.

Development Happens in Order

Greetings. I live and work in Africa (http://therandymon.com/content/view/104/59/ [therandymon.com]), so I happen to know a little something about the way things are. Frankly, I don't see the scandal in the fact that Africa doesn't have good access to the Internet, and reject this article on the grounds that (a) as usual, the story is focused on lack of infrastructure, which is not the correct focus, and (b) as usual paints a bleaker picture than neecssary.

It's true service is slower and more expensive but in the capitals and in major cities there is more than enough to go around. In Benin there is dial up service for about $15 per month plus the cost of the phone call, ADSL service in the capital for about $75 a month for 256/128, and if that's not good enough you can pay more (up to $200/month) for greater bandwidth. It's more expensive than I'd like and the service is occasionally down for service, not to mention phone line trouble, saturated networks, and so on, but that's another story. The point is, I've got Internet in the capital (Cotonou, if you care) and it's essentially satisfactory. Inland in places like Burkina Faso and Mali they've got internet connections as well, but they are more expensive and the bandwidth isn't as good, since the network goes through the coastal nations - Ghana, Togo, and Benin. The big agencies - UN, embassies, major companies working in the region - also have available satellite internet at much higher prices.

Lack of infrastructure is not the problem. Lack of a market willing to pay for the service that demands that infrastructure is, and as the market develops the infrastructure will suddenly seem like a worthwhile investment. You don't get Africans connected by building a bunch of equipment and hoping they show up. The second factor is regulation, which is clearly an area where African governments have some growing to do. To build a telecommunications sector (and make no mistake about it, if you put in cable and connections you're building the sector) you need effective government regulation. Unfortunately that has to happen from within, and no multinational company can effectively impose good government (and thus good government oversight) on a nation. The article's story about Kigali is a perfect example of this point.

In the meantime, where's the scandal? I have friends and colleagues who live in small villages inland, not in the capital. Every one of them has a hotmail/yahoo.fr/gmail account, and when they need to use the Internet they go to a cybercafe for a quick hour or two. That fits their budget and works well.

If you want to connect Africa, help educate the people so they can improve their own economic situation. They will form the basis for a stronger economic market for these services, and the system will be sustainable. Impose on these growing countries the infrastructure before they are ready to sustain it and you will just perpetuate the development myth.

Before leaving this post, I highly recommend you read White Man's Burden by William Easterly, if the idea of development interests you. After 40 years of investing in growing countries we know a lot more about it than before, and there are many lessons to be learned.

What Good It Is

Let's leave aside the issues of life, like infant mortality, life expectancy and disease morbidity and focus on the relevant issues:

Less than 60% of Africans are literate.
20% of Africans don't have electricity and that number is increasing by almost 10% per year. That is, they're losing it, not getting it.
Less than 1% of Africans have land line phones. Less than 10% have cell phones, and coverage is spotty, unreliable and low rate.

Africa is waiting for the web like dolphins are waiting for a subway.

The people who think Africa really needs the web are mostly the people who stand to profit from selling it to them. Much of what did get sold would never be put to use -- it'd get resold or just sit and rot, the money gone to the corrupt governments, agencies and companies that were supposed to provide it to people the majority of whom couldn't afford it anyway.

How can an American company get involved?

I represent a group of African Americans who are interested in providing telecommunications services to Africa, particularly East and Central Africa. Just last week we discussed the possibility of laying fiber optic cable along the East Coast of Africa. Who do we have to see to make this happen? Does anyone know? Should we approach private companies or the U.S. Commerce Department? Where is a good source for raising funds for what is obviously a huge and expensive undertaking? Is there another way around fiber optics and satellite services?

OLPC?

The nytfeed provides us with an article about the current state of internet connectivity on the African continent. Only 4 percent of Africa's population has regular access to the internet, with most of those people living in North African countries, or the country of South Africa. This might seem like a market ripe for development, but the article explains that there are numerous difficulties involved getting an infrastructure project off the ground.

But, didn't we just send a bunch of internet-enabled laptops there?

Posting From "AFRICA"

First of all I have to say I find the ignorance of some of the replies here quite discusting. May I remind people here the Africa is a continent with many entirely separate nations not all of which are poor or wartorn. Having said that I am in Zambia. I am posting off a 256K radio link broadband connection that costs $100/month (Its worth it if only for International Skype calls). The downside is the latency because the ISP uses vsat links. There is no access to coastline fiber because we are landlocked and hooking up to a coastline countries network requires a hell of alot of politicall will. The main issue is few people inderstand the value of the internet aside from the occasional e-mail. Meanwhile we have 5 competing cell phone providers charging ridiculous rates and raking in the $$$. The political response is usually "we have people starving and dying in the villages so why worring about internet access." Never mind the fact that local businesses can't compete on the global market without internet and thus the place never improves.

SA Connected ...

... It may well be, but it doesn't have the bandwidth. I'm from the UK and essentially work for the EMEA region of my employer as a consultant, which has resulted in my last 3 trips being 2 to SA and one to Israel. While there may well be internet in these countries, the bandwidth just isn't there, to the point where Yahoo mail breaks, and facebook, my VPN, Google mail, and I really wouldn't try to watch anything on YouTube.

So, it may be great to get everyone connected, but they will be on a different tier of Internet from a functionality perspective, and I am not sure that SA needs this right now, let alone the whole continent of Africa.

Worse Broadband Than Australia?

I must say it's amazing to find there's even one country with a worse broadband deployment than Australia.

Oddly enough their deep well of pain and suffering is due to exactly the same problems we are struggling with here in Down Under land.

the cable was supposed to provide cheaper and faster Web access, but so far that has not happened. Prices remain high because the national telecommunications linked to the cable maintain a monopoly over access, squeezing out potential competitors.

No surprises there.

Been There, Done That.

Still have the scars to prove it.

Still hoping one day we'll have a government interest in waking our country up from THIS NEVERENDING NIGHTMARE.

Nothing but ignorant drivel

Reading comments from I'm assuming mostly Americans... You have no right on assuming what is best for Africa. Africa needs more internet connectivity. A global voice to tap into. A lot of comments about Nigerians and 419ers as well. You only assume that is what its going to be used for, and assume that Africans cannot help themselves. My only comment about internet already available, is that its too expensive. $60 a month for a 3gig account, line rental etc. pathetic. Which is mostly to blame on privatized companies running it for profit or share prices. Public enemy nr. 1 being Telkom http://www.telkomsa.net/ [telkomsa.net].

South africa no internet haven

if any of you are thinking that the RSA is a haven for internet thing again! the website <a href="http://www.hellkom.co.za/>hellkom</a> proves other wise.

what Africa needs is polotitions that aren't corrupt and know what they are talking about about, I mean when the lead of the anti aid's campaign and also the vice president of south Africa says in court that a shower will get rid of AIDS, you can see there are bigger problems then email !

Well in Ghana...

Ghana Telecom is now destroying competition with their new DSL service. I just got it hooked up to the school im doing a project for and it is not what was advertised as far as speed goes, but is a major improvement over the previous 600 USD a month 64kbps ISDN over radio connection from Africa Online (perhaps the worst provider in Ghana at the moment). We currently pay 90 USD a month for about 300kbps DSL (supposed to be 2mbit, but we aren't in the capital where 2mbit is working, we are 150miles north or so where the service just came out).

Yes we are on the west coast, and are a former British colony with natural resources, but the problems discussed in the article are pretty much standard anywhere in Africa. Lets take a very advanced technology and impliment it before we have roads, reliable water or reliable electrical power. I arrived in Ghana 1 month after load shedding started (due to either poor management/lack of maintenance of the Akosombo Dam, or slight drought conditions the year before), the school I am at has expanded a bit more than it should have, so we had some water problems (although the whole village has had water problems, due to boreholes not being dug deep enough), so I experienced first hand both sides of Mr. Wyler's plight.

Africa Online is the most horrible service I can imagine, their squid transparent proxy cache server has craches several times, their DNS server's barely function, and their routing is faster when their main fibre connection fails and the backup satellite connection is switched to. They have been here for 10 years or so, and charge customers through the nose as they were the only game in town. Now they have a huge amount of competition and will learn very quickly they need to upgrade, repair, and plan new network expansion.

On the other side, getting Ghana Telecom DSL was a massive pain, 3 months after being told "Next week" they would come for installation (this is common, it is referred to as Ghana Maybe time, or GMT for short). But when we finally got it, the service isn't up to spec, but just by having a decent (new) network, and working DNS servers it is a thousand times better, and they do seem to be attempting to fix their problems. Also, saving over 500 USD a month is very nice, over 6000 USD a year.

Now my computer lab has the best internet connection in probably 100 miles or more, and is offering something not really available before to the children. Google Earth functions now, kids can download videos of their favorite hip hop artists on youtube, and can upload art/other stuff to community sites like flickr/deviant art/etc. There is definitely a tech boom here in Ghana.

Now if only I didn't have electricity off tomorrow from 6am to 6pm.

What Africans think about this issue

I think before this discussion gets too heated that posters might stop and ask what people in Africa think about this issue. They are the ones who count, right? And they're not posting on Slashdot because most of them won't take the time to read all 242 comments because they're paying half a days wages already for an hour at an internet cafe.

I taught in Africa in 2006, and I can tell you that I never met a single English-speaking person who did not have a yahoo account, including a Maasai guide in tribal robes who had to walk and hitchhike 40 km to get to a town with an internet cafe. People are desperate for connection. Wouldn't you be?

My students (from all over Africa) and I put together a website on universities in Africa in general and internet issues in particular. That website was some of the background material for the New York Times article. It's at www.arp.harvard.edu/AfricaHigherEducation/. If you go to "student voices" you can read my students' stories and opinions.

The website has several goals beyond bringing the students' voices. One goal is to help explain WHY communications are so expensive in Africa, because of predatory pricing by cable monopolies (and it's worth remembering that some 30% of the ownership of African cables are held by multinationals, including AT&T and France Telecom). Costs are high because, as the NYT article said, governments are too weak to regulate properly and operators charge what they can. If you want to help Africa, write your Congressman and ask for World Bank funding for a second cable, based on an Open Access model. For $250 million you can revolutionize telecommunications in East Africa. That's nothing compared to most infrastructure projects, absolutely nothing.

The second meta-goal of the website was to puncture the false impression that many well-meaning people pick up from the media, that Africans are somehow special and exotic and in need of special treatment. No country, it's worth remembering, has ever developed because of foreign aid. Countries all develop through building business and industry and trade. Rememeber that 200 years ago there were famines in Sweden too. Why are so many Americans in the Midwest blonde? Because peasants in Scandinavia were desperately poor and they left by the boatfull. The best way to help African countries now is to treat them as you would any other countries that are poor, yes, but growing fast (6% per year in sub-Saharan Africa right now), and with the same demands, needs, and desires as anyone else. The greatest help we can do for Africa is to promote that growth.

EJM

SAT 3 is not the only connection.

I'm looking at our Network Map here showing Sea cables around the world. (Dated 2004) As far as I can see following cables connect to Africa: Sat-3/WASC (40Gb) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT-3 [wikipedia.org] SAFE (30Gb) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFE_(cable_system) [wikipedia.org] SeaMeWe-3 (20Gb), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_3_(cable_sy stem) [wikipedia.org] FLAG (10Gb), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-Optic_Link_Arou nd_the_Globe [wikipedia.org] ALPAL-2 (160Gb), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALPAL-2_(cable_system ) [wikipedia.org] Agreed that for multiple connections, SAT-3 is the only one, but it is not the only one connecting Africa.

Re:How about not killing each other first...

Classic "short-term / long-term" distraction argument. Why worry about preparing for the future, when there is something other bad happening right now?

The answer is: If we postpone improvements until there is no killing or until there is religious harmony, then we would never do anything.

Re:I'm glad

I know that you were trying to make a joke, but if you (and others) would've RTFA, it would be seen that this article has nothing, NOTHING to do with Nigeria!
Don't believe me? Try searching for the string "Nigeria" in the print version of the article.

This is why I'm a little PO'd that when almost anything about Internet access in Africa comes up (ref: today's OLPC article), it's always "Fuck that, I don't want more 419 scams!" (never occurring to oneself to educate oneself aboutthem and just delete the damn things).

Thinking along those lines is a dis-service to others in Africa who need the speedy access, such as educational institutions, medical workers, relief/aid workers, scientists, engineers...and can make a big opening for globalized businesses (that are not mining or petrochem), such as car/truck companies and electronic research companies, to come into the country and start building stuff up. For all we know (and I might get modded down for this), Kigali, Rwanda in 10-20 years could be the next Bangalore, India if they have the resources to do it.

Thinking in the mentality box of "SCAMMERZ!" or "All they want is teh pr0n!" is what may be a small part, but still helping to mismanage stop investment in Africa, which is the point of TFA in the first place.

Re:Out of Africa...

Most of the people who left Africa in prehistoric times did so accidentally, with pretty much no knowledge that they were in Africa to begin with--it was pretty much random human migration, nothing more. Also, how on earth has some thinly-veiled racist remark gotten modded up a 3, Insightful?

Re:Internet?

It seems to me that the real "injustice" is a life expectancy of less than thirty years, a belief that raping virgins cures AIDS, religious civil wars, genocide...

Re:How about not killing each other first...

For the US the saying was "television is the opiate of the masses" - it's very likely that bringing good mass communication to everyone will help quell their bickering. Either thru education, getting people to see each other and their place in the rest of the world, or just feeding them mind-numbing videos via Youtube.