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.

The Internet May Not Be a Top Priority,

[ImustDIE]

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.

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

[matthewcraig]

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.

About South-Africa, Internet Boom

[dabatla]

As a South-African citizen I believe that progress is finally taking place, I also believe that South-Africa specifically is on the verge of a dramatic internet boom. Hopefully, other sub-Sahara country's will follow, but also learn from our mistakes. Up until a few years ago Telkom, the monopolizing, mainly government owned telecoms operator was the only company in South Africa that was allowed, by law, to provide landline-based services and VOIP was illegal. Since the beginning of the new Government in 1994 the tale of South-African public internet-connectivity has been a long and tragic tale that has been told many times over. (check hellkom.co.za) But finally we are beginning to see some progress : Telkom now has a competitor, Neotel, and since their licensing, broadband prices started to fall dramatically, and it is continuing to do so. Telkom claims that it will have 1 million broadband subscribers by 2009 and for us, although most people are skeptical, that is a HUGE leap forward. With our growing economy and WIMAX just around the corner, proper broadband internet connectivity might just become one of the most successful tools for education, and most experts these days agree that education is the best weapon that we can use to fight our problems like HIV/AIDS and crime.

Re:Bigger picture...

[toddhisattva]

'The West' (America, England, France etc) have supported, propped up, or installed dictators in numerous countries on the African continent at some point or another within the last 20 years.

You left out Russia and China, but they're the good guys so nobody should criticize them.

Re:Not africa's biggest problem

[N3Roaster]

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:Can't wait!

[sumdumass]

Wow, Troll over something obviously funny and almost neccesary.

Anyways, it isn't limited to the internet. I started getting phone calls that would ring once or twice and then hang up. The numbers were my own Cell Phone number with a Nigerian country and area code in front of it. I didn't find this out until after I got a letter from the government.

I had freaked out and called my cell provider and they claim they didn't even have a record of me getting a call at the times it was on the phone and then said someone must be playing games with a computer. I didn't like that answer and was thinking that some terrorist cell was cloning and using my phone and calling over seas or something. So I called the homeland security tip line and told them about it so I didn't get one of those all expenses paid trips to club gitmo for a couple of years by accident. I recieved a letter saying it was a scam where If I called back, I would get placed on hold for something like $50 to $100 a minute.

I work in Africa

[abarrow]

I work in Angola, in telecoms/networking. I've been working with the guys in various African countries for the past 10 years, but I've only been working in-country for the past 18 months.

I expected the worst when I got here, and I wasn't dissapointed. Everything they say in the article about lack of satellite capacity and high costs of SAT-3 is true. We're just about to pay a company $1MM Euros/yr. for 6Mb of bandwidth out of here - compare that to your home DSL line. The in-country infrastructure is a disaster, and it's unlikely to improve soon. Just imagine what would happen if you put Texas through 30 years of civil war, then gave it 6 years to rebuild infrastructure. It's unrealistic to think everything will change overnight.

I hear the "fix the society first" bit a lot, including from local government officials. I see it a little differently. I'd like people to look at Internet connectivity in the same way that they now look at mobile phone usage. The main reason that mobile phones have been so popular in Africa is that the infrastructure is such a mess. Now, putting wired infrastructure in the ground in many citys just isn't a big priority - everyone has a mobile phone.

I think the same thing is possible with Internet connectivity and leveraging projects like OLPC. The society can leap-frog over the issues of lack of school books, teachers, and maybe even brick-and-mortar schools. Wireless can work where DSL will never be. Books are delivered online, and maybe even teaching. Rechargeable, battery powered devices are mandatory.

Still, that means that the main issue of wider connectivity needs to be solved. Satellite capacity over Africa is extremely limited, but getting better. We're unlikely to have another SAT-3 for quite a while.

Well in Ghana...

[EvanTaylor]

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.