Description
The environment for networked readiness has improved relatively rapidly in most urban areas in Africa. Five years ago, only a handful of countries had local Internet access or mobile telephones; now, devices and access are available in virtually every major city.
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Environment and Readiness
The environment for networked readiness has improved
relatively rapidly in most urban areas in Africa. Five years
ago, only a handful of countries had local Internet access or
mobile telephones; now, devices and access are available in
virtually every major city. Hundreds of new radio stations
and newspapers have been licensed over the last few years
and digital satellite television has also become widely
available. The “digital divide” however, is still at its most
extreme in Africa. In absolute terms, networked readiness is
still at a very early stage of development compared to other
regions of the world. Of the approximately 816 million
people in Africa in 2001, it is estimated
1
that only:
one in four have a radio (200 million);
one in 13 have a television (62 million);
one in 35 have a mobile telephone (24 million);
one in 39 have a ?xed line (21 million);
one in 130 have a personal computer (PC) (5.9 million);
one in 160 use the Internet (5 million);
one in 400 have pay-television (2 million).
These ?gures do not take into consideration the widespread
sharing of media that takes place in Africa (often ten people
may read the same newspaper or share an Internet account,
and a whole village may use a single telephone line or crowd
around a television set at night); nevertheless, it appears
that sub-Saharan Africa may be slipping behind when
compared to south Asia, the other least developed region.
As Table 1 shows, the two regions are at the bottom of the
list in Internet usage surveys around the world, but south
Asia has caught up considerably since 1998.
Table 1. Internet Users as Percentage of Total Population
Region 1998 2000
United States 26.30 54.3
High-income OECD (excluding the U.S.) 6.90 28.2
Latin America and the Caribbean 0.80 3.2
East Asia and the Paci?c 0.50 2.3
Eastern Europe and CIS 0.80 3.9
Arab States 0.20 0.6
Sub-Saharan Africa 0.10 0.4
South Asia 0.04 0.4
World 2.40 6.7
Source: United Nations Development Program, World Development Report 2001.
Because the region is so diverse, it can be misleading to
generalize about Africa. The averages given above obscure
the great variation between countries, but it can be said that
most of the continent’s population are amongst the poorest
Chapter 6
ICT in Africa:
A Status Report
Mike Jensen
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in the world (Africa had US$766 in gross domestic product
(GDP) per person in 2000), with the divide between urban
and rural areas being particularly marked. Most services are
concentrated in the towns, while the majority of Africans (70
to 80 percent) reside in smaller communities scattered across
the vast rural areas. In some countries, more than 75 percent
of the country’s telephone lines are concentrated in the
capital city. Irregular or nonexistent electricity supplies are
also common in Africa, especially outside major towns.
Another systemic problem is that road, rail, and air transport
networks are limited, costly to use, and often in poor
condition, resulting in barriers to the increased movement of
people and goods; increased mobility is needed to implement
and support a pervasive network infrastructure and also for
the increased economic and social activity that would occur
with greater physical movement of people. Visa requirements
and congested border posts add to these dif?culties.
Furthermore, many tax regimes still treat computers and
cellular telephones as luxury items, which makes these
imported items all the more expensive.
Another problem is that the brain drain and generally low
levels of education and literacy have together resulted in a
great scarcity of skills and expertise (at all levels, from policy
making down to the end user). Rural areas in particular
have limited human resources. Along with the very low pay
scales in the African civil service, this is a chronic problem
for governments that are continually losing their brightest
and most experienced to the private sector. The fact that
this situation is not unique to Africa or other developing
countries, but is also being faced by the developed world,
is simply exacerbating the situation in Africa, because
experienced professionals are able to ?nd much higher
paying jobs in Europe and North America.
Finally, while a good business climate is acutely needed or
the information and communications sector, the general
investment climate in Africa often suffers from the well-
known problems of small markets, nontransparent and
time-consuming business procedures, limited opportunities
(partly due to the historic pattern of state monopolies),
scarce local capital, currency instability, exchange controls,
and in?ation.
Usage
Telecommunication
Overall, a substantial increase in the rate of expansion and
modernization of ?xed networks is currently taking place,
along with an explosion of mobile networks. The number of
main lines in Africa grew about 9 percent per year between
1995 and 2001, although the overall ?xed line teledensity
as of 2001 is still only about one in 40 inhabitants, and
one in 130 in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa).
Taking into account population growth, the effective
annual increase in lines is only 6 percent. Also, much of
the existing telecommunications infrastructure is out of
the reach of most people—50 percent of the available lines
are in the capital cities, where only about 10 percent of the
population lives. In more than ?fteen countries in Africa,
including Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Uganda, more than 70
percent of the ?xed lines are still located in the largest city
(International Telecommunication Union [ITU] 2002).
Overall, the number of ?xed lines increased from 12.5
million to 21 million across Africa between 1995 and 2001,
a teledensity growth rate of 6.7 percent (i.e., taking into
account population growth). North Africa had 11.4 million
of these ?xed lines and South Africa, 5 million lines; this
means there were only 4.6 million lines in the rest of the
continent. Therefore, while the sub-Sahara has about 10
percent of the world’s population (626 million), it has only
0.2 percent of the world’s 1 billion ?xed telephone lines.
Compared to all of the low-income countries (which house
50 percent of the world’s population and 10 percent of the
telephone lines), the penetration of telephone lines on the
subcontinent is about three times worse than the “average”
low-income country.
The situation is not quite as bad as it would appear, however,
because of the penetration of mobile networks, where
subscribers (now numbering 23.5 million) have surpassed
?xed line users in most countries; this demonstrates that
there is pent-up demand for basic voice services. Most of
the subscribers use prepaid accounts, and because of the low
cost and long range of the cellular base stations, many rural
areas have also been covered. But the high cost of mobile
usage (US$0.25 to US$0.50/minute) makes it too expensive
for regular local calls or Internet access. A common response
to this is the use of text messaging; in some countries, for
example, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa, text messaging
now includes delivery of information services such as news,
weather, and market prices.
Even if telecommunications infrastructure is beginning
to spread, domestic use has, until recently, been largely
con?ned to the small proportion of the population that can
actually afford their own telephone—the cost of renting a
connection averages almost 20 percent of GDP per capita,
versus a world average of 9 percent and only 1 percent in
high-income countries.
2
Despite these high charges relative
to income levels, the number of public telephones is still
much lower than elsewhere. According to the ITU (2001),
there are approximately 350,000 public telephones in the
whole continent of Africa—75,000 of which are in the sub-
Sahara—or about one telephone for every 8,500 people,
compared to a world average of one to 500 and a high-
income average of one to 200.
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However, an increasing number of operators in Africa
are now passing the responsibility for maintaining public
telephones to the private sector, and this has resulted in
a rapid growth of public “phone shops” and “telecenters”
in many countries; the most well-known case is that of
Senegal, which now has more than 10,000 commercially-run
public phone bureaus employing more than 15,000 people
and generating more than 30 percent of the entire network’s
revenues. While most of these are in urban areas, a growing
number are being established in more remote locations, and
some networks also provide Internet access and other more
advanced ICT services to the public.
Public telephone operators (PTOs) in some countries, such
as Botswana and South Africa, are now launching prepaid
?xed line services, or providing a “virtual telephone”
alternative for those unable to obtain their own telephone.
Subscribers are issued their own unique phone number and
pay a small rental for a voice mailbox, from which they can
retrieve their messages from any telephone. A pager can also
be tied to the system to immediately inform the subscriber
that a voice message is waiting.
Although there is substantial gray-market use of Voice
over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services in Africa wherever
international bandwidth allows, these are not of?cially
permitted for the end user anywhere in the region
except in Egypt and Nigeria. In Egypt, the national
telecommunications operator provides a PC-to-phone
service, and in Nigeria, the regulator has sanctioned
all licensed cybercafes to provide VoIP. However, many
telecommunications operators are now using or planning
to use VoIP as a transport layer on their international and
national links, and operators in countries such as Egypt,
Gambia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe
have established joint ventures with international VoIP
companies such as ITXC, GatewayIP, and Ibasis to
implement these facilities.
Nevertheless, high telecommunications charges (often up to
ten times greater than rates for equivalent services in Europe
or North America) and limited service are still generally
prevalent, largely because of the monopoly environment
in which most national state-run providers operate. This
is now slowly changing, with the ?rst step usually being to
seek an international strategic equity partner in a partial-
privatization process. Generally, there have been two modes
of partial privatization; selling less than (some countries are
selling 30 to 33 percent) or more than 51 percent of shares.
The largest international partners and their ownership levels
are currently as follows: France Telecom (Côte d’Ivoire
Telecom, 51 percent; SONATEL [Senegal], 33 percent;
Mauritius Telecom, 40 percent); Malaysia Telecom (Telkom
SA [South Africa], 30 percent; Ghana Telecom, 30 percent;
SOTELGUI [Guinea Conakry], 60 percent); Maroc Telecom
(Mauritel [Mauritania], 54 percent); Vivendi Universal
(Maroc Telecom, 35 percent).
While most African PTOs are, or will shortly be, partially
privatized, there are still a few countries lagging behind
in privatizations, notably Nigeria, Gambia, Democratic
Republic of the Congo, the Comoros Islands, Sierra Leone,
Liberia, Zimbabwe, and Libya. Of worldwide distribution
of privatization in the year 2000 (by region, based on
ninety-eight countries), the African continent represented
15 percent; Europe, 35 percent; the Americas, 24 percent;
the Asia Paci?c region, 20 percent; and the Arab states
accounted for 6 percent. In terms of the percentage of
privatized operators, in 2000 Africa had 35 percent; Europe,
63 percent; the Americas, 74 percent; Asia Paci?c, 53
percent; and the Arab states, 29 percent.
The availability of specialist training in telecommunications
is currently extremely limited on the continent. In Africa,
there are only two major regional centers for training in
telecommunications: ESMT in Senegal for francophone
countries, and AFRALTI in Kenya for Anglophone
countries. It is expected that these centers, with the support
of an ITU program, will be transformed into Centers
of Excellence in Telecommunications Administration
(CETA). CETA is intended to provide senior-level, advanced
training, and professional development in the areas of
telecommunications policies, regulatory matters, and the
management of telecommunications networks and services.
A number of telecommunication operators maintain
their own training schools but these, similar to the
operators, usually lack ?nancial resources. Over the last
twenty years, the German international technical training
assistance agency, Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft, has sent
a large number of telecommunications trainees from
Africa to Germany; many other development agencies
have similar, if smaller, programs. At a global level, one
initiative that may have an impact in the future is the ITU’s
Global Telecommunications Academy. This will operate
as a brokerage service for distance-learning courses. Once
established, the Academy is to be self-?nanced through
a fee payable by every course participant. The aim of the
Academy is to create a cooperative network of partners by
pooling existing resources in universities, training institutes,
?nancing bodies, governments, regional organizations, and
telecommunications operators.
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Country
Fixed
Lines
Fixed
Line
Penetra-
tion
Public
Tele-
phones
Mobile
Users
Mobile
Penetra-
tion
(000)
(% of
Popula-
tion) (000) (000)
(% of
Popula-
tion)
Algeria 1,880.0 6.04 5.00 100.0 0.32
Angola 80.0 0.59 0.27 86.5 0.64
Benin 59.3 0.92 0.51 125.0 1.94
Botswana 150.3 9.27 3.00 278.0 16.65
Burkina Faso 57.6 0.47 1.44 75.0 0.61
Burundi 20.0 0.29 0.08 20.0 0.29
Cameroon 101.4 0.67 6.55 310.0 2.04
Cape Verde 62.3 14.27 0.39 31.5 7.21
Central Africa 10.0 0.26 0.09 11.0 0.29
Chad 11.0 0.14 0.06 22.0 0.27
Comoros 8.9 1.22 0.17 — —
Republic of Congo 22.0 0.71 — 150.0 4.82
Côte d’Ivoire 293.6 1.80 1.93 728.5 4.46
Djibouti 9.9 1.54 0.42 150.0 0.29
D. R. C. 20.0 0.04 3.0 0.47
Egypt 6,650.0 10.30 21.99 2,793.8 4.33
Equatorial Guinea 6.9 1.47 — 15.0 3.19
Eritrea 32.0 0.84 0.42 — —
Ethiopia 310.0 0.48 1.56 27.5 0.04
Gabon 37.2 2.95 0.83 258.1 20.45
Gambia 35.0 2.62 0.68 43.0 3.22
Ghana 242.1 1.16 3.18 193.8 0.93
Guinea 25.5 0.32 0.85 55.7 0.69
Guinea Bissau 12.0 0.98 0.20 — —
Kenya 313.1 1.00 9.03 500.0 1.60
Lesotho 22.2 1.03 0.37 33.0 1.53
Liberia 6.7 — — — —
Libya 610.0 10.93 0.45 50.0 0.90
Madagascar 58.4 0.36 0.46 147.5 0.90
Malawi 54.1 0.47 0.54 55.7 0.48
Mali 49.9 0.43 2.37 45.3 0.39
Mauritania 19.0 0.72 0.89 — —
Mauritius 306.8 25.56 2.92 300.0 25.00
Mayotte 10 6.98 — — —
Morocco 1,193.3 3.92 46.84 4,771.7 15.68
Mozambique 89.4 0.44 1.86 169.9 0.84
Namibia 117.4 6.57 5.30 100.0 5.59
Niger 21.7 0.19 0.06 1.8 0.02
Nigeria 500.0 0.43 1.60 330.0 0.28
Réunion 268.5 — — — —
Rwanda 21.5 0.27 0.40 65.0 0.82
SaoTomé 5.4 3.63 0.08 — —
Senegal 237.2 2.45 13.49 390.8 4.04
Seychelles 21.4 26.73 0.22 44.1 55.15
Sierra Leone 22.7 0.47 0.31 26.9 0.55
Somalia 15.0 — — — —
South Africa 4,969.0 11.35 178.11 9,197.0 21.00
Sudan 453.0 1.42 5.25 105.0 0.33
Swaziland 32.0 3.14 0.83 66.0 6.47
Tanzania 148.5 0.41 0.72 427.0 1.19
Togo 48.1 1.03 0.16 95.0 2.04
Tunisia 1,056.2 10.89 19.31 389.2 4.01
Uganda 63.7 0.28 1.38 322.7 1.43
Zambia 85.4 0.8 0.87 98.3 0.92
Zimbabwe 253.7 1.86 3.23 328.7 2.41
Total 21,210.3 3.52 346.67 23,545.2 2.95
Table 2. Telecommunications Usage in Africa, 2001
Countries with Advanced Data Services
Botswana—ISDN, Frame Relay
Egypt—ISDN, Frame Relay, ATM, DSL
Kenya—ISDN, DSL
Ghana—Frame Relay
Mauritius—ISDN, Frame Relay, DSL, ATM
Morocco—ISDN, GPRS, Frame Relay
Senegal—ISDN
Seychelles —ISDN
South Africa—ISDN, GPRS, Frame Relay
Tunisia—ISDN
Uganda—ISDN, DLS
The Internet
The use of the Internet is a good indicator of the use of
information and communication technologies, as such use
requires the integration of many of individual components—
electricity, telecommunications infrastructure, computers,
and the skills to use them. As the Figure 1 shows, both the
number of Internet users and the amount of international
bandwidth is still growing strongly across the continent.
Figure 1. Growth of Internet Use in Africa
Source: Sangonethttp://www3.sn.apc.org/africa
In Africa, the pattern of Internet diffusion has been similar to
that of the mobile telephone networks. Although the Internet
is not quite as widespread, it preceded the mobile telephone
explosion; its greatest impact is at the top end of business and
in wealthy families, primarily in major urban areas.
The rates of growth seen in the 1990s have slowed in most
countries, because most users who can afford a computer
and telephone have already obtained connections. However,
although the total number of dial-up subscriber accounts
is readily available, the large number of shared dial-up
accounts, along with the relatively high use of public access
services such as telecenters, and cybercafes, make it dif?cult to
measure the total number of Internet users. Because the total
number of dial-up accounts is only a partial gauge of the size
of the Internet sector, the sector should be looked at along
Source: International Telecommunication Union
Subscribers/Kbps
1998
0
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
1999 2000 2001 2002
Subscribers
International
bandwidth (Kbps)
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with other factors, such as the quantity of international
traf?c each country generates.
As measured by Network Wizards,
3
the total number of
computers permanently connected to the Internet in Africa
(excluding South Africa) exceeded 35,000 in 2001. However,
such ?gures are becoming increasingly meaningless in Africa,
with the widespread use of dot-com and dot-net domains
along with the frequent re-use of Internet address space
behind ?rewalls due to the dif?culties of obtaining public
Internet space. As a result, many African countries surveyed
by Network Wizards show zero or only a handful of hosts,
when in actual fact there might be hundreds, if not thousands,
of machines connected to the Internet in each country.
As of mid-2002, the number of dial-up Internet subscribers
was close to 1.7 million, which is 20 percent up from
2001, an increase mainly bolstered by growth in a few
countries, such as Nigeria. North Africa and South Africa
are responsible for about 1.2 million of these subscribers,
leaving about 500,000 for the remaining forty-nine sub-
Saharan African countries. If we assume that each computer
with an Internet or e-mail connection supports a range of
three to ?ve users, this puts current estimates of the number
of African Internet users at about 5 to 8 million. About 1.5
to 2.5 million of these users are outside North and South
Africa; this suggests one user for every 250 to 400 people.
The world average, in contrast, is one user for every ?fteen
people; the North American and European average is about
one user in every two to three people. No studies have been
made in Africa of the number of rural versus urban users,
but it is safe to say that users in the cities and towns vastly
outnumber rural users.
The use of public access facilities and corporate or academic
networks is continuing to grow at greater rates than the
number of dial-up users. Evidence of this pattern can be
seen in the deployment of international Internet bandwidth,
which is still expanding faster than the number of dial-up
subscribers. International Internet bandwidth increased
by more than 100 percent last year, from 700 Mbps of
available outgoing bandwidth in 2001 to 1,500 Mbps in 2002.
However, this is still slower growth than the rest of the world,
which averaged 174 percent growth in 2001; further, some
international links may only be as big as the circuit used by a
small- or medium-sized business, or even a broadband home
user, in a developed country—that is, about 128 Kbps. In
most cases these circumstances are con?ned to very small and
poor African countries, but there are many other regulatory,
historic, and social factors that also in?uence slow growth.
Due to high international tariffs and lack of circuit capacity,
obtaining suf?cient international bandwidth is a major
problem in most countries, and although conditions have
improved recently, users generally still have to contend
with substantial congestion at peak times. This year,
Egypt overtook South Africa as the country with the
most international bandwidth (550 Mbps vs. 380 Mbps),
following the launch of Nile-Online, a government-backed
international connectivity provider. Today, twenty countries
have links carrying 5 Mbps or more, and thirteen countries—
Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco,
Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia
and Zimbabwe—have outgoing links of 10 Mbps or more.
Also of note is that while the range in available international
bandwidths continues to increase, eight countries in
Africa (Liberia, Republic of Congo, Chad, Equatorial
Guinea, Comoros, and São Tomé and Príncipe) are still on
international links of 256 Kbps—less than that used by the
average small- or medium-sized business user in Europe or
North America.
Dial-up subscriptions
South Africa
Egypt
Morocco
Algeria
Tunisia
Nigeria
Reunion
Kenya
Mauritius
Tanzania
Zimbabwe
Botswana
Swaziland
Angola
Senegal
Ghana
Namibia
The rest
900,000
120,000
80,000
75,000
7,0000
60,000
47,000
35,000
35,000
30,000
25,000
20,000
20,000
16,000
15,000
15,000
15,000
130,535
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5
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7
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13
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14
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Figure 2. Countries with More Than 10,000 Internet
Subscribers
Source: Sangonet
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Figure 3. Countries with More Than 5 Mbps International
Outgoing Bandwidth
Source:http://www3.sn.apc.org/africa
Incoming bandwidth is about 50 percent greater, but is not
as easy to monitor because much of it comes in via variable
(uncommitted) bitrate satellite broadcast circuits. Use of this
type of circuitry is a common response to the bandwidth
problem; Internet service providers (ISPs) in Africa are now
installing data broadcasting services. A basic satellite dish can
be used to receive a stream of popular Web data for caching
locally, as well as to receive encoded broadcasts of other
user traf?c. These can often provide far cheaper incoming
bandwidth than that available via local operators.
Two-way satellite-based Internet services using very small
aperture terminals (VSAT) to connect directly to the
United States or Europe have also been quickly adopted by
ISPs wherever regulations allow—namely, in Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and
Zambia, which all have ISPs that are not dependent on the
local telecommunications operator for their international
bandwidth. Uganda used to allow public VSAT Internet
services, but following the sale of the second operator license
the issuing of new VSAT licenses has been suspended.
With the exception of some ISPs in Southern Africa, most
of the international Internet circuits in Africa connect to the
United States and Canada; other connections are to Belgium,
Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, and
France. Outgoing bandwidth totals approximately 1.5 Gbps,
of which 1 Gbps lands in the United States, 375 Mbps in
Europe, and 2 Mbps in Asia. Only 13 Mbps of bandwidth is
intra-African. High intraregional telecommunications prices
have limited the establishment of links between neighboring
countries to just ?ve—the Gambia-Senegal link, and South
Africa’s links to Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana.
(In South Africa, the telecommunications operator instituted
low tariffs for international links to neighboring countries.)
As a result of the high international tariffs charged by most
telecommunications operators, private ISPs are discouraged
from establishing multiple international links; increasing
amounts of intra-African traf?c are therefore transmitted
through high-cost cross-continental links.
The high tariffs are also the reason behind the common
practice amongst popular African Internet sites of being
hosted on servers that are in Europe or the United States.
This is especially necessary for the many countries,
such as Tanzania and Nigeria, where ISPs operate their
own independent international links without local
interconnections (a practice called peering). Peering means
that traf?c between the subscribers of two ISPs in the same
city must travel to the United States or Europe and back. Out-
of-country routing makes it more ef?cient to host outside-
country; also, Web hosting costs can be very high in Africa,
whereas there are even a number of free hosting sites in the
United States and Europe.
Local peering problems are now being addressed in some
countries through the establishment of national Internet
Exchange Points (IXPs), where all of the ISPs transfer
local traf?c. IXPs have already been set up by national ISP
associations in Kenya, Mozambique, and South Africa, and
plans are at an advanced stage to establish similar facilities
in Ghana and Uganda. Although local traf?c is only 15 to
25 percent of total traf?c, the use of IXPs can still result in
signi?cant savings on international bandwidth and improves
performance for the user.
The major international Internet suppliers are AT&T, BT,
UUNET/AlterNet (with parent company WorldCom/MCI),
Total outbound bandwidth in Kbps
Egypt
South Africa
Morocco
Algeria
Tunisia
Senegal
Kenya
Gabon
Nigeria
Botswana
Tanzania
Zimbabwe
Sudan
Uganda
Cameroon
Namibia
Angola
Cote D'Ivoire
The Rest
535,000
398,512
136,000
83,000
75,000
60,000
28,000
16,384
15,000
14,000
12,000
11,000
10,000
9,250
9,000
8,500
7,000
6,500
64,334
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NSN, Teleglobe, Verio, Verestar, and OpenTransit (France
Telecom/FCR). A number of other links are provided
by Intelsat, PanamSat, New Skies and Inmarsat, direct-
to-private and PTO groundstations in North America,
Europe, and the Middle East, circumventing local PTO
infrastructure.
International bandwidth is increasingly being used as
a better measure of networked readiness than the total
number of users, because it takes into account the range
of use, “from those who write a few e-mails a week, to
those who spend many hours a day on the net browsing,
transacting, streaming, or downloading” (IDRC 2002).
As most of the Internet traf?c is international (75 to 90
percent), the size of a country’s international bandwidth
compared to population size provides a ready indication of
the extent of its Internet activity (IDRC 2002).
An index of bits per capita (BPC) can be calculated by
dividing the total international Internet bandwidth in a
country by its total population (IDRC 2002). As is evident
from the map in Figure 4, which charts to exact area scale
the BPC per country, there is extremely large variation in
the BPC index, ranging from 0.02 to greater than 40—a
factor of more than 1,000. These ?gures re?ect the wide
range of wealth in different countries; however, GDP per
capita only varies by a factor of about 30, which indicates
that other variables affect the index. Bandwidth price is
a major factor that varies considerably on the continent;
high price heavily impacts demand. Price, in turn, is
in?uenced by the regulatory environment—the presence of
competition, availability of wireless and VSAT licences, as
well as access to international ?bre optic bandwidth.
The recent establishment of West African Submarine Cable
(WASC), also shown below, has already resulted in plans
by operators in Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Namibia, Nigeria,
Senegal, and South Africa to establish large international
Internet links. This should substantially increase the
available Internet bandwidth and drive down prices.
Senegal has already moved in this direction; last year the
country enabled a 45 Mbps Internet circuit to France via
the recently-installed Atlantis-2 cable, which it now shares
with neighboring Gambia. Senegal is planning to become
a regional hub, and will shortly be linking its Internet
backbone to Mauritania and Mali, much like South Africa
has done with its neighboring countries.
Most African capitals now have more than one ISP, and in
mid-2002 there were about 560 public ISPs across the region
(excluding South Africa, where the market has consolidated
into three major players with 90 percent of the market and
about 100 smaller players with the remainder of the market).
In 2002, twenty countries had ?ve or more ISPs, while seven
countries (Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa,
Tanzania, and Togo) had ten or more active ISPs; seven
countries, however, still had only one ISP. Although Ethiopia
and Mauritius are the only countries where a monopoly ISP
is still national policy (i.e., private companies are barred from
reselling Internet services), monopolies are present in other
countries, predominantly in the francophone and the Central
African/Sahel subregions, where markets are small: Burkina
Faso, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Djibouti,
Ethiopia, Mauritius, and Niger.
Of the regional ISPs, African Lakes’ AfricaOnline has been
listed by the London Stock Exchange as the largest operation.
The group now has services in Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt,
Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, and
Zimbabwe. AfricaOnline is also engaged in a partnership
with WorldCom/UUNET to provide AfricaOnline’s
infrastructure in Kenya and Zambia. UUNet South Africa
also provides their own dial-up and leased line services in
Namibia and Botswana. South Africa-based MediaPost is
expanding its network, with operations currently in South
Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda, Republic of Congo, Kenya, and
Senegal and ?rm plans for Nigeria, Cameroon, Malawi, and
Democratic Republic of the Congo. The next largest regional
ISP is Swift Global, but after selling its Ugandan operation to
AfricaOnline, it is now only present in Kenya and Tanzania,
making South African ISP Mweb the other regional player,
having purchased ISPs in Namibia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
Although many African countries now have Internet points
of presence (POPs) in some of the secondary towns (totaling
about 280, in different locations across the continent), most
rural users still have to make a costly long distance call to
connect to the Internet. However, some countries have
now instituted local call charges for all calls to the Internet
regardless of distance, which greatly reduces costs for those
living in remote areas and increases the accessibility and
viability of Internet services provided by rural public access
facilities in these nations. So far, nineteen countries have
adopted this strategy: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde,
Chad, Ethiopia, Gabon, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mauritania,
Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, South Africa, Togo,
Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Interestingly, the Seychelles
has gone a step further to encourage use—tariffs for calls
to the Internet are charged at a 50 percent lower rate than
normal local voice calls.
Currently, the average total cost of using a local dial-up
Internet account for twenty hours a month in Africa is about
US$60 per month (price includes usage fees and local call
telephone time included, but not telephone line rental).
ISP subscription charges vary greatly (between US$10 and
US$80 a month) and largely re?ect the different levels of
maturity of the markets, the varying tariff policies of the
telecommunications operators, the different regulations on
private wireless data services, and on access to international
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telecommunications bandwidth. So far the “free-ISP” model
has only been adopted in Egypt, where there are no monthly
charges and revenues obtained from the local call tariffs are
split between the telecommunications operator and the ISP.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) (2000), twenty hours of Internet
access in the United States costs US$22 per month (inclusive
of telephone charges) in 2000. Although European costs
were higher (US$33 in Germany, US$39 across the European
Union), these countries have per capita incomes that are at
least ten times greater than the African average. In fact, US$60
per month is higher than the average African monthly salary.
Low income has limited individual use of the Internet and
has, together with elements such as the low telephone and
computer penetration, created the demand for public-access
facilities (the cost of a single account being effectively shared
amongst the customers who would not otherwise be able to
afford access).
Public access services are already very much in evidence in
most countries in Africa, particularly in those such as Nigeria
and Senegal where telecommunications operators have relied
on the private sector to provide public telephone services.
Such services are also available in most other major urban
areas across Africa, however, in rapidly-growing numbers of
telecenters, kiosks, cybercafes, business centers as well as in
other locations (e.g., in community phone-shops, schools,
police stations, and clinics).
The concept has also received considerable support from
members of the international community, as well as a number
of national governments and public telecommunication
operators as a means to establish access in rural areas.
Public access to the Internet is being seen as one of the most
important ways of realizing Universal Service Objectives
in rural and remote locations. To achieve the objectives,
many national government programs and more than
twenty international pilot projects have been initiated
Figure 4. African Internet Bandwidth per Capita and Marine Fibre Cables
Source: International Development Research Center (2002)
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throughout Africa (mostly in Ghana, Mozambique, and
Uganda, as well as in Benin, South Africa, Tanzania,
Zambia, and Zimbabwe) to test different models, means
of implementation, and mechanisms for sustainability.
The demand for public phone shops and telecenters is
also having spinoffs in the IT sector for small businesses,
equipment providers, and franchisers.
However, the case for large, multibranch cybercafe chains is
not yet proven, as regional ISP AfricaOnline learned when
it rolled out hundreds of public access kiosks as part of
its E-Touch franchise program in which local stores were
provided with a PC to enable e-mail and Internet access.
AfricaOnline had approximately 100,000 users spread across
740 outlets in Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and
Zimbabwe before it discovered these outlets were generating
insuf?cient income to maintain them. The company has
subsequently closed most of them, and is testing a new
franchise strategy with fewer, better known, “I-cafes.”
In the area of Internet-based content and applications,
the African Web presence continues to increase, but there
are generally few relevant applications for the general
population. Almost all African countries now have some
form of local or internationally-hosted Web server,
unof?cially or of?cially representing the country with
varying degrees of comprehensiveness. French-speaking
countries generally have a higher pro?le on the Web and
greater institutional connectivity than the non-French
speaking countries. This is largely due to the strong
assistance provided by various francophone support
agencies, as well as the Canadian and French governments,
which are concerned about the dominance of English
on the Internet. The two dominant francophone content
developers are the Agence de Cooperation Culturelle et
Technique (ACCT) (with the BIEF center), and AUPELF-
UREF/REFER’s Syfed Center; both centers are building
websites of local information as well as providing access.
In response to the high cost of Internet services and the
slow speed of Web access, and also because of the overriding
importance of electronic mail, lower-cost e–mail-only
services are continuing to attract subscribers. However, the
relatively high cost of local e-mail services from African ISPs
means that a large proportion of African e-mail users use
the international, free Web-based services such as Hotmail,
Yahoo, or Excite. These services are more costly and slower
than using standard e-mail software because extra online
time is needed to maintain the connection to the website.
Unfortunately for the ISPs, these services can also use up
scarce international bandwidth. In response to these issues
and the growing use of shared accounts, some African ISPs,
such as AfricaOnline and MailAfrica, have set up their own
low-cost Web-based e-mail services.
Source: Sangonethttp://www3.sn.apc.org/africa
Table 3. African Internet Statistics 2002
Country
Dial-up
Subscribers
Interna-
tional
Band-
width
Popula-
tion (in
Millions)
GDP/
Capita
US$
Cities
with
POPs
Outgoing
Kbps 2000 1999
Algeria 45,000 12,000 30.08 1,442 1
Angola 16,000 5,126 12.09 1,684 3
Benin 4,500 2,100 5.78 374 1
Botswana 20,000 14,000 1.57 3,252 11
Burkina Faso 4,700 256 11.31 199 1
Burundi 300 512 6.46 159 4
Cameroon 7,000 9,000 14.31 617 2
Cape Verde 2,456 1,024 0.41 876 1
Central Africa 700 64 3.48 276 1
Chad 900 64 7.27 149 2
Comoros 491 64 0.66 382 7
Republic of Congo 200 128 2.79 833 5
Côte d’Ivoire 13,000 6,000 16.20 767 13
D.R. C. 4,500 1,024 49.30 400 1
Djibouti 850 2,048 0.62 846 6
Egypt 100,000 535,000 65.98 1,195 1
Equatorial Guinea 200 64 0.43 668 1
Eritrea 2,500 512 3.58 161 1
Ethiopia 6,500 8,200 59.65 103 5
Gabon 5,000 16,384 1.17 5,121 7
Gambia 3,000 1,024 1.23 284 14
Ghana 15,000 4,096 19.16 372 3
Guinea 4,000 128 7.71 677 10
Guinea-Bissau 250 640 1.13 245 4
Kenya 35,000 28,000 29.01 347 2
Lesotho 750 784 2.06 547 2
Liberia 250 128 2.67 1,000 1
Libya 4,000 2,048 5.98 6,579 1
Madagascar 10,000 2,750 16.36 224 1
Malawi 3,500 2,300 10.75 242 2
Mali 6,000 4,096 10.69 230 1
Mauritania 960 384 2.53 455 1
Mauritius 35,000 4,096 1.15 3,661 1
Morocco 80,000 200,000 27.87 1,218 1
Mozambique 6,000 2,048 18.88 86 11
Namibia 15,000 6,144 1.66 2,051 100
Niger 2,000 384 10.08 161 1
Nigeria 60,000 15,000 113.50 551 2
Reunion 47,000 576 0.68 9,270 4
Rwanda 2,700 1,300 6.60 317 1
São Tomé 378 64 0.14 358 1
Senegal 15,000 48,000 10.00 518 4
Seychelles 3,000 4,098 0.08 6,995 3
Sierra Leone 1,000 512 4.57 209 1
Somalia 250 768 10.63 169 2
South Africa 750,000 342,000 44.31 2,979 2
Sudan 9,000 10,000 28.29 364 7
Swaziland 5,000 256 0.95 1,388 1
Tanzania 30,000 12,000 32.10 244 4
Togo 1,700 1,536 4.40 324 9
Tunisia 70,000 75,000 9.34 2,144 1
Uganda 10,000 9,250 20.55 317 5
Zambia 7,000 5,120 8.78 463 1
Zimbabwe 25,000 11,000 12.68 712 4
Africa 1,492,535 1,409,100 769.66 1,207.5 283
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Outside North and South Africa, there are generally few
organizations using the Web to deliver signi?cant quantities
of information or to carry out transactions with their user
base. Although large numbers of organizations now have
a “brochure” website with basic descriptive and contact
information, very few actually use the Internet for real
business activities. This is mainly explained by the limited
number of local people that have access to the Internet
(and thus the limited importance of a Web presence to
the institution), the lack of credit cards, the limited skills
available for digitizing and coding pages, and the high costs
of local Web-hosting services.
Similarly, although there are some notable of?cial general
government websites, such as those of Angola, Egypt,
Gabon, Lesotho, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal,
South Africa, Togo, Tunisia, and Zambia, there is as yet
little government use of the Internet for administrative
purposes or for interacting with the public. Lack of timely
information is known to be the largest constraint on the
small-scale agricultural production and natural resource
exploitation sector, which provide a livelihood for 70 to
80 percent of Africa’s population. However, the potential
for ICT to impact this sector has not yet received much
attention, although some commodity markets in east Africa,
such as coffee and tea, are now beginning to trade online.
Web presence is higher in sectors involved in tourism and
foreign investment, because these sectors aim to develop an
international market presence. Some administrations are
also beginning to streamline their operations and improve
internal ef?ciency by switching to a network environment
within the organization. For example, the government of
Lesotho recently declared that announcements for cabinet
and committee meetings would be made only by e-mail.
South Africa, Algeria, and Tunisia now provide immediate
global access to tenders via the Web. Health and education
departments in many countries are beginning to electronically
transmit operational management information system
statistics (e.g., disease occurrences and pupil registrations).
The results of blood tests done in remote areas of South
Africa are being transmitted to remote clinics that are off the
telecommunications grid via mobile telephone text messages.
As greater numbers of public of?cials gain low-cost access to
the Web, the vast information resources available via Internet
are becoming increasingly important tools in ensuring
informed decision-making.
The “death of distance” introduced by the Internet has
meant that the opportunities to be found in the much
larger economies of the more developed countries can be
exploited by some African companies. Examples of such
initiatives include the following:
1. A local ISP in Morocco is digitizing the National Library of
France’s paper archives. They are scanned in France, sent
to Morocco by satellite link, and are edited by keyboard
operators in Rabat.
2. In Togo and Mauritius, call centers now provide telephone
support services for international companies with
customers in Europe and North America.
3. In Cape Verde “virtual security guards” have found jobs
using the Internet to monitor webcams in of?ce parks on
the east coast of the United States. They notify local rapid
response teams there if they see anything amiss.
4. Many African artists and craft makers are selling their
wares on the World Wide Web.
In most major cities in Africa, various private companies
provide Internet applications training. However, apart
from a few universities, there are virtually no network
engineering-level facilities. The United Nations Development
Program (UNDP) and Cisco recently created a joint venture
to assist in the establishment of nonpro?t Cisco network
training academies in all the less-developed countries. Many
of these academies have opened in Africa, including in
Democratic Republic of the Congo. The UNDP’s Sustainable
Development Networking Programme (SDNP) and the
United States Agency for International Development’s Leland
initiative have also trained signi?cant numbers of network
technicians. Other initiatives include the following:
1. In Cameroon, United Nations Institute for Training and
Research (UNITAR) and ORSTOM have collaborated in
a joint project focusing on technical capacity-building in
sub-Saharan francophone Africa. The ?rst training center
and courses have been established in Cameroon (CITI-
CM) with support from the World Bank’s infoDev fund
and additional funds from from Orstom, ACCT,
and others. A network engineering course is now being
run regularly at CITI-CM. Funds are being sought for
CITI-CI (Côte d’Ivoire), CITI-SN (Sénégal), CITI-BF
(Burkina Faso), CITI-BE (Bénin), and CITI-ML (Mali).
2. An Internet training program for institutes, schools,
and other agencies of higher learning in francophone
and lusophone sub-Saharan African countries, called
Internet pour les Ecoles Inter-Etat d’Afrique de l’Ouest et
du Centre, has been established in a related effort to the
UNITAR/ORSTOM project, under the Diderot Initiative.
3. COMNET-IT, established by the Commonwealth
Secretariat (ComSec) in Malta to support ICT in
Commonwealth developing countries, has initiated a
number of ICT-support activities, such as the provision
of scholarships for Commonwealth country students to
obtain postgraduate degrees in computer science.
4. The African Virtual University (see website) is providing
training in computer and Internet applications and
programming languages to its twenty-nine university
campuses in eighteen countries in Africa.
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5. International volunteers are being seen as an increasingly
important vehicle for training and technology transfer.
This has been been boosted by the recently announced
UNITeS program of the UN’s UN Volunteers and other
similar nongovernmental organization initiatives, such as
the Global Netcorps (previously NetCorps Canada) and
GeekCorps.
6. More general ICT applications and indeed “technology
enhanced” teaching in other subjects is also now being
tackled by the growing number of national school-
based networking projects and foundations active on
the continent, such as SchoolNet Africa (see SchoolNet
website).
Hardware and Software
Most recent estimates (i.e., 2001 data) for the number of
personal computers in Africa put the total at about 7.5
million—an average of about one per 100 people. These
?gures, however, are notoriously unreliable because of
limited capacities for monitoring industry and the large
numbers of machines brought in independently to avoid
duties. Some studies, such as the 1995 ACCT survey,
indicate that of?cial ?gures are three to six times higher
than actual ?gures, making the average closer to one PC per
500 people. Account should also be taken of the number of
users sharing a single computer, which is much greater than
in the more developed regions.
Underutilization of existing computer resources is also
common. Often an of?ce may have many machines but only
one connected to the Internet, and there is a preponderance
of stand-alone computers, indicating limited use of Local
Area Networks. This usually means that there is competition
for the Internet-connected machine and a shared e-mail
account, which is not effective use of the Internet.
Few international companies operate of?ces in Africa, but
some of the major companies such as Bull, HP, IBM, NCR,
Oracle, and Microsoft have some form of local representation
in most countries. Microsoft now has its own of?ces in Côte
d’Ivoire, Kenya, Morocco, and South Africa. PC equipment
is often clone equipment imported from Asia; but Dell, HP,
IBM, and ICL also have signi?cant shares of the market, and
Dell South Africa is now selling via the Web.
Although there have been notable efforts in some countries
to reduce import duties on computers, communications
equipment and peripherals are still often charged at higher
rates. The high cost of computer hardware in Africa has a
major impact on the continent’s ability to improve networked
readiness, as this cost is often the largest component of
network startup budgets. This situation is likely to become
an even more critical bottleneck because low-cost bandwidth,
such as through Ku-Band VSAT and spread spectrum wireless
(WiFi) links, is increasingly becoming available. As a result,
the use of recycled PCs, thin clients, set-top boxes, or other
low-cost Internet “appliances,” as well as Open Source (free)
software, is becoming more common.
Electronic Mass Media
Radio is still by far the most dominant electronic mass
medium in Africa, with ownership of radio sets being far
higher than for any other electronic device. The United
Nations Educational, Scienti?c and Cultural Organization
estimates that in 1997, radio ownership in Africa was close
to 170 million with a 4 percent per annum growth rate. This
puts current estimates for 2002 at more than 200 million
radio sets, compared with only 62 million televisions. It is
estimated that more than 60 percent of the population of
the sub-continent are reached by existing radio transmitter
networks, while national television coverage is largely
con?ned to major towns. Some countries, even relatively well
developed ones, still do not have their own national television
broadcaster. For example, Botswana has only this year
launched a national television broadcaster.
An increasing number of commercial stations are being
established following liberalization of the sector in many
countries. However, most of these stations concentrate on
entertainment (music), and the news and information output
is often limited to a re-broadcast either of news produced
by the national (state-controlled) broadcaster, or of news
produced by an international broadcaster or news agency.
Local news and current affairs (especially that focusing on
events outside of the capital) or educational programming is
rarely broadcast, and local community stations have also been
slow to take off.
In the last few years, there has been substantial growth
of satellite-based broadcasting on the continent. In 1995,
South African company M-Net launched the world’s ?rst
digital direct-to-home subscriber satellite service (DSTV).
Subscribers have access to more than thirty video channels
and forty audio programs, and these are available to most of
Africa through low-cost KU-band terminals. The US-based
company, WorldSpace, launched a digital radio broadcasting
satellite called AfriStar in late 1998. Radio broadcasters
from many African countries, as well as from Europe and
the United States, are using the service to broadcast their
channels all over Africa and to most of Europe. WorldSpace
ultimately aims to make a suite of more than eighty audio
channels available to anyone who can afford the special digital
radio (priced at US$50); the radio is also able to receive data
services, including the transmission of Web pages and other
information such as weather maps and crop disease images.
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Outlook
As Figure 5 below shows, of all the major network
components in Africa, the most impressive growth has been
in the uptake of mobile telephones. This, combined with
the not insigni?cant use of the Internet, has undoubtedly
had a substantial impact on the ability of entrepreneurs
to do business in urban areas, as well as for more wealthy
individuals to stay in contact with friends and family.
Figure 5. Growth in the Number of ICT Users in Africa
Source: ITU, Sangonet
Nevertheless, the vast majority of Africans remain
unconnected. Efforts to promote broader use in Africa
have been discussed among high-level policymakers since
the early 1990s. Of?cial recognition was given to the issue
in 1996, when the Conference of African Ministers of
Social and Economic Planning requested that the United
Nations Economic Commission for Africa set up a “high-
level working group” to help de?ne a strategy for greater
networked readiness in Africa. Subsequently, an expert
group developed a framework document entitled the
African Information Society Initiative (AISI). Since then,
communications ministers from more than forty African
countries have provided high-level endorsement for AISI,
along with speci?c telecommunications development
policies which they encapsulated in their common vision
document, African Connection, published in 2001 (see
African Connection website).
Among the proposals in AISI was a call for the formulation
and development of a national information and
communication infrastructure (NICI) plan that would be
driven by national development priorities in every African
country. AISI also proposed cooperation among African
countries in order to share experiences. Most countries
have begun the process of developing NICI plans, and
seventeen countries have ?nalized their strategies—Benin,
Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Gambia,
Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda,
Senegal, Seychelles, South Africa, Sudan, and Tunisia (see
UNECA website). A high priority in many of these plans
is improvement of public Internet access in rural areas
through the use of telecenters that exploit the convergence
of technologies to provide cost-effective services in
underserviced and remote locations.
As addressing the digital divide has become an even higher
priority in the international community, the outlook for
international support has also improved. This has culminated
in the activities of the G8 Digital Opportunity Task Force
(Dot Force), the United Nations ICT Task Force, and related
efforts in 2002 that have resulted in developed countries
creating a variety of new projects (such as Canada’s Institute
for Connectivity in Africa and Italy’s e-Government Support
Program in Mozambique, Nigeria, and Tunisia) to help
developing countries achieve networked readiness.
Much of the impact of these efforts will depend on the extent
of improvements to the telecommunication infrastructure on
which the networks depend. The high costs of connectivity
in remote areas will hopefully be addressed by the large
number of low-cost, two-way Ku-band VSAT satellite-based
data services that have been launched this year by companies
such as Afsat and Web-Sat. These services will be a major
boon to rural users, making use of the new high-powered
satellite footprints now covering Africa, similar to services
currently available in the United States and Europe. Costs are
about US$1,500 to US$3,000 for the equipment and US$200
to US$400 per month for “better than dial-up” speeds (i.e.,
about 56 Kbps outgoing and 200 to 400 Kbps incoming).
These are expected to see rapid uptake wherever regulations
allow; unfortunately, most countries in Africa either charge
excessively high license fees or do not allow these services at
all, as they compete with the state-run telecommunications
operator.
Liberalization of the telecommunication sector and the
introduction of competition are increasingly seen as key
factors needed to drive down prices and improve the quality
of service, and although some countries have begun to
open up their markets, there is a general sense that too
little is being done. While a variety of efforts are underway
to restructure national telecom operations and build
better national and international infrastructures, many
of these efforts lack a cohesive approach built on a clear
understanding of the dynamics and impact of the blindingly
fast-changing communications technologies. As a result,
the pace of regulatory change is still generally seen by the
Internet industry as too slow, conducted with insuf?cient
transparency, and with not enough participation by the
sector in developing policy. In general, strategies continue
to favor an extension of the monopoly for the incumbent
(usually for ?ve to seven years) in return for a high share
price sold to a foreign strategic investor, which is normally a
multinational operator keen to shore up pro?ts under threat
from liberalization in their home markets.
Users (000)
1998 1999 2000 2000
Fixed lines
Mobile
Internet users
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
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The justi?cation for continuing the exclusivity period of
the national operator is usually to ensure that suf?cient
income is generated to roll out infrastructure without it
being siphoned by competitors. Although this strategy may
be logical, experience since the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) breakup of AT&T has shown that the
only way of ensuring the ef?ciency of service delivery is to
bring self-interest into play by opening the markets and using
competition to do much of the regulating. This strategy also
helps address the problem of limited resources that faces
government policymakers and regulators worldwide (even
the FCC); regulators do not have the capacity to keep up
with the rapid technological change in order to fully enforce
regulations.
Furthermore, the old model of an extensive regulatory
apparatus supporting the slow entry of only one or two new
operators is not as relevant in Africa as it is in developed
countries, because developed countries are not burdened
with huge state-owned operators holding 99.9 percent of the
market, or encumbered with old technologies (used by the
majority of the population) that need to be carefully moved
into a competitive environment. In contrast to the massive
incumbents in developed nations, emerging operators
in Africa make use of much cheaper next-generation
technologies that allow many smaller companies to enter the
marketplace, and they are more self-regulated than operators
in developed countries. African operators’ self-regulation is
even more evident when one takes into account their partial
self-provisioning (as demonstrated by the rapid growth of
the Internet, WiFi, and mobile telephony).
In practical terms, while competition in the ICT sector
results in some overlap and duplication of resources by
the different competitors, the overall operation of the
sector is more ef?cient than that of a monopoly. Thus, the
initial process of privatization and liberalization of the
telecommunications sector in Africa should bypass the
common ?rst step of transforming a public monopoly into a
private one; a private monopoly can be even more dif?cult to
control, especially if it has a large foreign partner experienced
in the use of litigation. Generally, the record of foreign
participation in Africa indicates that even the strategy of a
limited exclusivity period for basic services in urban areas
is questionable, and it may ultimately be more ef?cient to
transition directly from a public monopoly to a multiplayer-
competitive environment, perhaps with small areas of
exclusivity for rural locations.
Technology and design options for rural populations are
becoming more readily apparent as technologies mature.
Perhaps more important than decisions about technology,
however, is a reassessment of the traditional view that rural
communications services are unpro?table. The need for
subsidized rural communications emerged decades ago in
developed countries when telecommunication infrastructure
costs were high, and where most of the population resided
in densely populated urban areas that could be serviced at
relatively low cost in conjunction with high-volume business
users. In this environment, cross-subsidization and Universal
Service Obligations were needed to cover the relatively
greater costs of serving the small minority of mainly
residential users living in sparsely populated rural areas.
These factors are not generally applicable in Africa and
other developing countries today—most of the population
is in rural areas, and network infrastructure roll-out and
usage costs have already plummeted and will continue to
do so for the foreseeable future. The growing availability
of ?bre, wireless, and satellite bandwidth services have the
potential to make rural areas almost as easy to reach as urban
ones, and technology convergence means that the same
infrastructure can be used to provide many services, not just
voice calls. Further, the use of the Internet for transaction
purposes vastly increases the added value potential of the
infrastructure, and thus the incentives to build it.
In addition to lowering usage and infrastructure costs, the
overhead costs associated with centralized national network
planning are no longer required. This is so because of the
emergence of the Internet model of network development,
which allows anyone to build a part of the network and be
able to sell excess bandwidth to third parties in order to help
cover their own costs or generate a pro?t. Examples of this
model are already evident in the Universities of Zambia and
Mozambique, which have become leading ISPs following the
establishment of their own facilities for internal use. It is no
coincidence that these service providers rely extensively on
VSAT and wireless systems to access and deliver their services
independent of the monopoly telecommunications operators
in their countries.
In identifying appropriate strategies for broader network use,
another important point to be made is that African models
of infrastructure provision are likely to be quite different to
those employed in developed countries, not only because of
the generally low income levels in Africa, but also because, in
Africa, informal business activity and rural populations are
much more important.
Innovative models are necessary to address the low-income
factor, and these models must focus on shared infrastructure,
public access facilities, and the use of intermediaries to
interact with the public (who may not be functionally
literate, let alone computer literate). In other respects,
strategies to improve network services are unlikely to be
uniform across the continent because of the very large
variations between countries. Aside from variations in
annual per capita GDP levels, which range from US$200 to
US$7,000, and market sizes that vary from 1 million to 100
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million people, many other factors vary substantially, and
may affect strategy. Some of the important issues that need
to be taken into account include:
1. The communications regulatory environment. The national
regulatory environment in Africa varies greatly, from
relatively open competition in Internet service provision
or even in mobile services and the local loop, to long-
term monopolies in all of these areas. In particular, very
few countries allow the use of VSAT or other wireless
technologies that may bypass state-run operators, and if
they do, they levy high bypass or license fees.
2. The extent of existing ?xed infrastructure and the cost of
access, for example ?xed line penetration can vary from 20
percent to less than 1 percent, depending on the country.
3. The existing usage of the radio spectrum. Many countries
do not have adequate resources to ef?ciently manage their
radio spectrum allocation for use by either national or
regional telecommunications and Internet operators. This
has resulted in congestion in some wavebands, lack of a
transparent licensing process, and dif?culties in obtaining
spectrum from the regulators.
4. The resources that national governments and their
international cooperating partners are allocating to
national information and communication infrastructure
building projects. In some countries there is strong, if
somewhat uncoordinated, support from both multilateral
and bilateral development agencies in this area; other
countries have yet to begin this process.
5. The focus of national universal service goals. Currently,
the aim of most of these efforts is simply to improve
the provision of public telephones within walking
distance; however, some countries, such as South Africa
and Uganda, have gone further, and have included
the provision of more advanced network services and
established universal service funds to redirect some of the
pro?ts made by telecommunications operators into the
provision of network access in rural areas. Uganda has
also developed an incoming termination fee, which is to
be paid to telecenters for incoming calls.
Consolidating markets and building economies of scale
will clearly require greater regional collaboration, both
for deploying infrastructure and for creating content and
applications. Encouraging efforts that warrant further
support and adoption in other regions have been made at the
regional level by South African Development Community
(SADC) and Common Market for Eastern and Southern
Africa (COMESA), which have both adopted a variety of
measures to improve network use, most notably:
1. SADC’s model telecommunication legislation, which has
been adopted by most member states, and is therefore a
legally-binding protocol
2. The formation of the Telecommunication Regulators
Association of Southern Africa (TRASA); TRASA acts
as a forum for regulators in the region to exchange
information and experience
3. The ComTel project to develop the terrestrial
telecommunication links between neighboring states
in COMESA, and to harmonize and upgrade the cross-
border information systems in transport, customs,
import/export, and trade.
Obtaining startup ?nancing for small businesses to establish
public access services is an acute problem, because the level
of investment usually required falls in the gap between
traditional microcredit loans (US$50 to US$1,000); and
?nanciers of venture capital or loan funds that are not
generally interested in anything smaller than US$250,000
(mainly because of the overheads required to carry out due
diligence). As a result, a public access startup project, which
might only require between US$25,000 and US$100,000,
has considerable dif?culty in sourcing the necessary funds.
Hopefully, this problem will in part be addressed through the
newly created DOT Force Entrepreneurial Network (DFEN),
which aims to provide ?nancing and support to small-
and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs
planning to use ICT in innovative and creative ways in the
developing world. The initial focus of DFEN’s activities will
be Africa.
The African Union and their program, the New Partnership
for African Development (NEPAD), which is supported by
the international community, are addressing many of the
more systemic issues. This many-faceted effort is aimed
at accelerating Africa’s development, and it should help
to create an environment more conducive to networked
readiness.
Endnotes
1. ITU; United Nations Educational, Scienti?c and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) statistics.
2. It should be noted, for example, that there is a large variation
between countries in the charges for installation, line rental,
and call tariffs. The average business connection in Africa
costs more than US$100 to install, US$6 a month to rent, and
US$0.11 per three minute local call. But installation charges
are higher than US$200 in some countries (Egypt, Benin,
Mauritania, Niger, and Togo), line rentals range from US$0.8 to
US$20 a month, and call charges vary by a factor of 10—from
US$0.60 an hour to more than US$5 an hour.
3. Network Wizards conducts a quarterly survey in which the
number of hosts on the Internet is counted.
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References
African Connection. Online.http://www.africanconnection.org.
African Internet Connectivity. 2002. Continental Connectivity
Indicators, July 2002. Online.http://www3.sn.apc.org/africa/
partial.html.
African Information Society Initiative (AISI) and Economic
Commission for Africa Online.http://www.bellanet.org/
partners/aisi/more/index.html.
African Virtual University. Online.http://www.avu.org.
Agence de Cooperation Culturelle et Technique (ACCT). 1995.
Survey of ICT Resources. Online.http://inforoutes.cidif.org.
Computer Aid International. Online. http://
www.computeraid.org.
GeekCorps. Online.http://www.geekcorps.org.
International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) Digital Partnership.
Online.http://www.digitalpartnership.org.
International Development Research Center (IDRC). 2002.
Mapping the Digital Divide in Africa. Rev. Online. http:
//www.idrc.ca/acacia/divide/info/info.html.
International Development Research Center (IDRC). 2002. The
Internet: Out of Africa. Rev. . Online.http://www.idrc.ca/
acacia/divide.
International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Rural Connectivity
and Telecentres. Rev. Online.http://www.itu.int/ITU-D-Rural.
International Telecommunication Union (ITU). 2002. World
Telecommunication Development Report 2002.
Jensen, M. 1996. Bridging the Gaps in Internet Development in
Africa. International Development Research Center. Online.http://www.idrc.ca/acacia/studies/ir-gaps.htm.
Jensen, M. and A. Esterhuysen. 2001. The Telecentre Cookbook
for Africa: Recipes for Self-Sustainability. Paris: United
Nations Educational, Scienti?c and Cultural Organization.
Online.http://www.unesco.org/webworld/news/2001/010713_
cookbook.shtml.
Netcorps. Canada International. Online.http://www.netcorps-
cyberjeunes.org.
Network Wizards. Internet Domain Survey. Rev. Online. http:
//www.nw.com.
Partnership for Information and Communication Technologies in
Africa (PICTA). Online.http://www.bellanet.org/partners/picta.
SchoolNet Africa. Online.http://www.schoolnetafrica.org.
The Information Society and Development: A Review. 2001.
European Commission 1.
Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOT Force). Digital Opportunities
for All: Meeting the Challenge. Report of the Digital
Opportunity Task Force.
Including a Proposal for a Genoa Plan of Action.Online. http:
//www.dotforce.org/reports/DOT_Force_Report_V_5.0h.html.
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. 2002. http:
//www.uneca.org/disd/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/nici_status.htm/map.
United Nations Development Program (UNDP). 2002. Human
Development Report 2001. Rev. Online.http://www.undp.org.
United Nations Volunteers. Online.http://www.unv.org.
World Computer Exchange. Online.http://www.wordcomputere
xchange.org.
doc_182734643.pdf
The environment for networked readiness has improved relatively rapidly in most urban areas in Africa. Five years ago, only a handful of countries had local Internet access or mobile telephones; now, devices and access are available in virtually every major city.
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Environment and Readiness
The environment for networked readiness has improved
relatively rapidly in most urban areas in Africa. Five years
ago, only a handful of countries had local Internet access or
mobile telephones; now, devices and access are available in
virtually every major city. Hundreds of new radio stations
and newspapers have been licensed over the last few years
and digital satellite television has also become widely
available. The “digital divide” however, is still at its most
extreme in Africa. In absolute terms, networked readiness is
still at a very early stage of development compared to other
regions of the world. Of the approximately 816 million
people in Africa in 2001, it is estimated
1
that only:
one in four have a radio (200 million);
one in 13 have a television (62 million);
one in 35 have a mobile telephone (24 million);
one in 39 have a ?xed line (21 million);
one in 130 have a personal computer (PC) (5.9 million);
one in 160 use the Internet (5 million);
one in 400 have pay-television (2 million).
These ?gures do not take into consideration the widespread
sharing of media that takes place in Africa (often ten people
may read the same newspaper or share an Internet account,
and a whole village may use a single telephone line or crowd
around a television set at night); nevertheless, it appears
that sub-Saharan Africa may be slipping behind when
compared to south Asia, the other least developed region.
As Table 1 shows, the two regions are at the bottom of the
list in Internet usage surveys around the world, but south
Asia has caught up considerably since 1998.
Table 1. Internet Users as Percentage of Total Population
Region 1998 2000
United States 26.30 54.3
High-income OECD (excluding the U.S.) 6.90 28.2
Latin America and the Caribbean 0.80 3.2
East Asia and the Paci?c 0.50 2.3
Eastern Europe and CIS 0.80 3.9
Arab States 0.20 0.6
Sub-Saharan Africa 0.10 0.4
South Asia 0.04 0.4
World 2.40 6.7
Source: United Nations Development Program, World Development Report 2001.
Because the region is so diverse, it can be misleading to
generalize about Africa. The averages given above obscure
the great variation between countries, but it can be said that
most of the continent’s population are amongst the poorest
Chapter 6
ICT in Africa:
A Status Report
Mike Jensen
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in the world (Africa had US$766 in gross domestic product
(GDP) per person in 2000), with the divide between urban
and rural areas being particularly marked. Most services are
concentrated in the towns, while the majority of Africans (70
to 80 percent) reside in smaller communities scattered across
the vast rural areas. In some countries, more than 75 percent
of the country’s telephone lines are concentrated in the
capital city. Irregular or nonexistent electricity supplies are
also common in Africa, especially outside major towns.
Another systemic problem is that road, rail, and air transport
networks are limited, costly to use, and often in poor
condition, resulting in barriers to the increased movement of
people and goods; increased mobility is needed to implement
and support a pervasive network infrastructure and also for
the increased economic and social activity that would occur
with greater physical movement of people. Visa requirements
and congested border posts add to these dif?culties.
Furthermore, many tax regimes still treat computers and
cellular telephones as luxury items, which makes these
imported items all the more expensive.
Another problem is that the brain drain and generally low
levels of education and literacy have together resulted in a
great scarcity of skills and expertise (at all levels, from policy
making down to the end user). Rural areas in particular
have limited human resources. Along with the very low pay
scales in the African civil service, this is a chronic problem
for governments that are continually losing their brightest
and most experienced to the private sector. The fact that
this situation is not unique to Africa or other developing
countries, but is also being faced by the developed world,
is simply exacerbating the situation in Africa, because
experienced professionals are able to ?nd much higher
paying jobs in Europe and North America.
Finally, while a good business climate is acutely needed or
the information and communications sector, the general
investment climate in Africa often suffers from the well-
known problems of small markets, nontransparent and
time-consuming business procedures, limited opportunities
(partly due to the historic pattern of state monopolies),
scarce local capital, currency instability, exchange controls,
and in?ation.
Usage
Telecommunication
Overall, a substantial increase in the rate of expansion and
modernization of ?xed networks is currently taking place,
along with an explosion of mobile networks. The number of
main lines in Africa grew about 9 percent per year between
1995 and 2001, although the overall ?xed line teledensity
as of 2001 is still only about one in 40 inhabitants, and
one in 130 in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa).
Taking into account population growth, the effective
annual increase in lines is only 6 percent. Also, much of
the existing telecommunications infrastructure is out of
the reach of most people—50 percent of the available lines
are in the capital cities, where only about 10 percent of the
population lives. In more than ?fteen countries in Africa,
including Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Uganda, more than 70
percent of the ?xed lines are still located in the largest city
(International Telecommunication Union [ITU] 2002).
Overall, the number of ?xed lines increased from 12.5
million to 21 million across Africa between 1995 and 2001,
a teledensity growth rate of 6.7 percent (i.e., taking into
account population growth). North Africa had 11.4 million
of these ?xed lines and South Africa, 5 million lines; this
means there were only 4.6 million lines in the rest of the
continent. Therefore, while the sub-Sahara has about 10
percent of the world’s population (626 million), it has only
0.2 percent of the world’s 1 billion ?xed telephone lines.
Compared to all of the low-income countries (which house
50 percent of the world’s population and 10 percent of the
telephone lines), the penetration of telephone lines on the
subcontinent is about three times worse than the “average”
low-income country.
The situation is not quite as bad as it would appear, however,
because of the penetration of mobile networks, where
subscribers (now numbering 23.5 million) have surpassed
?xed line users in most countries; this demonstrates that
there is pent-up demand for basic voice services. Most of
the subscribers use prepaid accounts, and because of the low
cost and long range of the cellular base stations, many rural
areas have also been covered. But the high cost of mobile
usage (US$0.25 to US$0.50/minute) makes it too expensive
for regular local calls or Internet access. A common response
to this is the use of text messaging; in some countries, for
example, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa, text messaging
now includes delivery of information services such as news,
weather, and market prices.
Even if telecommunications infrastructure is beginning
to spread, domestic use has, until recently, been largely
con?ned to the small proportion of the population that can
actually afford their own telephone—the cost of renting a
connection averages almost 20 percent of GDP per capita,
versus a world average of 9 percent and only 1 percent in
high-income countries.
2
Despite these high charges relative
to income levels, the number of public telephones is still
much lower than elsewhere. According to the ITU (2001),
there are approximately 350,000 public telephones in the
whole continent of Africa—75,000 of which are in the sub-
Sahara—or about one telephone for every 8,500 people,
compared to a world average of one to 500 and a high-
income average of one to 200.
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However, an increasing number of operators in Africa
are now passing the responsibility for maintaining public
telephones to the private sector, and this has resulted in
a rapid growth of public “phone shops” and “telecenters”
in many countries; the most well-known case is that of
Senegal, which now has more than 10,000 commercially-run
public phone bureaus employing more than 15,000 people
and generating more than 30 percent of the entire network’s
revenues. While most of these are in urban areas, a growing
number are being established in more remote locations, and
some networks also provide Internet access and other more
advanced ICT services to the public.
Public telephone operators (PTOs) in some countries, such
as Botswana and South Africa, are now launching prepaid
?xed line services, or providing a “virtual telephone”
alternative for those unable to obtain their own telephone.
Subscribers are issued their own unique phone number and
pay a small rental for a voice mailbox, from which they can
retrieve their messages from any telephone. A pager can also
be tied to the system to immediately inform the subscriber
that a voice message is waiting.
Although there is substantial gray-market use of Voice
over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services in Africa wherever
international bandwidth allows, these are not of?cially
permitted for the end user anywhere in the region
except in Egypt and Nigeria. In Egypt, the national
telecommunications operator provides a PC-to-phone
service, and in Nigeria, the regulator has sanctioned
all licensed cybercafes to provide VoIP. However, many
telecommunications operators are now using or planning
to use VoIP as a transport layer on their international and
national links, and operators in countries such as Egypt,
Gambia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe
have established joint ventures with international VoIP
companies such as ITXC, GatewayIP, and Ibasis to
implement these facilities.
Nevertheless, high telecommunications charges (often up to
ten times greater than rates for equivalent services in Europe
or North America) and limited service are still generally
prevalent, largely because of the monopoly environment
in which most national state-run providers operate. This
is now slowly changing, with the ?rst step usually being to
seek an international strategic equity partner in a partial-
privatization process. Generally, there have been two modes
of partial privatization; selling less than (some countries are
selling 30 to 33 percent) or more than 51 percent of shares.
The largest international partners and their ownership levels
are currently as follows: France Telecom (Côte d’Ivoire
Telecom, 51 percent; SONATEL [Senegal], 33 percent;
Mauritius Telecom, 40 percent); Malaysia Telecom (Telkom
SA [South Africa], 30 percent; Ghana Telecom, 30 percent;
SOTELGUI [Guinea Conakry], 60 percent); Maroc Telecom
(Mauritel [Mauritania], 54 percent); Vivendi Universal
(Maroc Telecom, 35 percent).
While most African PTOs are, or will shortly be, partially
privatized, there are still a few countries lagging behind
in privatizations, notably Nigeria, Gambia, Democratic
Republic of the Congo, the Comoros Islands, Sierra Leone,
Liberia, Zimbabwe, and Libya. Of worldwide distribution
of privatization in the year 2000 (by region, based on
ninety-eight countries), the African continent represented
15 percent; Europe, 35 percent; the Americas, 24 percent;
the Asia Paci?c region, 20 percent; and the Arab states
accounted for 6 percent. In terms of the percentage of
privatized operators, in 2000 Africa had 35 percent; Europe,
63 percent; the Americas, 74 percent; Asia Paci?c, 53
percent; and the Arab states, 29 percent.
The availability of specialist training in telecommunications
is currently extremely limited on the continent. In Africa,
there are only two major regional centers for training in
telecommunications: ESMT in Senegal for francophone
countries, and AFRALTI in Kenya for Anglophone
countries. It is expected that these centers, with the support
of an ITU program, will be transformed into Centers
of Excellence in Telecommunications Administration
(CETA). CETA is intended to provide senior-level, advanced
training, and professional development in the areas of
telecommunications policies, regulatory matters, and the
management of telecommunications networks and services.
A number of telecommunication operators maintain
their own training schools but these, similar to the
operators, usually lack ?nancial resources. Over the last
twenty years, the German international technical training
assistance agency, Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft, has sent
a large number of telecommunications trainees from
Africa to Germany; many other development agencies
have similar, if smaller, programs. At a global level, one
initiative that may have an impact in the future is the ITU’s
Global Telecommunications Academy. This will operate
as a brokerage service for distance-learning courses. Once
established, the Academy is to be self-?nanced through
a fee payable by every course participant. The aim of the
Academy is to create a cooperative network of partners by
pooling existing resources in universities, training institutes,
?nancing bodies, governments, regional organizations, and
telecommunications operators.
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Country
Fixed
Lines
Fixed
Line
Penetra-
tion
Public
Tele-
phones
Mobile
Users
Mobile
Penetra-
tion
(000)
(% of
Popula-
tion) (000) (000)
(% of
Popula-
tion)
Algeria 1,880.0 6.04 5.00 100.0 0.32
Angola 80.0 0.59 0.27 86.5 0.64
Benin 59.3 0.92 0.51 125.0 1.94
Botswana 150.3 9.27 3.00 278.0 16.65
Burkina Faso 57.6 0.47 1.44 75.0 0.61
Burundi 20.0 0.29 0.08 20.0 0.29
Cameroon 101.4 0.67 6.55 310.0 2.04
Cape Verde 62.3 14.27 0.39 31.5 7.21
Central Africa 10.0 0.26 0.09 11.0 0.29
Chad 11.0 0.14 0.06 22.0 0.27
Comoros 8.9 1.22 0.17 — —
Republic of Congo 22.0 0.71 — 150.0 4.82
Côte d’Ivoire 293.6 1.80 1.93 728.5 4.46
Djibouti 9.9 1.54 0.42 150.0 0.29
D. R. C. 20.0 0.04 3.0 0.47
Egypt 6,650.0 10.30 21.99 2,793.8 4.33
Equatorial Guinea 6.9 1.47 — 15.0 3.19
Eritrea 32.0 0.84 0.42 — —
Ethiopia 310.0 0.48 1.56 27.5 0.04
Gabon 37.2 2.95 0.83 258.1 20.45
Gambia 35.0 2.62 0.68 43.0 3.22
Ghana 242.1 1.16 3.18 193.8 0.93
Guinea 25.5 0.32 0.85 55.7 0.69
Guinea Bissau 12.0 0.98 0.20 — —
Kenya 313.1 1.00 9.03 500.0 1.60
Lesotho 22.2 1.03 0.37 33.0 1.53
Liberia 6.7 — — — —
Libya 610.0 10.93 0.45 50.0 0.90
Madagascar 58.4 0.36 0.46 147.5 0.90
Malawi 54.1 0.47 0.54 55.7 0.48
Mali 49.9 0.43 2.37 45.3 0.39
Mauritania 19.0 0.72 0.89 — —
Mauritius 306.8 25.56 2.92 300.0 25.00
Mayotte 10 6.98 — — —
Morocco 1,193.3 3.92 46.84 4,771.7 15.68
Mozambique 89.4 0.44 1.86 169.9 0.84
Namibia 117.4 6.57 5.30 100.0 5.59
Niger 21.7 0.19 0.06 1.8 0.02
Nigeria 500.0 0.43 1.60 330.0 0.28
Réunion 268.5 — — — —
Rwanda 21.5 0.27 0.40 65.0 0.82
SaoTomé 5.4 3.63 0.08 — —
Senegal 237.2 2.45 13.49 390.8 4.04
Seychelles 21.4 26.73 0.22 44.1 55.15
Sierra Leone 22.7 0.47 0.31 26.9 0.55
Somalia 15.0 — — — —
South Africa 4,969.0 11.35 178.11 9,197.0 21.00
Sudan 453.0 1.42 5.25 105.0 0.33
Swaziland 32.0 3.14 0.83 66.0 6.47
Tanzania 148.5 0.41 0.72 427.0 1.19
Togo 48.1 1.03 0.16 95.0 2.04
Tunisia 1,056.2 10.89 19.31 389.2 4.01
Uganda 63.7 0.28 1.38 322.7 1.43
Zambia 85.4 0.8 0.87 98.3 0.92
Zimbabwe 253.7 1.86 3.23 328.7 2.41
Total 21,210.3 3.52 346.67 23,545.2 2.95
Table 2. Telecommunications Usage in Africa, 2001
Countries with Advanced Data Services
Botswana—ISDN, Frame Relay
Egypt—ISDN, Frame Relay, ATM, DSL
Kenya—ISDN, DSL
Ghana—Frame Relay
Mauritius—ISDN, Frame Relay, DSL, ATM
Morocco—ISDN, GPRS, Frame Relay
Senegal—ISDN
Seychelles —ISDN
South Africa—ISDN, GPRS, Frame Relay
Tunisia—ISDN
Uganda—ISDN, DLS
The Internet
The use of the Internet is a good indicator of the use of
information and communication technologies, as such use
requires the integration of many of individual components—
electricity, telecommunications infrastructure, computers,
and the skills to use them. As the Figure 1 shows, both the
number of Internet users and the amount of international
bandwidth is still growing strongly across the continent.
Figure 1. Growth of Internet Use in Africa
Source: Sangonethttp://www3.sn.apc.org/africa
In Africa, the pattern of Internet diffusion has been similar to
that of the mobile telephone networks. Although the Internet
is not quite as widespread, it preceded the mobile telephone
explosion; its greatest impact is at the top end of business and
in wealthy families, primarily in major urban areas.
The rates of growth seen in the 1990s have slowed in most
countries, because most users who can afford a computer
and telephone have already obtained connections. However,
although the total number of dial-up subscriber accounts
is readily available, the large number of shared dial-up
accounts, along with the relatively high use of public access
services such as telecenters, and cybercafes, make it dif?cult to
measure the total number of Internet users. Because the total
number of dial-up accounts is only a partial gauge of the size
of the Internet sector, the sector should be looked at along
Source: International Telecommunication Union
Subscribers/Kbps
1998
0
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
1999 2000 2001 2002
Subscribers
International
bandwidth (Kbps)
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with other factors, such as the quantity of international
traf?c each country generates.
As measured by Network Wizards,
3
the total number of
computers permanently connected to the Internet in Africa
(excluding South Africa) exceeded 35,000 in 2001. However,
such ?gures are becoming increasingly meaningless in Africa,
with the widespread use of dot-com and dot-net domains
along with the frequent re-use of Internet address space
behind ?rewalls due to the dif?culties of obtaining public
Internet space. As a result, many African countries surveyed
by Network Wizards show zero or only a handful of hosts,
when in actual fact there might be hundreds, if not thousands,
of machines connected to the Internet in each country.
As of mid-2002, the number of dial-up Internet subscribers
was close to 1.7 million, which is 20 percent up from
2001, an increase mainly bolstered by growth in a few
countries, such as Nigeria. North Africa and South Africa
are responsible for about 1.2 million of these subscribers,
leaving about 500,000 for the remaining forty-nine sub-
Saharan African countries. If we assume that each computer
with an Internet or e-mail connection supports a range of
three to ?ve users, this puts current estimates of the number
of African Internet users at about 5 to 8 million. About 1.5
to 2.5 million of these users are outside North and South
Africa; this suggests one user for every 250 to 400 people.
The world average, in contrast, is one user for every ?fteen
people; the North American and European average is about
one user in every two to three people. No studies have been
made in Africa of the number of rural versus urban users,
but it is safe to say that users in the cities and towns vastly
outnumber rural users.
The use of public access facilities and corporate or academic
networks is continuing to grow at greater rates than the
number of dial-up users. Evidence of this pattern can be
seen in the deployment of international Internet bandwidth,
which is still expanding faster than the number of dial-up
subscribers. International Internet bandwidth increased
by more than 100 percent last year, from 700 Mbps of
available outgoing bandwidth in 2001 to 1,500 Mbps in 2002.
However, this is still slower growth than the rest of the world,
which averaged 174 percent growth in 2001; further, some
international links may only be as big as the circuit used by a
small- or medium-sized business, or even a broadband home
user, in a developed country—that is, about 128 Kbps. In
most cases these circumstances are con?ned to very small and
poor African countries, but there are many other regulatory,
historic, and social factors that also in?uence slow growth.
Due to high international tariffs and lack of circuit capacity,
obtaining suf?cient international bandwidth is a major
problem in most countries, and although conditions have
improved recently, users generally still have to contend
with substantial congestion at peak times. This year,
Egypt overtook South Africa as the country with the
most international bandwidth (550 Mbps vs. 380 Mbps),
following the launch of Nile-Online, a government-backed
international connectivity provider. Today, twenty countries
have links carrying 5 Mbps or more, and thirteen countries—
Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco,
Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia
and Zimbabwe—have outgoing links of 10 Mbps or more.
Also of note is that while the range in available international
bandwidths continues to increase, eight countries in
Africa (Liberia, Republic of Congo, Chad, Equatorial
Guinea, Comoros, and São Tomé and Príncipe) are still on
international links of 256 Kbps—less than that used by the
average small- or medium-sized business user in Europe or
North America.
Dial-up subscriptions
South Africa
Egypt
Morocco
Algeria
Tunisia
Nigeria
Reunion
Kenya
Mauritius
Tanzania
Zimbabwe
Botswana
Swaziland
Angola
Senegal
Ghana
Namibia
The rest
900,000
120,000
80,000
75,000
7,0000
60,000
47,000
35,000
35,000
30,000
25,000
20,000
20,000
16,000
15,000
15,000
15,000
130,535
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Figure 2. Countries with More Than 10,000 Internet
Subscribers
Source: Sangonet
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Figure 3. Countries with More Than 5 Mbps International
Outgoing Bandwidth
Source:http://www3.sn.apc.org/africa
Incoming bandwidth is about 50 percent greater, but is not
as easy to monitor because much of it comes in via variable
(uncommitted) bitrate satellite broadcast circuits. Use of this
type of circuitry is a common response to the bandwidth
problem; Internet service providers (ISPs) in Africa are now
installing data broadcasting services. A basic satellite dish can
be used to receive a stream of popular Web data for caching
locally, as well as to receive encoded broadcasts of other
user traf?c. These can often provide far cheaper incoming
bandwidth than that available via local operators.
Two-way satellite-based Internet services using very small
aperture terminals (VSAT) to connect directly to the
United States or Europe have also been quickly adopted by
ISPs wherever regulations allow—namely, in Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and
Zambia, which all have ISPs that are not dependent on the
local telecommunications operator for their international
bandwidth. Uganda used to allow public VSAT Internet
services, but following the sale of the second operator license
the issuing of new VSAT licenses has been suspended.
With the exception of some ISPs in Southern Africa, most
of the international Internet circuits in Africa connect to the
United States and Canada; other connections are to Belgium,
Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, and
France. Outgoing bandwidth totals approximately 1.5 Gbps,
of which 1 Gbps lands in the United States, 375 Mbps in
Europe, and 2 Mbps in Asia. Only 13 Mbps of bandwidth is
intra-African. High intraregional telecommunications prices
have limited the establishment of links between neighboring
countries to just ?ve—the Gambia-Senegal link, and South
Africa’s links to Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana.
(In South Africa, the telecommunications operator instituted
low tariffs for international links to neighboring countries.)
As a result of the high international tariffs charged by most
telecommunications operators, private ISPs are discouraged
from establishing multiple international links; increasing
amounts of intra-African traf?c are therefore transmitted
through high-cost cross-continental links.
The high tariffs are also the reason behind the common
practice amongst popular African Internet sites of being
hosted on servers that are in Europe or the United States.
This is especially necessary for the many countries,
such as Tanzania and Nigeria, where ISPs operate their
own independent international links without local
interconnections (a practice called peering). Peering means
that traf?c between the subscribers of two ISPs in the same
city must travel to the United States or Europe and back. Out-
of-country routing makes it more ef?cient to host outside-
country; also, Web hosting costs can be very high in Africa,
whereas there are even a number of free hosting sites in the
United States and Europe.
Local peering problems are now being addressed in some
countries through the establishment of national Internet
Exchange Points (IXPs), where all of the ISPs transfer
local traf?c. IXPs have already been set up by national ISP
associations in Kenya, Mozambique, and South Africa, and
plans are at an advanced stage to establish similar facilities
in Ghana and Uganda. Although local traf?c is only 15 to
25 percent of total traf?c, the use of IXPs can still result in
signi?cant savings on international bandwidth and improves
performance for the user.
The major international Internet suppliers are AT&T, BT,
UUNET/AlterNet (with parent company WorldCom/MCI),
Total outbound bandwidth in Kbps
Egypt
South Africa
Morocco
Algeria
Tunisia
Senegal
Kenya
Gabon
Nigeria
Botswana
Tanzania
Zimbabwe
Sudan
Uganda
Cameroon
Namibia
Angola
Cote D'Ivoire
The Rest
535,000
398,512
136,000
83,000
75,000
60,000
28,000
16,384
15,000
14,000
12,000
11,000
10,000
9,250
9,000
8,500
7,000
6,500
64,334
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NSN, Teleglobe, Verio, Verestar, and OpenTransit (France
Telecom/FCR). A number of other links are provided
by Intelsat, PanamSat, New Skies and Inmarsat, direct-
to-private and PTO groundstations in North America,
Europe, and the Middle East, circumventing local PTO
infrastructure.
International bandwidth is increasingly being used as
a better measure of networked readiness than the total
number of users, because it takes into account the range
of use, “from those who write a few e-mails a week, to
those who spend many hours a day on the net browsing,
transacting, streaming, or downloading” (IDRC 2002).
As most of the Internet traf?c is international (75 to 90
percent), the size of a country’s international bandwidth
compared to population size provides a ready indication of
the extent of its Internet activity (IDRC 2002).
An index of bits per capita (BPC) can be calculated by
dividing the total international Internet bandwidth in a
country by its total population (IDRC 2002). As is evident
from the map in Figure 4, which charts to exact area scale
the BPC per country, there is extremely large variation in
the BPC index, ranging from 0.02 to greater than 40—a
factor of more than 1,000. These ?gures re?ect the wide
range of wealth in different countries; however, GDP per
capita only varies by a factor of about 30, which indicates
that other variables affect the index. Bandwidth price is
a major factor that varies considerably on the continent;
high price heavily impacts demand. Price, in turn, is
in?uenced by the regulatory environment—the presence of
competition, availability of wireless and VSAT licences, as
well as access to international ?bre optic bandwidth.
The recent establishment of West African Submarine Cable
(WASC), also shown below, has already resulted in plans
by operators in Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Namibia, Nigeria,
Senegal, and South Africa to establish large international
Internet links. This should substantially increase the
available Internet bandwidth and drive down prices.
Senegal has already moved in this direction; last year the
country enabled a 45 Mbps Internet circuit to France via
the recently-installed Atlantis-2 cable, which it now shares
with neighboring Gambia. Senegal is planning to become
a regional hub, and will shortly be linking its Internet
backbone to Mauritania and Mali, much like South Africa
has done with its neighboring countries.
Most African capitals now have more than one ISP, and in
mid-2002 there were about 560 public ISPs across the region
(excluding South Africa, where the market has consolidated
into three major players with 90 percent of the market and
about 100 smaller players with the remainder of the market).
In 2002, twenty countries had ?ve or more ISPs, while seven
countries (Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa,
Tanzania, and Togo) had ten or more active ISPs; seven
countries, however, still had only one ISP. Although Ethiopia
and Mauritius are the only countries where a monopoly ISP
is still national policy (i.e., private companies are barred from
reselling Internet services), monopolies are present in other
countries, predominantly in the francophone and the Central
African/Sahel subregions, where markets are small: Burkina
Faso, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Djibouti,
Ethiopia, Mauritius, and Niger.
Of the regional ISPs, African Lakes’ AfricaOnline has been
listed by the London Stock Exchange as the largest operation.
The group now has services in Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt,
Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, and
Zimbabwe. AfricaOnline is also engaged in a partnership
with WorldCom/UUNET to provide AfricaOnline’s
infrastructure in Kenya and Zambia. UUNet South Africa
also provides their own dial-up and leased line services in
Namibia and Botswana. South Africa-based MediaPost is
expanding its network, with operations currently in South
Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda, Republic of Congo, Kenya, and
Senegal and ?rm plans for Nigeria, Cameroon, Malawi, and
Democratic Republic of the Congo. The next largest regional
ISP is Swift Global, but after selling its Ugandan operation to
AfricaOnline, it is now only present in Kenya and Tanzania,
making South African ISP Mweb the other regional player,
having purchased ISPs in Namibia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
Although many African countries now have Internet points
of presence (POPs) in some of the secondary towns (totaling
about 280, in different locations across the continent), most
rural users still have to make a costly long distance call to
connect to the Internet. However, some countries have
now instituted local call charges for all calls to the Internet
regardless of distance, which greatly reduces costs for those
living in remote areas and increases the accessibility and
viability of Internet services provided by rural public access
facilities in these nations. So far, nineteen countries have
adopted this strategy: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde,
Chad, Ethiopia, Gabon, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mauritania,
Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, South Africa, Togo,
Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Interestingly, the Seychelles
has gone a step further to encourage use—tariffs for calls
to the Internet are charged at a 50 percent lower rate than
normal local voice calls.
Currently, the average total cost of using a local dial-up
Internet account for twenty hours a month in Africa is about
US$60 per month (price includes usage fees and local call
telephone time included, but not telephone line rental).
ISP subscription charges vary greatly (between US$10 and
US$80 a month) and largely re?ect the different levels of
maturity of the markets, the varying tariff policies of the
telecommunications operators, the different regulations on
private wireless data services, and on access to international
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telecommunications bandwidth. So far the “free-ISP” model
has only been adopted in Egypt, where there are no monthly
charges and revenues obtained from the local call tariffs are
split between the telecommunications operator and the ISP.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) (2000), twenty hours of Internet
access in the United States costs US$22 per month (inclusive
of telephone charges) in 2000. Although European costs
were higher (US$33 in Germany, US$39 across the European
Union), these countries have per capita incomes that are at
least ten times greater than the African average. In fact, US$60
per month is higher than the average African monthly salary.
Low income has limited individual use of the Internet and
has, together with elements such as the low telephone and
computer penetration, created the demand for public-access
facilities (the cost of a single account being effectively shared
amongst the customers who would not otherwise be able to
afford access).
Public access services are already very much in evidence in
most countries in Africa, particularly in those such as Nigeria
and Senegal where telecommunications operators have relied
on the private sector to provide public telephone services.
Such services are also available in most other major urban
areas across Africa, however, in rapidly-growing numbers of
telecenters, kiosks, cybercafes, business centers as well as in
other locations (e.g., in community phone-shops, schools,
police stations, and clinics).
The concept has also received considerable support from
members of the international community, as well as a number
of national governments and public telecommunication
operators as a means to establish access in rural areas.
Public access to the Internet is being seen as one of the most
important ways of realizing Universal Service Objectives
in rural and remote locations. To achieve the objectives,
many national government programs and more than
twenty international pilot projects have been initiated
Figure 4. African Internet Bandwidth per Capita and Marine Fibre Cables
Source: International Development Research Center (2002)
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throughout Africa (mostly in Ghana, Mozambique, and
Uganda, as well as in Benin, South Africa, Tanzania,
Zambia, and Zimbabwe) to test different models, means
of implementation, and mechanisms for sustainability.
The demand for public phone shops and telecenters is
also having spinoffs in the IT sector for small businesses,
equipment providers, and franchisers.
However, the case for large, multibranch cybercafe chains is
not yet proven, as regional ISP AfricaOnline learned when
it rolled out hundreds of public access kiosks as part of
its E-Touch franchise program in which local stores were
provided with a PC to enable e-mail and Internet access.
AfricaOnline had approximately 100,000 users spread across
740 outlets in Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and
Zimbabwe before it discovered these outlets were generating
insuf?cient income to maintain them. The company has
subsequently closed most of them, and is testing a new
franchise strategy with fewer, better known, “I-cafes.”
In the area of Internet-based content and applications,
the African Web presence continues to increase, but there
are generally few relevant applications for the general
population. Almost all African countries now have some
form of local or internationally-hosted Web server,
unof?cially or of?cially representing the country with
varying degrees of comprehensiveness. French-speaking
countries generally have a higher pro?le on the Web and
greater institutional connectivity than the non-French
speaking countries. This is largely due to the strong
assistance provided by various francophone support
agencies, as well as the Canadian and French governments,
which are concerned about the dominance of English
on the Internet. The two dominant francophone content
developers are the Agence de Cooperation Culturelle et
Technique (ACCT) (with the BIEF center), and AUPELF-
UREF/REFER’s Syfed Center; both centers are building
websites of local information as well as providing access.
In response to the high cost of Internet services and the
slow speed of Web access, and also because of the overriding
importance of electronic mail, lower-cost e–mail-only
services are continuing to attract subscribers. However, the
relatively high cost of local e-mail services from African ISPs
means that a large proportion of African e-mail users use
the international, free Web-based services such as Hotmail,
Yahoo, or Excite. These services are more costly and slower
than using standard e-mail software because extra online
time is needed to maintain the connection to the website.
Unfortunately for the ISPs, these services can also use up
scarce international bandwidth. In response to these issues
and the growing use of shared accounts, some African ISPs,
such as AfricaOnline and MailAfrica, have set up their own
low-cost Web-based e-mail services.
Source: Sangonethttp://www3.sn.apc.org/africa
Table 3. African Internet Statistics 2002
Country
Dial-up
Subscribers
Interna-
tional
Band-
width
Popula-
tion (in
Millions)
GDP/
Capita
US$
Cities
with
POPs
Outgoing
Kbps 2000 1999
Algeria 45,000 12,000 30.08 1,442 1
Angola 16,000 5,126 12.09 1,684 3
Benin 4,500 2,100 5.78 374 1
Botswana 20,000 14,000 1.57 3,252 11
Burkina Faso 4,700 256 11.31 199 1
Burundi 300 512 6.46 159 4
Cameroon 7,000 9,000 14.31 617 2
Cape Verde 2,456 1,024 0.41 876 1
Central Africa 700 64 3.48 276 1
Chad 900 64 7.27 149 2
Comoros 491 64 0.66 382 7
Republic of Congo 200 128 2.79 833 5
Côte d’Ivoire 13,000 6,000 16.20 767 13
D.R. C. 4,500 1,024 49.30 400 1
Djibouti 850 2,048 0.62 846 6
Egypt 100,000 535,000 65.98 1,195 1
Equatorial Guinea 200 64 0.43 668 1
Eritrea 2,500 512 3.58 161 1
Ethiopia 6,500 8,200 59.65 103 5
Gabon 5,000 16,384 1.17 5,121 7
Gambia 3,000 1,024 1.23 284 14
Ghana 15,000 4,096 19.16 372 3
Guinea 4,000 128 7.71 677 10
Guinea-Bissau 250 640 1.13 245 4
Kenya 35,000 28,000 29.01 347 2
Lesotho 750 784 2.06 547 2
Liberia 250 128 2.67 1,000 1
Libya 4,000 2,048 5.98 6,579 1
Madagascar 10,000 2,750 16.36 224 1
Malawi 3,500 2,300 10.75 242 2
Mali 6,000 4,096 10.69 230 1
Mauritania 960 384 2.53 455 1
Mauritius 35,000 4,096 1.15 3,661 1
Morocco 80,000 200,000 27.87 1,218 1
Mozambique 6,000 2,048 18.88 86 11
Namibia 15,000 6,144 1.66 2,051 100
Niger 2,000 384 10.08 161 1
Nigeria 60,000 15,000 113.50 551 2
Reunion 47,000 576 0.68 9,270 4
Rwanda 2,700 1,300 6.60 317 1
São Tomé 378 64 0.14 358 1
Senegal 15,000 48,000 10.00 518 4
Seychelles 3,000 4,098 0.08 6,995 3
Sierra Leone 1,000 512 4.57 209 1
Somalia 250 768 10.63 169 2
South Africa 750,000 342,000 44.31 2,979 2
Sudan 9,000 10,000 28.29 364 7
Swaziland 5,000 256 0.95 1,388 1
Tanzania 30,000 12,000 32.10 244 4
Togo 1,700 1,536 4.40 324 9
Tunisia 70,000 75,000 9.34 2,144 1
Uganda 10,000 9,250 20.55 317 5
Zambia 7,000 5,120 8.78 463 1
Zimbabwe 25,000 11,000 12.68 712 4
Africa 1,492,535 1,409,100 769.66 1,207.5 283
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Outside North and South Africa, there are generally few
organizations using the Web to deliver signi?cant quantities
of information or to carry out transactions with their user
base. Although large numbers of organizations now have
a “brochure” website with basic descriptive and contact
information, very few actually use the Internet for real
business activities. This is mainly explained by the limited
number of local people that have access to the Internet
(and thus the limited importance of a Web presence to
the institution), the lack of credit cards, the limited skills
available for digitizing and coding pages, and the high costs
of local Web-hosting services.
Similarly, although there are some notable of?cial general
government websites, such as those of Angola, Egypt,
Gabon, Lesotho, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal,
South Africa, Togo, Tunisia, and Zambia, there is as yet
little government use of the Internet for administrative
purposes or for interacting with the public. Lack of timely
information is known to be the largest constraint on the
small-scale agricultural production and natural resource
exploitation sector, which provide a livelihood for 70 to
80 percent of Africa’s population. However, the potential
for ICT to impact this sector has not yet received much
attention, although some commodity markets in east Africa,
such as coffee and tea, are now beginning to trade online.
Web presence is higher in sectors involved in tourism and
foreign investment, because these sectors aim to develop an
international market presence. Some administrations are
also beginning to streamline their operations and improve
internal ef?ciency by switching to a network environment
within the organization. For example, the government of
Lesotho recently declared that announcements for cabinet
and committee meetings would be made only by e-mail.
South Africa, Algeria, and Tunisia now provide immediate
global access to tenders via the Web. Health and education
departments in many countries are beginning to electronically
transmit operational management information system
statistics (e.g., disease occurrences and pupil registrations).
The results of blood tests done in remote areas of South
Africa are being transmitted to remote clinics that are off the
telecommunications grid via mobile telephone text messages.
As greater numbers of public of?cials gain low-cost access to
the Web, the vast information resources available via Internet
are becoming increasingly important tools in ensuring
informed decision-making.
The “death of distance” introduced by the Internet has
meant that the opportunities to be found in the much
larger economies of the more developed countries can be
exploited by some African companies. Examples of such
initiatives include the following:
1. A local ISP in Morocco is digitizing the National Library of
France’s paper archives. They are scanned in France, sent
to Morocco by satellite link, and are edited by keyboard
operators in Rabat.
2. In Togo and Mauritius, call centers now provide telephone
support services for international companies with
customers in Europe and North America.
3. In Cape Verde “virtual security guards” have found jobs
using the Internet to monitor webcams in of?ce parks on
the east coast of the United States. They notify local rapid
response teams there if they see anything amiss.
4. Many African artists and craft makers are selling their
wares on the World Wide Web.
In most major cities in Africa, various private companies
provide Internet applications training. However, apart
from a few universities, there are virtually no network
engineering-level facilities. The United Nations Development
Program (UNDP) and Cisco recently created a joint venture
to assist in the establishment of nonpro?t Cisco network
training academies in all the less-developed countries. Many
of these academies have opened in Africa, including in
Democratic Republic of the Congo. The UNDP’s Sustainable
Development Networking Programme (SDNP) and the
United States Agency for International Development’s Leland
initiative have also trained signi?cant numbers of network
technicians. Other initiatives include the following:
1. In Cameroon, United Nations Institute for Training and
Research (UNITAR) and ORSTOM have collaborated in
a joint project focusing on technical capacity-building in
sub-Saharan francophone Africa. The ?rst training center
and courses have been established in Cameroon (CITI-
CM) with support from the World Bank’s infoDev fund
and additional funds from from Orstom, ACCT,
and others. A network engineering course is now being
run regularly at CITI-CM. Funds are being sought for
CITI-CI (Côte d’Ivoire), CITI-SN (Sénégal), CITI-BF
(Burkina Faso), CITI-BE (Bénin), and CITI-ML (Mali).
2. An Internet training program for institutes, schools,
and other agencies of higher learning in francophone
and lusophone sub-Saharan African countries, called
Internet pour les Ecoles Inter-Etat d’Afrique de l’Ouest et
du Centre, has been established in a related effort to the
UNITAR/ORSTOM project, under the Diderot Initiative.
3. COMNET-IT, established by the Commonwealth
Secretariat (ComSec) in Malta to support ICT in
Commonwealth developing countries, has initiated a
number of ICT-support activities, such as the provision
of scholarships for Commonwealth country students to
obtain postgraduate degrees in computer science.
4. The African Virtual University (see website) is providing
training in computer and Internet applications and
programming languages to its twenty-nine university
campuses in eighteen countries in Africa.
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5. International volunteers are being seen as an increasingly
important vehicle for training and technology transfer.
This has been been boosted by the recently announced
UNITeS program of the UN’s UN Volunteers and other
similar nongovernmental organization initiatives, such as
the Global Netcorps (previously NetCorps Canada) and
GeekCorps.
6. More general ICT applications and indeed “technology
enhanced” teaching in other subjects is also now being
tackled by the growing number of national school-
based networking projects and foundations active on
the continent, such as SchoolNet Africa (see SchoolNet
website).
Hardware and Software
Most recent estimates (i.e., 2001 data) for the number of
personal computers in Africa put the total at about 7.5
million—an average of about one per 100 people. These
?gures, however, are notoriously unreliable because of
limited capacities for monitoring industry and the large
numbers of machines brought in independently to avoid
duties. Some studies, such as the 1995 ACCT survey,
indicate that of?cial ?gures are three to six times higher
than actual ?gures, making the average closer to one PC per
500 people. Account should also be taken of the number of
users sharing a single computer, which is much greater than
in the more developed regions.
Underutilization of existing computer resources is also
common. Often an of?ce may have many machines but only
one connected to the Internet, and there is a preponderance
of stand-alone computers, indicating limited use of Local
Area Networks. This usually means that there is competition
for the Internet-connected machine and a shared e-mail
account, which is not effective use of the Internet.
Few international companies operate of?ces in Africa, but
some of the major companies such as Bull, HP, IBM, NCR,
Oracle, and Microsoft have some form of local representation
in most countries. Microsoft now has its own of?ces in Côte
d’Ivoire, Kenya, Morocco, and South Africa. PC equipment
is often clone equipment imported from Asia; but Dell, HP,
IBM, and ICL also have signi?cant shares of the market, and
Dell South Africa is now selling via the Web.
Although there have been notable efforts in some countries
to reduce import duties on computers, communications
equipment and peripherals are still often charged at higher
rates. The high cost of computer hardware in Africa has a
major impact on the continent’s ability to improve networked
readiness, as this cost is often the largest component of
network startup budgets. This situation is likely to become
an even more critical bottleneck because low-cost bandwidth,
such as through Ku-Band VSAT and spread spectrum wireless
(WiFi) links, is increasingly becoming available. As a result,
the use of recycled PCs, thin clients, set-top boxes, or other
low-cost Internet “appliances,” as well as Open Source (free)
software, is becoming more common.
Electronic Mass Media
Radio is still by far the most dominant electronic mass
medium in Africa, with ownership of radio sets being far
higher than for any other electronic device. The United
Nations Educational, Scienti?c and Cultural Organization
estimates that in 1997, radio ownership in Africa was close
to 170 million with a 4 percent per annum growth rate. This
puts current estimates for 2002 at more than 200 million
radio sets, compared with only 62 million televisions. It is
estimated that more than 60 percent of the population of
the sub-continent are reached by existing radio transmitter
networks, while national television coverage is largely
con?ned to major towns. Some countries, even relatively well
developed ones, still do not have their own national television
broadcaster. For example, Botswana has only this year
launched a national television broadcaster.
An increasing number of commercial stations are being
established following liberalization of the sector in many
countries. However, most of these stations concentrate on
entertainment (music), and the news and information output
is often limited to a re-broadcast either of news produced
by the national (state-controlled) broadcaster, or of news
produced by an international broadcaster or news agency.
Local news and current affairs (especially that focusing on
events outside of the capital) or educational programming is
rarely broadcast, and local community stations have also been
slow to take off.
In the last few years, there has been substantial growth
of satellite-based broadcasting on the continent. In 1995,
South African company M-Net launched the world’s ?rst
digital direct-to-home subscriber satellite service (DSTV).
Subscribers have access to more than thirty video channels
and forty audio programs, and these are available to most of
Africa through low-cost KU-band terminals. The US-based
company, WorldSpace, launched a digital radio broadcasting
satellite called AfriStar in late 1998. Radio broadcasters
from many African countries, as well as from Europe and
the United States, are using the service to broadcast their
channels all over Africa and to most of Europe. WorldSpace
ultimately aims to make a suite of more than eighty audio
channels available to anyone who can afford the special digital
radio (priced at US$50); the radio is also able to receive data
services, including the transmission of Web pages and other
information such as weather maps and crop disease images.
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Outlook
As Figure 5 below shows, of all the major network
components in Africa, the most impressive growth has been
in the uptake of mobile telephones. This, combined with
the not insigni?cant use of the Internet, has undoubtedly
had a substantial impact on the ability of entrepreneurs
to do business in urban areas, as well as for more wealthy
individuals to stay in contact with friends and family.
Figure 5. Growth in the Number of ICT Users in Africa
Source: ITU, Sangonet
Nevertheless, the vast majority of Africans remain
unconnected. Efforts to promote broader use in Africa
have been discussed among high-level policymakers since
the early 1990s. Of?cial recognition was given to the issue
in 1996, when the Conference of African Ministers of
Social and Economic Planning requested that the United
Nations Economic Commission for Africa set up a “high-
level working group” to help de?ne a strategy for greater
networked readiness in Africa. Subsequently, an expert
group developed a framework document entitled the
African Information Society Initiative (AISI). Since then,
communications ministers from more than forty African
countries have provided high-level endorsement for AISI,
along with speci?c telecommunications development
policies which they encapsulated in their common vision
document, African Connection, published in 2001 (see
African Connection website).
Among the proposals in AISI was a call for the formulation
and development of a national information and
communication infrastructure (NICI) plan that would be
driven by national development priorities in every African
country. AISI also proposed cooperation among African
countries in order to share experiences. Most countries
have begun the process of developing NICI plans, and
seventeen countries have ?nalized their strategies—Benin,
Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Gambia,
Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda,
Senegal, Seychelles, South Africa, Sudan, and Tunisia (see
UNECA website). A high priority in many of these plans
is improvement of public Internet access in rural areas
through the use of telecenters that exploit the convergence
of technologies to provide cost-effective services in
underserviced and remote locations.
As addressing the digital divide has become an even higher
priority in the international community, the outlook for
international support has also improved. This has culminated
in the activities of the G8 Digital Opportunity Task Force
(Dot Force), the United Nations ICT Task Force, and related
efforts in 2002 that have resulted in developed countries
creating a variety of new projects (such as Canada’s Institute
for Connectivity in Africa and Italy’s e-Government Support
Program in Mozambique, Nigeria, and Tunisia) to help
developing countries achieve networked readiness.
Much of the impact of these efforts will depend on the extent
of improvements to the telecommunication infrastructure on
which the networks depend. The high costs of connectivity
in remote areas will hopefully be addressed by the large
number of low-cost, two-way Ku-band VSAT satellite-based
data services that have been launched this year by companies
such as Afsat and Web-Sat. These services will be a major
boon to rural users, making use of the new high-powered
satellite footprints now covering Africa, similar to services
currently available in the United States and Europe. Costs are
about US$1,500 to US$3,000 for the equipment and US$200
to US$400 per month for “better than dial-up” speeds (i.e.,
about 56 Kbps outgoing and 200 to 400 Kbps incoming).
These are expected to see rapid uptake wherever regulations
allow; unfortunately, most countries in Africa either charge
excessively high license fees or do not allow these services at
all, as they compete with the state-run telecommunications
operator.
Liberalization of the telecommunication sector and the
introduction of competition are increasingly seen as key
factors needed to drive down prices and improve the quality
of service, and although some countries have begun to
open up their markets, there is a general sense that too
little is being done. While a variety of efforts are underway
to restructure national telecom operations and build
better national and international infrastructures, many
of these efforts lack a cohesive approach built on a clear
understanding of the dynamics and impact of the blindingly
fast-changing communications technologies. As a result,
the pace of regulatory change is still generally seen by the
Internet industry as too slow, conducted with insuf?cient
transparency, and with not enough participation by the
sector in developing policy. In general, strategies continue
to favor an extension of the monopoly for the incumbent
(usually for ?ve to seven years) in return for a high share
price sold to a foreign strategic investor, which is normally a
multinational operator keen to shore up pro?ts under threat
from liberalization in their home markets.
Users (000)
1998 1999 2000 2000
Fixed lines
Mobile
Internet users
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
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The justi?cation for continuing the exclusivity period of
the national operator is usually to ensure that suf?cient
income is generated to roll out infrastructure without it
being siphoned by competitors. Although this strategy may
be logical, experience since the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) breakup of AT&T has shown that the
only way of ensuring the ef?ciency of service delivery is to
bring self-interest into play by opening the markets and using
competition to do much of the regulating. This strategy also
helps address the problem of limited resources that faces
government policymakers and regulators worldwide (even
the FCC); regulators do not have the capacity to keep up
with the rapid technological change in order to fully enforce
regulations.
Furthermore, the old model of an extensive regulatory
apparatus supporting the slow entry of only one or two new
operators is not as relevant in Africa as it is in developed
countries, because developed countries are not burdened
with huge state-owned operators holding 99.9 percent of the
market, or encumbered with old technologies (used by the
majority of the population) that need to be carefully moved
into a competitive environment. In contrast to the massive
incumbents in developed nations, emerging operators
in Africa make use of much cheaper next-generation
technologies that allow many smaller companies to enter the
marketplace, and they are more self-regulated than operators
in developed countries. African operators’ self-regulation is
even more evident when one takes into account their partial
self-provisioning (as demonstrated by the rapid growth of
the Internet, WiFi, and mobile telephony).
In practical terms, while competition in the ICT sector
results in some overlap and duplication of resources by
the different competitors, the overall operation of the
sector is more ef?cient than that of a monopoly. Thus, the
initial process of privatization and liberalization of the
telecommunications sector in Africa should bypass the
common ?rst step of transforming a public monopoly into a
private one; a private monopoly can be even more dif?cult to
control, especially if it has a large foreign partner experienced
in the use of litigation. Generally, the record of foreign
participation in Africa indicates that even the strategy of a
limited exclusivity period for basic services in urban areas
is questionable, and it may ultimately be more ef?cient to
transition directly from a public monopoly to a multiplayer-
competitive environment, perhaps with small areas of
exclusivity for rural locations.
Technology and design options for rural populations are
becoming more readily apparent as technologies mature.
Perhaps more important than decisions about technology,
however, is a reassessment of the traditional view that rural
communications services are unpro?table. The need for
subsidized rural communications emerged decades ago in
developed countries when telecommunication infrastructure
costs were high, and where most of the population resided
in densely populated urban areas that could be serviced at
relatively low cost in conjunction with high-volume business
users. In this environment, cross-subsidization and Universal
Service Obligations were needed to cover the relatively
greater costs of serving the small minority of mainly
residential users living in sparsely populated rural areas.
These factors are not generally applicable in Africa and
other developing countries today—most of the population
is in rural areas, and network infrastructure roll-out and
usage costs have already plummeted and will continue to
do so for the foreseeable future. The growing availability
of ?bre, wireless, and satellite bandwidth services have the
potential to make rural areas almost as easy to reach as urban
ones, and technology convergence means that the same
infrastructure can be used to provide many services, not just
voice calls. Further, the use of the Internet for transaction
purposes vastly increases the added value potential of the
infrastructure, and thus the incentives to build it.
In addition to lowering usage and infrastructure costs, the
overhead costs associated with centralized national network
planning are no longer required. This is so because of the
emergence of the Internet model of network development,
which allows anyone to build a part of the network and be
able to sell excess bandwidth to third parties in order to help
cover their own costs or generate a pro?t. Examples of this
model are already evident in the Universities of Zambia and
Mozambique, which have become leading ISPs following the
establishment of their own facilities for internal use. It is no
coincidence that these service providers rely extensively on
VSAT and wireless systems to access and deliver their services
independent of the monopoly telecommunications operators
in their countries.
In identifying appropriate strategies for broader network use,
another important point to be made is that African models
of infrastructure provision are likely to be quite different to
those employed in developed countries, not only because of
the generally low income levels in Africa, but also because, in
Africa, informal business activity and rural populations are
much more important.
Innovative models are necessary to address the low-income
factor, and these models must focus on shared infrastructure,
public access facilities, and the use of intermediaries to
interact with the public (who may not be functionally
literate, let alone computer literate). In other respects,
strategies to improve network services are unlikely to be
uniform across the continent because of the very large
variations between countries. Aside from variations in
annual per capita GDP levels, which range from US$200 to
US$7,000, and market sizes that vary from 1 million to 100
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million people, many other factors vary substantially, and
may affect strategy. Some of the important issues that need
to be taken into account include:
1. The communications regulatory environment. The national
regulatory environment in Africa varies greatly, from
relatively open competition in Internet service provision
or even in mobile services and the local loop, to long-
term monopolies in all of these areas. In particular, very
few countries allow the use of VSAT or other wireless
technologies that may bypass state-run operators, and if
they do, they levy high bypass or license fees.
2. The extent of existing ?xed infrastructure and the cost of
access, for example ?xed line penetration can vary from 20
percent to less than 1 percent, depending on the country.
3. The existing usage of the radio spectrum. Many countries
do not have adequate resources to ef?ciently manage their
radio spectrum allocation for use by either national or
regional telecommunications and Internet operators. This
has resulted in congestion in some wavebands, lack of a
transparent licensing process, and dif?culties in obtaining
spectrum from the regulators.
4. The resources that national governments and their
international cooperating partners are allocating to
national information and communication infrastructure
building projects. In some countries there is strong, if
somewhat uncoordinated, support from both multilateral
and bilateral development agencies in this area; other
countries have yet to begin this process.
5. The focus of national universal service goals. Currently,
the aim of most of these efforts is simply to improve
the provision of public telephones within walking
distance; however, some countries, such as South Africa
and Uganda, have gone further, and have included
the provision of more advanced network services and
established universal service funds to redirect some of the
pro?ts made by telecommunications operators into the
provision of network access in rural areas. Uganda has
also developed an incoming termination fee, which is to
be paid to telecenters for incoming calls.
Consolidating markets and building economies of scale
will clearly require greater regional collaboration, both
for deploying infrastructure and for creating content and
applications. Encouraging efforts that warrant further
support and adoption in other regions have been made at the
regional level by South African Development Community
(SADC) and Common Market for Eastern and Southern
Africa (COMESA), which have both adopted a variety of
measures to improve network use, most notably:
1. SADC’s model telecommunication legislation, which has
been adopted by most member states, and is therefore a
legally-binding protocol
2. The formation of the Telecommunication Regulators
Association of Southern Africa (TRASA); TRASA acts
as a forum for regulators in the region to exchange
information and experience
3. The ComTel project to develop the terrestrial
telecommunication links between neighboring states
in COMESA, and to harmonize and upgrade the cross-
border information systems in transport, customs,
import/export, and trade.
Obtaining startup ?nancing for small businesses to establish
public access services is an acute problem, because the level
of investment usually required falls in the gap between
traditional microcredit loans (US$50 to US$1,000); and
?nanciers of venture capital or loan funds that are not
generally interested in anything smaller than US$250,000
(mainly because of the overheads required to carry out due
diligence). As a result, a public access startup project, which
might only require between US$25,000 and US$100,000,
has considerable dif?culty in sourcing the necessary funds.
Hopefully, this problem will in part be addressed through the
newly created DOT Force Entrepreneurial Network (DFEN),
which aims to provide ?nancing and support to small-
and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs
planning to use ICT in innovative and creative ways in the
developing world. The initial focus of DFEN’s activities will
be Africa.
The African Union and their program, the New Partnership
for African Development (NEPAD), which is supported by
the international community, are addressing many of the
more systemic issues. This many-faceted effort is aimed
at accelerating Africa’s development, and it should help
to create an environment more conducive to networked
readiness.
Endnotes
1. ITU; United Nations Educational, Scienti?c and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) statistics.
2. It should be noted, for example, that there is a large variation
between countries in the charges for installation, line rental,
and call tariffs. The average business connection in Africa
costs more than US$100 to install, US$6 a month to rent, and
US$0.11 per three minute local call. But installation charges
are higher than US$200 in some countries (Egypt, Benin,
Mauritania, Niger, and Togo), line rentals range from US$0.8 to
US$20 a month, and call charges vary by a factor of 10—from
US$0.60 an hour to more than US$5 an hour.
3. Network Wizards conducts a quarterly survey in which the
number of hosts on the Internet is counted.
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