The African Internet - A Status Report
Updated: July 2002
The use of the Internet has grown relatively rapidly in most urban areas in
Africa, in much the same pattern as the adoption of the mobile phone which followed
shortly after. As an indication, five years ago, only a handful of countries
had local Internet access, now it is available in every capital city. But although
these are encouraging trends, the differences between the development levels
of Africa and the rest of the world are much wider in this area than they are
using more traditional measures of development: Of the approximately 816 million
people in Africa in 2001, it is estimated that only:
· 1 in 4 have a radio (205m)
· 1 in 13 have a TV (62m)
· 1 in 35 have a mobile phone (24m)
· 1 in 40 have a fixed line (20m)
· 1 in 130 have a PC (5.9m)
· 1 in 160 use the Internet (5m)
· 1 in 400 have pay-TV (2m)
The Current Status of the Internet in Africa
Because of the large number of shared accounts, and the high use of public access
services, it is difficult to measure the total numbers of Internet users. While
the number of dialup subscriber accounts is readily available, these figures
are only a partial indicator of the size of the Internet sector and should be
looked at along with other factors such as the quantity of international traffic
each country generates and the extent of the local Internet infrastructure.
The rates of growth in users seen in the 1990s has slowed in most countries
as the bulk of the users who can afford a computer and telephone have already
obtained connections. As of mid 2002 the number of dialup Internet subscribers
was close to 1.7 million, 20% up from last year, mainly bolstered by growth
in a few of the larger countries such as Egypt, South Africa, Morocco and Nigeria.
Of the total subscribers, North Africa and South Africa are responsible for
about 1.2 million, leaving about 500 000 for the remaining 49 Sub-Saharan African
countries.
In Africa, each computer with an Internet or email connection usually supports
a range of three to five users. This puts current estimates of the total number
of African Internet users at around 5-8 million, with about 1.5-2.5 million
outside of North and South Africa. This is about 1 user for every 250-400 people,
compared to a world average of about one user for every 15 people, and a North
American and European average of about one in every 2 people. (The UNDP World
Development Report1 figures for other developing regions in 2000 were: 1 in
30 for Latin America and the Caribbean, 1 in 250 for South Asia, 1 in 43 for
East Asia, 1 in 166 for the Arab States).
Shared/public access and the use of corporate networks is continuing to grow
at greater rates than the number of dialup users. This can be seen in the deployment
of international Internet bandwidth, which still expanding substantially - up
over 100%, from just over 700 Mbps of available outgoing bandwidth in 2001 to
1 500 Mbps in 2002 (although this is still slower than the rest of the world,
which averaged 174% growth in 2001, with Latin America at 479%)2.
There are a variety of reasons for greater increases in international bandwidth,
most notably: the increasing use by ISPs of low-cost bandwidth via satellite
to augment their existing links, the greater demand by a maturing user-base
for more bandwidth (including for VOIP), growth in use of public access facilities
(cybercafes, business centres). Also, the pricing for international bandwidth
has dropped due to greater competition in the sector caused by new supplies
from satellite providers and the establishment of new marine fiber cable along
west Africa connecting to Europe and Asia. With the recent launch of new low-cost
service offerings such as 2-way Ku-band VSAT and GPRS mobile data, it appears
this growth will continue. Nevertheless, this growth is off a very low base
- even Latin America has 10 times as much International bandwidth (16 132.5
Mbps)and the average North American resident has access to around 570 times
more international bandwidth than the average African citizen.
There are now about 39 countries in Africa with 1000 or more dialup subscribers,
20 countries with more than 5000 and 16 countries with 10 000 or more subscribers.
Clearly a number of countries such as those in North Africa and Southern Africa
have more highly developed economies and better infrastructures which naturally
result in larger populations of Internet users. Most of these countries were
also among the first on the continent to obtain Internet access and so have
had the most time to develop the user base.
Nevertheless, some countries such as Senegal and Cap Verde are bucking the trend,
and have much higher levels of connectivity than their GDP/capita would suggest.
Also, after many years of relative inactivity, the recent opening up of the
Nigerian Internet market has begun to have an impact the African internet picture.
With a fifth of Sub-Sahara's population, the country was still a relatively
small player in the Internet sector until mid '98 when it only had a few dialup
email providers and a couple of full ISPs operating on very low bandwidth links.
The national regulator has since licensed over 50 ISPs to sell services, of
which about 20-30 are currently active, with about 8 major players (Linkserve,
21st Century, Hyperia, Cyberspace, Infoweb, Sioel, Nova and Nitel). In the major
cities there are now many thousands of cybercafe/business centres run by small
entrepreneurs who are allowed by the regulator to provide VOIP services as part
of their cybercafe license, which costs about $500 a year.
Neverthless the extremely sparse and unreliable fixed line network in Nigeria,
which also suffers from severe inter-exchange congestion is still a major impediment
to widespread Internet uptake. Some of the wireless local loop operators which
have been licensed in the urban areas have promised to provide data services
over their subscriber links, but have yet to launch them. The GSM subscriber
base licensed only last year has already eclipsed the number of fixed line subscribers
nationwide (400 000) and if the mobile providers make low-cost GPRS services
available on their network this could have a major impact on Internet use. The
privatisation of the public telecom operator, Nitel (which also has a new GSM
license) and the introduction of a second network operator is expected to accelerate
Internet use further, however this has been subject to further delays.
Few studies have been made in Africa of the number of rural vs urban users,
but it is safe to say that users in the cities and towns vastly outnumber rural
users. However many countries now have points of presence (POPs) in some of
the secondary towns, bringing the number of different centres across the continent
with local infrastructure to about 240 (50) of which are towns in South Africa).
However, many countries now have instituted local call charges for all calls
to the Internet regardless of distance, which greatly reduces costs for those
in remote areas. So far only 19 countries have adopted this strategy - Benin,
Burkina Faso, Cap Vert, Ethiopia, Gabon, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mauritania,
Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, South Africa, Tchad, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda
and Zimbabwe. Seychelles goes a step further encourage use, and charges for
calls to the Internet are actually tariffed 50% lower than normal local voice
call
As measured by Network Wizards3, the total number of computers permanently connected
to the Internet in Africa (excluding South Africa) exceeded 35 000 in 2001.
However these figures have also become increasingly meaningless in Africa with
the widespread use of .com and .net domains, and the frequent re-use of Internet
address space behind firewalls due to the difficulties of obtaining pubic Internet
space. As a result many of the African countries surveyd by Network Wizards
show zero or only a handful of hosts when in actual fact there might hundreds
if not thousands of machines connected to the Internet there.
Most African capitals now have more than one ISP, and in mid 2002 there were
about 560 public ISPs across the region (excluding SA, where the market has
consolidated into 3 major players with 90% of the market and about 75 small
players with the remainder). Twenty countries had 5 or more ISPs, while seven
countries had 10 or more active ISPs: Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South
Africa, Tanzania and Togo, and 16 countries still had only one ISP. Although
Ethiopia and Mauritius are the only countries where a monopoly ISP is still
national policy (i.e. where private companies are barred from reselling Internet
services), there are other countries in which this practice still continues,
predominantly in Francophone and Sahel sub-regions, where markets are small.
As far as the multinational ISPs are concerned, AfricaOnline is still the largest
operation. The group now has services in Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya,
Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. A partnership with WorldCom/UUNET
to provide AfricaOnline's infrastructure is in place in Kenya and Zambia. UUNet
South Africa also provide their own dialup and leased line services in Namibia
and Botswana. South Africa based MediaPost is also expanding its network with
operations in South Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda, Congo Brazzaville, Kenya and Senegal
and firm plans for Nigeria, Cameroon, Malawi and DRC. The next largest regional
ISP was 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 fourth largest regional player, having purchased ISPs in Namibia, Uganda
and Zimbabwe.
Currently, the average total cost of using a local dialup Internet account for
20 hours a month in Africa is about $60/month (usage fees and local call telephone
time included, but not telephone line rental). But ISP subscription charges
vary greatly - between $10 and $80 a month, largely reflecting the different
levels of maturity of the markets, the varying tariff policies of the telecom
operators, the different regulations on private wireless data services and on
access to international telecommunications bandwidth. According to the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, in 2000, 20 hours of Internet access
a month in the U.S. cost $22, including telephone charges. Although European
costs were higher ($33 in Germany, $39 across the EU), all of these countries
have per capita incomes which are at least 10 times greater than the African
average. In fact $60/month is higher than the average African salary.
In response to the high cost of Internet services and the slow speed of the
web, and also because of the overriding importance of electronic mail, lower-cost
email-only services are continuing to attract subscribers. Similarly, because
of the relatively high cost of local electronic mailbox services from African
ISPs, a large proportion of African email users make use of the free Web-based
services such as Hotmail, Yahoo or Excite, most of which are in the US. These
services can be more costly and cumbersome than using standard email software,
because extra online time is needed to maintain the connection to the remote
site. But they do provide the added advantages of anonymity and perhaps greater
perceived stability than a local ISP who may not be in business next year. Unfortunately
for the ISPs, these services can also use up scarce international bandwidth.
Due to the relatively small number of people who can afford a phone line, let
alone a computer, public access services are very much in demand in the urban
areas. As is most evident in Nigeria and Senegal, and other countries where
telecom operators have relied on the private sector to provide public phone
services, but also in most other major urban areas, there is a rapidly growing
number of kiosks, cybercafes and other forms of public Internet access, such
as adding PCs to community phone-shops, schools, police stations and clinics
which address low-income levels by sharing the cost and maintenance of equipment
and access amongst a larger number of users, as discussed further in this book.
In addition a growing number of hotels and business centres provide a PC with
Internet access. The demand for public phone shops and telecenters is also having
spinoffs in the sector for small businesses, equipment providers and franchisers.
However the case for large multi-branch 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 programme in which local stores were
provided with a PC to provide email and Internet access. AfricaOnline had approximately
100 000 users spread across 740 outlets in Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania
and Zimbabwe before it discovered these were generating insufficient income
to maintain them. The company has subsequently closed most of them and is testing
new strategy with fewer, larger branded I-cafes.
Due to high international tariffs and lack of circuit capacity, obtaining sufficient
international bandwidth is still a major problem in most countries, and although
conditions have improved over the last year, users generally still have to contend
with substantial congestion in peak times. This year Egypt overtook South Africa
as the country with the most international bandwidth (550Mpbs vs 380Mbps), following
the launch of government backed international connectivity provider, Nile-Online.
Today 20 countries have links carrying 5Mbps or more, and 13 countries have
outgoing links of 10Mbps or more - Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius,
Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.
Also of note is that the range in available international bandwidths is continuing
to increase, with some 8 countries still on International links that are less
than than the average small or medium sized business user in Europe or North
America - 256Kbps (Liberia, Congo-Brazzaville, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Comoros
and Sao Tome & Principe).
Incoming bandwidth is about 50% greater, but is not as easy to monitor because
much of it comes in via variable (uncommitted) bitrate satellite broadcast circuits.
This is a common response to the bandwidth problem in which data broadcasting
services are now being installed by ISPs in Africa. A basic satellite dish can
be used to receive a stream of popular web data for caching locally, as well
as encoded broadcasts of other user traffic. These can provide incoming bandwidth
in chunks of 64Kbps for about US$30-$1000/month (depending on usage) which is
often far cheaper than services available via local operators.
Two-way C-Band satellite-based Internet services using very small aperture terminals
(VSAT) to connect directly to the US or Europe have also been quickly adopted
by ISPs where ever regulations allow. Namely in DRC, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania,
and Zambia, which all have ISPs that are not dependent on the local telecom
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 USA and Canada, with some to Belgium,
Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Italy, and France. Of the 1.5Gbps
of outgoing bandwidth, approximately 1Gbps lands in the US, 375 Mbps in Europe,
2 Mbps in Asia and only 13Mbps is intra-African. The major international Internet
suppliers are AT&T, BT, UUNET/AlterNet (with parent company WorldCom/MCI),
NSN, Teleglobe, Verio, Verestar, and OpenTransit (France Telecom/FCR). A number
of other links are provided by PanamSat, New Skies and Intelsat, direct to private
and PTO groundstations in the US and UK, circumventing local PTO infrastructure.
A number of low-cost consumer oriented two-way VSAT services are being launched
this year by companies such as Afsat Kenya, Web-Sat and IVS Africa, which are
expected to see rapid uptake where regulations allow. These services make use
of the new high-powered Ku-Band footprints now covering Africa, and are similar
to services currently available in the US and Europe such as Tachyon and Starband.
Initial pricing is expected to be $1500-$3000 for the VSAT equipment and $200
/month for 'better than dialup' speeds (i.e 56Kbps outgoing and 200-400Kbps
incoming). Web-Sat's service, which is based in Ireland, has been operational
for some years in North Africa and West Africa, making use of the edge of the
footprint from the European satellite Eutelsat and Panamsat's PAS1R.
In Southern Africa, however, Internet Service Providers in countries with borders
shared with South Africa benefit from the low tariff policies instituted by
the South African telecom operator for international links to neighbouring countries.
As a result South Africa acts as a hub for some of its neighbouring countries
- Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland. Aside from this, there is only one other
intra-regional Internet link between neighbouring countries - a 4Mbps connection
between Gambia and Senegal, operated by the two national telecom operators,
which is also used for VOIP. The main reason there are so few such intra-African
links is that the high international tariffs charged by telecom operators discourage
private ISPs from establishing multiple international links. As a result ISPs
are forced to consolidate all of their traffic over their high cost international
circuits.
This is also the reason behind the common practice amongst popular African Internet
sites to be hosted on servers that are in Europe or the U.S. This is especially
necessary for the many countries where ISPs operate their own independent international
links without local interconnections (peering), such as in Tanzania and Nigeria,
which means that traffic between the subscribers of two ISPs in the same city
must travel to the US or Europe and back. This makes it more efficient to host
outside-country, and is also being encouraged because web hosting costs can
be very high, while there are even a number of free hosting sites in the US
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 traffic. These have been set up by national ISP associations
in Kenya, Mozambique and South Africa. Plans are at an advanced stage to establish
similar facilities in Ghana and Uganda. Although local traffic is only 15-25%
of total traffic, this can still result in significant savings on international
bandwidth and improves performance for the user.
Roaming dialup Internet access has for many years been available in most African
countries courtesy of SITA, the airline co-operative, which has by far the largest
network in Africa. SITA's commercial division, Equant, which was formed to service
the non-airline market, operates dialup points of presence in about 40 African
countries. Subscribers of Internet service providers who are members of IPASS
(a group of ISPs, which includes SITA, who share access to their POPs) can connect
for $0.10-0.22c a minute, depending on the local provider (SITA POPs are usually
more expensive). A similar group called GRIC is also active in Africa, with
ISP members in about 10 countries.
In the area of Internet content and applications, the African web-space continues
to expand and almost all countries now have some form of local or internationally
hosted web server, unofficially or officially representing the country with
varying degrees of comprehensiveness. Although there are a few notable official
general government web sites, there is as yet little discernible government
use of the Internet for existing administrative purposes. Web presence is higher
in some sectors, particularly those involved in tourism and foreign investment,
and these often have more mature sites, aimed at developing an international
market presence.
Universal smart card and e-commerce policies are also gaining attention in a
number of countries. Mauritius and South Africa are looking at a single smart
card that will allow the public to hold their drivers licence, small amounts
of funds which can be used for small transactions, as well as carrying their
health and other social security information. Harmonisation of e-commerce policies
is also on the agenda in a number of countries, so that, for example electronic
evidence is upheld in court and can be used in many ways for ensuring that e-commerce
is correctly carried out.
Some countries, such as Tunisia and Ghana have launched sites to announce tenders,
however outsided South Africa, except for some African newspapers, there are
still generally few organisations that are using the Web to deliver significant
quantities of information or to carry out transactions with its user-base. While
large numbers of organisations now have a 'brochure' Web site with basic descriptive
and contact information, very few actually use the Web 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 digitising and coding
pages, and also the high costs of local web hosting services.
French speaking countries generally have a higher profile on the Web and greater
institutional connectivity than the non-French speaking countries. This is largely
due to the strong assistance provided by the various Francophone support agencies,
and the Canadian and French governments, which are concerned about the dominance
of English on the Internet. ACCT's BIEF and AUPELF-UREF/REFER's Syfed Centres,
which are building Web sites of local information as well as providing access,
are the two dominant content developers in this respect.
As far as regional intergovernmental agencies are concerned, so far ACMAD
, ADB , CEDEAO
, COMESA , ECA,
and IGAD have built web sites with a substantial
amount of information on their activities and their member states.
There are about 140 electronic mailing lists and UseNet newsgroups on the Internet
which discuss issues relating to Africa (although a significant proportion of
them are more closely affiliated with US African-American issues). These lists
and newsgroups are almost entirely hosted off-continent except for a number
in South Africa, North Africa and Kenya. There is a list for almost every nation
as well as others on more general topics ranging from African Cinema to Post
Colonialism. In the area of ICTs in Africa, AFRIK-IT is the only notable public
list, and it is run from Ireland by the University College of Dublin.
There are other announcement and discussion lists with a smaller circulation,
many of which focus on some of the programmes the international communities
are carrying out in Africa, such as the African Information Society Initiative's
AISI-HITD-CL and its associated African Technical Advisory Committee ATAC-CL,
the PICTA-CL and SCAN-ICT-CL mailing lists hosted by Bellanet.There are also
some more specialised lists relating to African ICTs in particular sectors,
regions or countries, notably:
- AFAGRICT-L - The use of ICTs in agriculture and natural resource management
in Africa, initiated by CTA and hosted by Bellanet
- AFRINIC-DISCUSS - The list of the Interim Committee and interested parties
to establish Africa's NIC, hosted by ISP UUNET/Iafrica in Johannesburg.
- IOZ - The South African Internet Service providers list hosted by ISP Citec
in Johannesburg
- EAIA - The East African Internet Service Providers Association, hosted by
UNON in Nairobi
- Linux user-group lists hosted in Nairobi, Durban and Johannesburg.
The news media are now relatively well represented on the web. As early as
1999, the US Columbia University African Studies department identified over
120 different newspapers and news magazines that were available on the Internet,
of which over 60 percent were published on the sub-continent, in about half
of the countries (23). Those most well represented in this area are again those
with more advanced Internet sectors - Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya,
Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Also of note are the efforts
to develop local content and host daily newspapers by the ISP AfricaOnline which
has offices in 8 countries.
There are two major continent-wide African traditional news agencies, both of
which extensively use electronic media - Inter Press Service (IPS) and the Pan
African News Agency (PANA). There are also a growing number of Internet-only
Africa news portals such as newafrica.com and allafrica.com As well as web search
engines specialising on Africa such as - Aardvark,
Orientation Africa - http://af.orientation.com
and Woyaa - http://www.woyaa.com . As with
other similar services elsewhere, these are run by commercial companies which
generate revenue through advertising.
Sub-regionally, Southern Africa has the only active regional news agencies using
the Internet - the Southern African Broadcasters Association (SABA) and the
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA. In other regions, use of Internet
amongst the media is much lower, but in West Africa, WANAD (West African News
Media and Development Centre) is assisting journalists and media outlets to
adopt the use of ICTs. Of course international news correspondents in Africa
are heavily dependant on the Internet to deliver material to their operations
in the US and Europe. CNN and the other international television news companies
regularly rent temporary space segments all over Africa with the local representatives
of IntelSat and PanamSat to deliver reports and live coverage. Radio journalists
(even freelancers) are now sending edited sound files by email to agencies such
as the BBC World Service.
Most major cities in Africa have various private companies providing Internet
applications training, however outside of a very few universities there are
virtually no network engineering level facilities. UNDP and Cisco recently created
a joint venture to assist in the establishment of non-profit Cisco network training
Academies in all the LDCs, many of which have been rolled out in Africa, including
in the DRC. The UNDP's SDNP programme and USAID's Leland initiative have also
trained significant numbers of network technicians. Other initiatives include:
· In Cameroun UNITAR and ORSTOM have collaborated in a joint project
focussing on technical capacity building in Sub-Saharan francophone Africa.
The first training centre and courses have been established in Cameroon (CITI-CM)
with support from the WorldBank's InfoDev fund, and additional funds from from
Orstom, ACCT and others. Funds are being sought for CITI-CI (Côte d'Ivoire),
CITI-SN (Sénégal), CITI-BF (Burkina-Faso), CITI-BE (Bénin),
CITI-ML (Mali). At CITE-CM a network engineering course is now being run regularly.
· An Internet training programme 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 under the Diderot Initiative.
· COMNET-IT, established by the Commonwealth Secretariat (ComSec) in
Malta to support ICTs in Commonwealth developing countries, also a number of
ICT support activities such as the provision of scholarships for Commonwealth
country students to obtain post graduate degrees in computer science.
· The African Virtual University4 (AVU), which is providing training
in computer and Internet applications and programming languages to its 29 university
campuses in 18 countries in Africa.
· 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 programme of the UN's UN Volunteers and other
similar NGO initiatives such as the Global Netcorps (previously NetCorps Canada)
and GeekCorps5.
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
Africa6.
Status of Broadcasting in Africa
Radio is still by far the most dominant mass medium in Africa with ownership
of radio sets being much higher than for any other electronic device. In 1997
radio ownership in Africa was estimated by UNESCO at close to 170 million with
a 4% per annum growth rate. This puts current estimates for 2002 at about over
200 million radio sets, compared with only 62 million TVs.
It should be noted however, that many people listen to the same radio or watch
television at the same time. In fact, large scale sharing of information resources
is a dominant feature of the African media landscape - readership of newspapers
is often above 10, it is estimated that there are usually 3 users per dialup
Internet account, and it is not uncommon to find most of a small village crowded
around the only TV set, often powered by a car-battery or small generator.
It is estimated that over 60 percent of the population of the sub-continent
are reached by existing radio transmitter networks while national television
coverage is largely confined to major towns. Some countries still do not have
their own national television broadcaster, even relatively well developed ones
such as Botswana has only this year launched a national TV broadcaster.
An increasing number of commercial stations are being established following
liberalisation of the sector in many countries. However the news and information
output of these commercial stations is often either a re-broadcast of the national
(state-controlled) broadcaster's news, or that of an international broadcaster
or news agency. Local news and current affairs, especially that focusing on
events outside of the capital, is rarely broadcast and community broadcasting
has generally been slow to take off in the region, although, Ghana, Mali, Niger,
South Africa and Uganda have seen notable numbers of new community radio licencees.
Satellite-based broadcasting has seen major activity on the continent in the
last few years. In 1995 South African company M-Net launched the world's first
digital direct-to-home subscriber satellite service called DSTV. Subscribers
have access to over 30 video channels and 40 audio programmes on C-band to the
whole of Africa and on lower-cost KU-band to Southern Africa, south of Lusaka.
Last year South Africa's public broadcaster, SABC, launched Channel Africa,
a new satellite-based news and entertainment channel aimed at the continent.
In 1998 north Africa started receiving Direct-to-home (DTH) TV broadcasts from
Nilesat, the continent's first locally owned geostationary satellite, capable
of broadcasting up to 72 digital TV programmes simultaneously. Operated by the
Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU), the country's national broadcaster,
Nilesat's coverage extends as far south as northern parts of Chad, Sudan, Eritrea
and Ethiopia (as well as from Morocco in the west to the Arabian Gulf in the
east).
The audience for satellite broadcasts are however largely confined to the elite
and the hospitality sector who can afford the equipment and subscription fees.
However the US-based company WorldSpace launched a digital radio broadcasting
satellite called AfriStar in late 1998 and is now broadcasting about 40 channels
using uplink hubs in South Africa, Ghana and London. Broadcasters in Europe,
the US and in Egypt, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Senegal and South Africa have
so far signed up to provide content. WorldSpace ultimately aims to make a suite
of over 80 audio channels available to anyone on the continent who can afford
the $50 for the special digital radio. A range of audio quality streams from
16Kbps for AM mono stations (good for all voice stations) to 128Kbps CD quality
music channels are available, as well as data services, including the transmission
of web pages through its Direct Media service.
Status of Telecommunication in Africa
Changes in the the telecommunication sector in Africa have perhaps been even
more marked than in broadcasting. A substantial increase in the rate of expansion
and modernisation of fixed networks is taking place along with the explosion
of mobile networks. The number of main lines grew about 9 percent a year between
1995 and 2001, however this is off a very low base - the overall fixed line
teledensity as of 2001 is still only about one per 130 inhabitants in Sub-saharan
Africa (excluding South Africa). Taking into account population growth, the
effective annual increase in lines is only 6%.
Also, most of the existing telecom infrastructure cannot reach the bulk of the
population - 50 percent of the available lines are concentrated in the capital
cities, where only about 10 percent of the population live. In over 15 countries
in Africa, including Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Uganda, over 70 percent of the
lines are still located in the largest city7.
The situation is not quite as bad as it would appear however, because of the
penetration of mobile networks, where subscribers have now surpassed fixed line
users in most countries, underlining the pent-up demand for basic voice services.
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 (about US0.20c-0.40c/minute
on average) makes it too expensive for most local calls or Internet access.
Overall, the number of fixed lines increased from 12.5 million to 21million
across Africa between 1995 and 2001. North Africa has 11.4 million of these
and South Africa another 5 million lines, leaving only 4.6 million for rest
of the continent. The sub-Sahara thus contains about 10 percent of the world's
population (626 million), but only 0.2 percent of the world's 1 billion telephone
lines. Comparing this 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 phone lines on the sub-continent is about 5 times worse than the 'average'
low income country.
It should be noted that there is a high level of variability between countries
and regions, even within the sub-Sahara. On a sub-regional level, the countries
of the Sahel and Central Africa are the worst off, such as Mali, Niger Congo
and Chad having one phone lines for every 200-500 people. North Africa and South
Africa have a teledensity of around 1 in 13, West and East African coastal countries
have densities in between - usually 1 in 50 to 1 in 100. With the exception
of North Africa and South Africa, only a few smaller countries have so far been
able to increase their teledensity above 1 in 50 - these are Botswana, Cap Verde,
Gabon, Mauritius, Mayotte, Namibia, Sao Tome, Senegal and Swaziland.
Even if telecom infrastructure is beginning to spread, domestic use has until
recently been largely confined to the small proportion of the population that
actually afford their own telephone - the cost of renting a connection averages
almost 20 percent of GDP per capita, vs. a world average of 9 percent and only
1 percent in high income countries.8 Despite these high charges relative to
income levels, the number of public telephones is still much lower than elsewhere
- in 2001 the ITU reports about 350 000 in the whole continent, 75 000 in the
SSA - or about 1 for every 8 500 people, compared to a world average of 1 to
500 and a high income average of 1 to 200.
PTOs in some countries, such as Botswana and South Africa, provide a 'virtual
phone' alternative for those unable to obtain their own phone. Subscribers are
issued with 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 message
is waiting.
However an increasing number of operators in Africa are now passing over the
responsibility for maintaining public telephones to the private sector and this
has seen a rapid growth of public 'phone shops' and 'telecentres' in many countries,
with the most well known success in Senegal which now has over 10 000 commercially
run public phone bureaus, employing over 15 000 people and generating over 30%
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 are now
also serving needs for providing Internet access and other more advanced ICT
services to the public.
The usage of international lines in Africa is relatively high compared to income
levels, reflecting the large size of the African Diaspora and the arbitrary
borders within the region. In 2000 the average for international outgoing calls
in Africa was 110 minutes per subscriber per year, compared to a world average
of 118, and 178 for high income countries. While many telecom operators are
beginning to reduce their charges for international calls (prompted by the growth
of call-back services), the high tariffs and large number of international calls,
means that despite their inefficiencies, African telecom operators enjoy substantial
profits on their lines. The world average in 2000 was $942 revenue per main
line per year, and in Africa it was $868.
The use of fibre optic cable for international traffic is still in its infancy
in Africa and most international telecom connections are carried via satellite.
Currently, 5 submarine cables provide some international fibre connectivity
to Africa. These cables are Sat-2/3 WASC, and SEA-ME-WE1/2 connect most of the
North African and West African coastal countries from South Africa to Morrocco,
to the global backbones in Europe. All remaining international bandwidth is
provided by satellite providers, primarily Intelsat, New Skies and Panamsat.
According to the ITU, the total number of 64Kbps international circuits in Africa
was close to 59 000 in 2000, 4% of the world total.
As indicated above, mobile cellular telephony has experienced very rapid growth
in Africa. Operators have expanded from a presence in only 6 countries ten years
ago to over 100 networks in 48 countries serving over 14 million customers (excluding
the 10m in South Africa). Operators provide access mainly in the capital cities
but also in some secondary towns and along major trunk routes. By far the majority
of the systems in use are now based on the digital GSM standard, although international
roaming agreements are limited or not available on the older analogue systems
that are still in use in many countries.
Nevertheless, some cellular operators are providing value added services, such
as data transmission, short message sending, WAP based Internet access and even
financial transactions. While data transmission is limited to 9.6Kb at the moment,
the new GSM data protocol, GPRS, will be widely available next year (trials
are already taking place in South Africa), which pushes data speeds to 384Kbps.
This will substantially advance the utility of the GSM network, especially when
combined with the sophisticated GSM handsets that are essentially becoming a
multi-function personal computing and communication device. These trends in
the GSM sector suggest that once competition and technical advances have forced
the price of hand sets and usage down sufficiently, the fixed line operators
may end up passing on most of their end-user customer services to the mobile
operators and concentrating on the provision of broadband national and international
connectivity.
Smart-card or 'scratch-card' and other PIN-based public and cellular phones
are becoming more widely adopted across the continent, creating a new revenue
stream in the sale of telephone air-time by small shops and telecentres. This
infrastructure can also form the basis for more advanced value added telephone-based
services, including e-commerce, as is already the case in Zambia and South Africa
were mobile phone based bill-payment systems have been launched.
Telex use continues to decline in SSA but not as quickly as elsewhere - the
number of subscribers declined by only 5 percent to 28 600 between 1990 and
1996, while the world average decline was over 15 percent, and over 20 percent
for high income countries. Fax usage is hard to estimate as not all imports
and attachments to the network are recorded, but the ITU estimates just over
100 000 fax machines in the sub-continent outside of South Africa - 0.2 percent
of the world's total.
Advanced services such as ISDN and video conferencing have generally not been
available on the continent, but recently a number of countries have added ISDN
services. These are now available in Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Kenya,
Ghana, Mauritius, Morocco, the Seychelles, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, South Africa
and Uganda. But most of these countries do not have ISPs capable of providing
ISDN connections and there were only about 40 000 ISDN subscribers across the
continent in 2000, half of which were located in South Africa.
Data communication services based on X.25 are available in half the countries
(27), most prevalently in the Francophone ones, which adopted the use of the
Minitel before the Internet became available. X.25 packet-switched based services
were in the past the most popular method of establishing wide-area data networks
in Africa, but because of their high-cost and traffic-based tariffs, they are
now mainly used by banks and other large corporations requiring secure real-time
low-volume data transactions such as credit card verification. Prices for international
traffic on the PSDNs in Africa are often $10-$15 / 64Kilobytes, although some
value added networks roll average traffic charges into an hourly rate which
usually varies between $24 and $30 per hour. SITA's charges from Africa vary
between $10 and $35 / hour or $75/Mb.
Although there is substantial grey-market use of Voice over Internet (VOIP)
services in Africa wherever international bandwidth allows, these are not officially
permitted for the end-user anywhere in the region except in Egypt where the
national telecom operator provides a PC-to-Phone service, and in Nigeria where
cybercafes are sanctioned to provide VOIP. However many telecom operators are
now using or planning to use VOIP as a transport layer on their international
and internal 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.
High costs and limited service are generally attributed to the monopoly environment
in which most of the PTOs operate, but this is slowly changing, with the first
step usually being to seek an international strategic equity partner in a partial
privatization process. Generally there have been two modes of the partial privatization
- some countries are selling 30-33 % of their shares to the partner, while some
will sell more than 51 %. Currently, the key international partners and their
ownership levels are:
- France Telecom (Cote- d'Ivoire Telecom 51%, SONATEL (Senegal) 33%, Mauritius
Telecom 40%,)
- Malaysia Telecom (Telkom SA (South Africa) 30%, Ghana Telecom 30%, SOTELGUI
(Guinea-Conakry) 60%)
- Maroc Telecom (Mauritel (Mauritania) 54%)
- Vivendi Universal (Maroc Telecom 35 %).
While most African PTOs are or are being partially privatized there are still
a few lagging behind, notably Nigeria, The Gambia, the Democratic Republic of
Congo, the Comoros Islands, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zimbabwe and Libya. In year
2000 and based on a total of 98 countries in the world, Africa represents 15%
in the distribution of privatization by region, with Europe, 35%, the Americas,
24%, the Asia Pacific, 20% and the Arab States counting for 6%. In terms of
countries with privatized operators, in year 2000, Africa has 35% with Europe
63%, the Americas, 74%, Asia Pacific, 53% and the Arab States, 29%.
Currently the availability of specialist training in telecommunications is extremely
limited on the continent. In Africa there are only two major regional centres
for training in telecommunications - ESMT in Senegal for francophone countries
and AFRALTI in Kenya for Anglophone countries. Through an ITU support programme
they are expected to be transformed into Centres of Excellence in Telecommunications
Administration (CETA). CETA is intended to provide senior-level, advanced training
and professional development in the areas of telecoms policies, regulatory matters
and the management of telecommunications networks and services.
A number of telecommunication operators maintain their own training schools
but these usually suffer from the same lack of financial resources being experienced
by the operators themselves. The German international technical training assistance
agency, Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft (CDG), has sent a large number of telecom
trainees from Africa to Germany over the last 20 years, and many other development
agencies have similar, if smaller such programmes. At a global level, an 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-financed through a fee payable by
every course participant. The Academy aims to create a cooperative network of
partners by pooling existing resources in universities, training institutes,
financing bodies, governments, regional organizations and telecommunications
operators.
ICT hardware and software
Most recent estimates for the number of PCs in Africa put the total at about
7.5 million for 2001 - an average of about 1 per 100 people, however, some studies
such as ACCT's 1995 survey indicates that this may be an over- estimate by between
3 and 6 times, making the average closer to than 1 per 500. Account should also
be taken of the number of users sharing a single computer, which is much greater
than in more developed regions.
Almost all of the PC equipment uses Intel or Intel-compatible processors except
for the publishing industry where there are significant numbers of Apple Macintosh
PCs. As a result Microsoft Windows is the dominant operating system, although
because many PCs are older machines using 386 and 486-processors and there are
still large numbers of DOS-based systems. Because of poor maintenance and insufficient
skills to diagnose system problems and swap parts, there are many out-of-commission
machines which could easily be re-activated.
Underutilisation of existing computer resources is common, often caused by the
preponderance of many standalone PCs in the same office with no use of Local
Area Networks (LANs). Often an office may have many machines, but only one with
a modem connecting to the Internet. This usually means that there is competition
for the machine and a shared email account - not conducive to effective use
of the Internet.
With the great lack of resources in the public sector in Africa, the penetration
of computers is generally much lower in government, with by far the majority
of PC equipment being used by private companies. Computers are mainly used for
accounting and word processing, although spreadsheets are used to some extent
for forecasting or as a simple database application. The limited number of database
systems often use Microsoft Access, but many national documentation centres
and archives, as well as small university and NGO libraries, use the UNESCO/IDRC
developed ISIS / microISIS package for bibliographic data. Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) and digitization facilities are beginning to be installed by some
universities, and ministry planning departments and municipalities.
Outside of South Africa there are only handfulls of mini and mainframe computers,
and most of these are confined to Ministries of Finance for government payroll,
and a few of the larger parastatals, telecom operators, banks and insurance
companies. IBM, NCR, Bull and ICL are the dominant suppliers of mini and micro-computers,
although there are also some Fujitsu machines.
Few of the international companies operate offices in Africa, but Bull, Compaq,
IBM, NCR, Oracle and Microsoft have some form of local representation in most
countries. Microsoft now has its own offices in Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Morocco
and South Africa. PC equipment is often clone equipment imported from Asia,
but Compaq, Dell, IBM and ICL also have significant shares of the market and
Dell South Africa is now selling via the Web.
General Factors
Aside from the low level of economic activity in Africa (the average GDP/capita
across the continent was only USD766 in 2000), there are a variety of other
reasons for this low level of technology penetration. Amongst the most important
of these are the systemic factors are outlined below:
1) Irregular or non-existent electricity supplies are a common feature and a
major barrier to use of the ICTs, especially outside the major towns. Many countries
have extremely limited power distribution networks which do not penetrate significantly
into rural areas, and power sharing (regular power outages for many hours) is
a common occurrence, even in some capital cities such as Accra, Dar es Salaam
and Lagos.
The road, rail and air transport networks are limited, costly and often in poor
condition, resulting in barriers to the increased movement of people and goods,
needed both to implement and support a pervasive ICT infrastructure, but also
for the increased economic and social activity which would be stimulated through
greater use of ICTs. Congested border posts and visa requirements add to these
difficulties.
2) Most tax regimes still treat computers and cell phones as luxury items, which
makes these almost exclusively imported commodities all the more expensive,
and even less obtainable by the majority. Although there have been notable efforts
in some countries to reduce duties on computers, however communications equipment
and peripherals are still often charged at higher rates.
3) Perhaps an even greater problem is that the brain drain and generally low
levels of education and literacy amongst the population has created a great
scarcity of skills and expertise (at all levels, from policy making down to
end-user). Rural areas in particular suffer with even more limited human resources.
Along with the very low pay scales in the African civil service, this is a chronic
problem for governments and NGOs who are continually losing their brightest
and most experienced to the private sector. This situation is not unique to
Africa or other developing countries, but is also being faced by the developed
world where infrastructure demands have outpaced the supply of experienced staff.
However this is simply exacerbating the situation in Africa, because experienced
technicians, even from the local private sector, are able to find much higher
paying jobs in Europe and North America.
4) Finally, the general business climate for increased investment in Africa,
acutely needed for the ICT sector, has suffered from the well known problems
of small markets divided by arbitrary borders, non-transparent and time-consuming
procedures, limited opportunities (due largely to the historic pattern of monopolies
and high levels of state control), currency instability, exchange controls and
inflation.
These systemic issues are being addressed by the African Union and their programme,
the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), supported by the international
community. This many-faceted effort is aimed at accelerating Africa's development
and could as a result help to create an environment more conducive to the rapid
adoption of ICTs.
Contact the author for further information on strategies for improving ICT access.
SEE Maps and Tables, Continent-wide connectivity indicators, African Internet Infrastructure Home Page
Related Links:
1. Africa's Information Society Initiative (AISI)
http://www.uneca.org/aisi/
2. Bridging the Gaps in Internet Development in Africa - Report (IDRC).
http://www.idrc.ca/acacia/
3. CTA Observatory on ICTs http://www.agricta.org/afagrict-l
4. Centre international pour le developpement de l'inforoute en francais (CIDIF)
http://www.cidif.org/cidifindex.php?langue=2
5. Continental Connectivity Indicators.
http://www3.sn.apc.org/africa/partial.html
6. ITU Rural Connectivity & Telecentres
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D-Rural
7. Partnership for ICTs in Africa (PICTA)
http://www.bellanet.org/partners/picta
Note:
1HDR 2001, UNDP http://www.undp.org
2Packet Geography report 2002 - Telegeography
http://www.telegeography.com/
3Host Survey http://www.nw.com/
4http://www.avu.org
5See http://www.unv.org/,
http://www.netcorps-cyberjeunes.org/, and
htt://www.geekcorps.org
6http://www.schoolnetafrica.org/
7ITU World Telecommunication Development Report 2002
http://www.itu.int/
8It should be noted 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 over $100 to install, $6 a month to rent and $0.11
per 3 minute local call. But installation charges are above $200 in some countries
(Egypt, Benin, Mauritania, Niger and Togo), line rentals range from $0.8 to
$20 a month, and call charges varied by a factor of 10 - from $0.60 an hour
to over $5 an hour.
9http://www.africanconnection.org/
10UNECA http://www.uneca.org/
11http://www.panos.org.uk/
12http://www.sn.apc.org
13See Prince of Wales IBLF Digital Partnership,
http://www.digitalpartnership.org/, Computer Aid UK http://www.computeraid.org/,
World ComputerExchange
http://www.worldcomputerexchange.org