By Cindy Shiner
In Nigeria, new subscribers are signing up with mobile phone services at a rate of almost one every second. In Kenya, they can transfer money, get exam results and even find dates using their phones. African farmers can decide what crops to plant by checking prices at local markets using their cell phones. Physicians can help nurses in rural clinics diagnose patients by “telemedicine.”
This is just a sampling of the exciting age of technological innovation that is opening up in Africa. But developing information and communication technology (ICT) is posing a huge challenge — in Nigeria, growth is so fast that networks can barely cope, and poor connectivity and congested lines are frequent problems. Across the continent, there is a huge backlog in the provision of broadband Internet.
Yet an end to the “digital divide” — the gap between the technologies available in developed and developing countries — is in sight.
New undersea cables are being laid which will vastly improve broadband Internet access between African countries and between the continent and Europe, Asia and North America. Third-generation (3G) mobile technology, which enables mobile phone owners to connect to the Internet via their mobile phones, is spreading. Monopolies which have inhibited growth are breaking down.
Says economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at New York’s Columbia University: “I actually think that we’ve turned the corner on the digital divide… a gap that seemed to be widening pretty relentlessly is now going to be narrowing in the coming years and I think narrowing quite quickly.
“We’ll find that it’s in business, it’s in emergency services, it’s in public education, it’s in primary healthcare, banking, distance learning, scientific communications, entertainment and all the rest, and this will make a very big difference.”
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) says the number of mobile phones overtook fixed telephone lines in 2001, and that the mobile phone industry in Africa is growing at twice the global rate.
Richard Bell, the chief executive officer of East Africa Capital Partners, a Nairobi-based venture capital group, believes East Africa will move within two or three years from being “one of the most backward regions in the world” for ICT to becoming “one of the most aggressive, competitive forward regions.”
The new cables being installed off the coast of East Africa are expected to make an enormous difference, both in terms of improved connectivity and more affordable prices.