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Internet coverage and performance in the Sub Sahara region of Africa (see Figure 1, for the UN definition of the Sub-Sahara) is exceedingly poor. This is illustrated by the number of Internet connections per city worldwide seen in Figure 2 where it is seen that Africa stands out as almost lacking of any (i.e. it is dark). Figure 3 illustrates how Africa has very little submarine cable connectivity (white lines) compared to the rest of the world.
Figure 1: UN Definition of Sub-Sahara | Figure 2: World Internet Connection Density | Figure 3: Submarine Cables 2007, from telegeography.com |
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Another way of looking at the poor situation in Africa is to look at Figure 4 showing a catrogram from http://www.worldmapper.org/
illustrating the lack of Internet users in Africa compared to the rest of the world.
Figure 4: Cartogram (equal area for equal Internet users) for 2002 from Worldmapper.com |
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There are many reasons for this poor connectivity including: electricity (see Figure 5 for the light at night for the world and compare Africa with the rest of the world), import duties, skills (see Figure 6 for a cartogram (where territories are re-sized according to the subject of interest - all cartograms shown here are from http://www.worldmapper.org/) of tertiary education spending growth), disease (Figure 7), protectionist policies, corruption (see Figure 78), conflict (see Figure 89).
Figure 5: World light at night | Figure 6: | Figure 7: HIV Prevalence | Figure 8: Corruption Perception Index | Figure 9: |
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Another way of looking at the poor situation in Africa is to look at Figure 4, a cartogram illustrating the lack of Internet users in Africa compared to the rest of the world.
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Figure 4: |
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Costs
One result and immediate cause of this is the cost of this are costs of Internet connections in Africa.
Opportunities
Africa has close to 1 billion people or about 14% of the world's population. However, the Internet penetration shown in the table below is only about 3.6% so it is a huge potential market. However, this will introduce challenges of new business models (e.g. micro-payments, content ion many new local languages etc.).
Interesting Trends:
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