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The following Case Study of Sub-Saharan Africa was put together following the presentation at the "2nd IHY-Africa Workshop" 11-16 November 2007, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
and the presentation at the "Internet & Grids in Africa: An Asset for African Scientists for the Benefit of African Society", 10-12 December 2007, Montpellier, France. It contains most of the information presented plus much more background information.
We first discuss the current situation including infrastructure, capacity, costs and opportunities. We then discuss the Internet performance measured by PingER comparing Africa to the rest of the world, and between sub-regions in Africa. We compare PingER measurements with other measures for capacity and throughput and for different development and corruption indices. We also look at the routing and bandwidth utilization in Africa. We then go on to show some examples of the effect of the poor African performance and suggest some possible remedies. Finally we wind up with some conclusions. Appendices are included: on detailed measurements and routing per country; and further useful reading.
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