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In 2006 Africa had reached close to 1 billion people or about 14% of the world's population. Its The Internet usage is also growing faster than the rest of the world. However, the Internet penetration shown in the table below is only about 3.6% so it is a huge potential market.
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At the same time there are promises of considerably increased fibre connectivity to sub-Saharan Africa, see figure 1515a. In fact, four major undersea cable projects are currently engaged in a race to be the first to lay a fibre-optic link connecting the eastern seaboard of Africa to the rest of the world, with the most vicious competition centering on the connections to Europe, which is the destination for 85 per cent of international bandwidth traffic in Africa. The four projects are the East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy), Seacom, TEAMS and Reliance of India. The goal is to have these cables in place in time for the Soccer World Cup in South Africa in 2010.
Figure 1515a: | Figure 15b: Median Population age |
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GEANT has connections to EuMed in particular Marocco, Algeria, Tunisa and Egypt, see http://www.dante.net/upload/pdf/EUMED-poster.pdf . They are now working on connecting to Ubuntunet East and Ubuntunet South.
Also the UN, governments such as China, the UK, Europe, the US and companies such as AMD, Intel,Microsoft, Cisco, Nokia and Ericsson are recognizing the opportunities and needs and investing. This will introduce challenges of new development models such as more inclusive business models; bottom-up approach; working in new regulatory, policy and poor infrastructural availability environments; working with governments and others to ensure fibres are installed with any major relevant projects (railways, roads, electricity pylons etc.); micro-payments; content in many new local languages; use of wireless for last mile connections; Internet kiosks and cafes, etc.
Finally, Africa has a very young population:
Despite the general trend toward population ageing, countries that still have relatively high fertility will have a younger population than the rest by 2050. Mostly least developed countries are in this group. In 2050, the youngest populations will be found in 11 least developed countries whose median ages are projected to be at or below 23 years. These countries include Angola, Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Niger and Uganda. Today, the median age in Mali, Niger and Uganda is16 years or less, making their populations the youngest in the planet.
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From "World Population Prospects, The 2004 Revision" UN available at: \[http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WPP2004/2004Highlights_finalrevised.pdf\| [http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WPP2004/2004Highlights_finalrevised.pdf |
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This is illustrated in the map in figure 15b where the data is from the UN "World Population Prospects, The 2004 Revision".
PingER and Internet Performance in Africa Africa
The PingER project is arguably the most extensive active end-to-end Internet performance measurement project today. Its data goes back over a decade and more recently has focused on measuring the Digital Divide. It covers measurements from over 16 countries to over 150 countries (see Figure 16) containing over 99% of the world's Internet connected population. 45 of the countries are in Africa.
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