Hype about the future growth of Africa abounds. With over one billion population, rich natural resources, a determined effort to move towards a seamless geographical contiguity without national boundaries at least in terms of trade and investment, Africa is considered to be the centre of economic activities in the 21st century. That is why International Monetary Fund (IMF) ranks the continent only second to Asia in terms of its growth prospects.
Yet there are seemingly glaring differences between Asia and Africa. Asia is already connected with internet and is poised to become a region very soon where majority of the people becomes net savvy. Major countries in the region-China and India-internet have crossed the stage of status symbol to become a vital tool for day to survival for a growing number of people across the spectrum of the society. A student or a shopkeeper in a remote village either in India or China considers internet as an enabling tool for pursing his/her daily chorus.
But the internet penetration in Africa has a different side. The penetration is very poor. Even the less than 24 age group in Africa falters, when it comes to internet. Fewer than half of the population in that demographic profile is net connected; not to speak about the age group beyond that. Yet, for some corporations that provides huge business opportunities. Facebook is one among them. Their task is clearly cut out. Statistics is revealing. Less than 13 per cent of Africans use Facebook. That is a challenge and opportunity for the world’s one of the largest tech and internet giant. Facebook realizes that Africa faces different internet obstacles as against relatively easy penetration in West and Asia. Facebook is unable to exploit the relatively better penetration of smart phones in Africa due to highly priced bandwidth, perhaps most expensive in the world. Coupled with this, is the frequent breakdowns across huge parts of Africa, because of inadequate and inefficient network backbone. The optical fibre network with last mile connectivity runs under the sea through submarine cables, which often gets disrupted by storms, fishing gears and ship’s anchors. While in developed world, there are a number of pathways that connects among countries, providing cushion for the internet access even if one pathway gets affected, Africa has only a very few under sea pathways for most of the countries with the result that disruptions in connections are very common rather than exception.
Yet another hindrance is the monopoly or duopoly of ownership and a huge state presence in the domain. The states resort to increases in tariff as a revenue generation measure. It is time that competition is inducted among the service providers, which will act as a deterrent for service providers to raise the tariff at the fall of a hat , thereby bringing down the internet charges. Can Africa take such bold measures in the near future? This is something to be seen. But everyone agrees that it is the critical need to popularize internet and facilitate digitization in the continent.
