Nigeria and Africa’s Internet connection challenge
Jonah Iboma
Efforts at bridging the Digital Divide seem to be yielding very little fruit in Africa. Jonah Iboma examines the problems.
Internet connection and use remain low in Africa in general, even though some progress had been made in terms of connections recorded. However, put against the rest of the world, it appears that Africa is lagging further behind. According to latest reports, while the continent has witnessed some growth, governments’ failure to open markets and subsequently, drive down costs have made it difficult for the market to grow fast.
According to a recent report by South African research group, BMI-TechKnowledge, though Broadband Internet connections in Africa are expected to more than double by 2011, this is still not significant enough compared to other places.
The report added that High-speed Internet connections in Africa — including Digital Subscriber Link, WiMax and wireless technologies such as 3G – are likely to rise to seven million by 2011 from three million now.
However, compared with almost 70million connections already in European Union countries, it appears that Africa still has a mountain to climb in brining more people to get connected. According to analysts, the gap means that broadband services will be inaccessible to all but a few rich and privileged Africans in the coming years.
Speaking on the development, BMI telecoms analyst, Richard Hurst, who co-authored the report, told Reuters that except something drastic was done, Africa might only see a widening of the digital divide in the area of Internet access.
One of the reasons that have been identified as being responsible for the development is the limited presence of infrastructure.
In Nigeria, for instance, until recently, optic fibre was present in only a few of the 36 states of the federation. Even with recent improvement in the infrastructure, the majority of users still depend on public access points such as cyber cafés.
According to Hurst, less than one per cent of Africans have access to broadband services due to a lack of international connectivity and unwieldy monopolies, compared with 22 per cent of Americans and 30 per cent of Western Europeans. More than three-quarters of Internet connections in Africa are dial-up.
North Africans are the most Internet-savvy on the continent, because governments have liberalised telecoms sectors, while Internet service providers can get access to a number of undersea cables thanks to their proximity to Europe.
But in East Africa, broadband is virtually non-existent, because there is no undersea cable linking countries to the rest of the world, forcing providers to rely on expensive and unreliable satellite connections.
Report have also blamed poor Internet access and high costs as preventing countries such as Kenya from nurturing call-centre outsourcing industries, which could provide thousands of jobs.
However for Nigeria, a new scheme that could help address the problem seemed to have been delayed with a lot of administrative challenges. The State Accelerated Broadband Initiative, a scheme unveiled by the NCC in 2006 is designed to bring broadband connection to every state capital. However, six months since the programme was mentioned by the Executive Vice-Chairman, NCC, Mr. Ernest Ndukwe, not much has been heard of it.
Even in South Africa, the continent’s economic powerhouse, state-controlled fixed-line operator, Telkom, has a stranglehold over the telecoms market, keeping DSL connections — a technology that enables broadband access through standard copper phone wires — to some 200,000, just 0.4 per cent of the population.
Hurst said there was some hope, noting that a lack of fixed-line infrastructure had forced African countries to adopt new technologies relatively quickly. South Africa already has about as many wireless broadband Internet connections — mostly via mobile operators Vodacom and as DSL subscriptions.
And of the seven million broadband connections forecast across continent by 2011, 3.3million are expected to be wireless or fixed wireless — using technologies such as WiMax.
“Africa is unique in the sense that almost half of broadband connections are wireless or fixed wireless,” said Hurst. “Key (for growth) is creating an open environment where operators of these new technologies can drive costs down.”
Commenting on solution to the problem, a Nigerian IT professional, Sunny Odum, who works for Woodgong Communications, Finland, said it seemed that broadband Internet connectivity via satellite technology alone, was the least available economic alternative for the proliferations of broadband Internet connectivity in the developing world.
Efforts at bridging the Digital Divide seem to be yielding very little fruit in Africa. Jonah Iboma examines the problems.
Internet connection and use remain low in Africa in general, even though some progress had been made in terms of connections recorded. However, put against the rest of the world, it appears that Africa is lagging further behind. According to latest reports, while the continent has witnessed some growth, governments’ failure to open markets and subsequently, drive down costs have made it difficult for the market to grow fast.
According to a recent report by South African research group, BMI-TechKnowledge, though Broadband Internet connections in Africa are expected to more than double by 2011, this is still not significant enough compared to other places.
The report added that High-speed Internet connections in Africa — including Digital Subscriber Link, WiMax and wireless technologies such as 3G – are likely to rise to seven million by 2011 from three million now.
However, compared with almost 70million connections already in European Union countries, it appears that Africa still has a mountain to climb in brining more people to get connected. According to analysts, the gap means that broadband services will be inaccessible to all but a few rich and privileged Africans in the coming years.
Speaking on the development, BMI telecoms analyst, Richard Hurst, who co-authored the report, told Reuters that except something drastic was done, Africa might only see a widening of the digital divide in the area of Internet access.
One of the reasons that have been identified as being responsible for the development is the limited presence of infrastructure.
In Nigeria, for instance, until recently, optic fibre was present in only a few of the 36 states of the federation. Even with recent improvement in the infrastructure, the majority of users still depend on public access points such as cyber cafés.
According to Hurst, less than one per cent of Africans have access to broadband services due to a lack of international connectivity and unwieldy monopolies, compared with 22 per cent of Americans and 30 per cent of Western Europeans. More than three-quarters of Internet connections in Africa are dial-up.
North Africans are the most Internet-savvy on the continent, because governments have liberalised telecoms sectors, while Internet service providers can get access to a number of undersea cables thanks to their proximity to Europe.
But in East Africa, broadband is virtually non-existent, because there is no undersea cable linking countries to the rest of the world, forcing providers to rely on expensive and unreliable satellite connections.
Report have also blamed poor Internet access and high costs as preventing countries such as Kenya from nurturing call-centre outsourcing industries, which could provide thousands of jobs.
However for Nigeria, a new scheme that could help address the problem seemed to have been delayed with a lot of administrative challenges. The State Accelerated Broadband Initiative, a scheme unveiled by the NCC in 2006 is designed to bring broadband connection to every state capital. However, six months since the programme was mentioned by the Executive Vice-Chairman, NCC, Mr. Ernest Ndukwe, not much has been heard of it.
Even in South Africa, the continent’s economic powerhouse, state-controlled fixed-line operator, Telkom, has a stranglehold over the telecoms market, keeping DSL connections — a technology that enables broadband access through standard copper phone wires — to some 200,000, just 0.4 per cent of the population.
Hurst said there was some hope, noting that a lack of fixed-line infrastructure had forced African countries to adopt new technologies relatively quickly. South Africa already has about as many wireless broadband Internet connections — mostly via mobile operators Vodacom and as DSL subscriptions.
And of the seven million broadband connections forecast across continent by 2011, 3.3million are expected to be wireless or fixed wireless — using technologies such as WiMax.
“Africa is unique in the sense that almost half of broadband connections are wireless or fixed wireless,” said Hurst. “Key (for growth) is creating an open environment where operators of these new technologies can drive costs down.”
Commenting on solution to the problem, a Nigerian IT professional, Sunny Odum, who works for Woodgong Communications, Finland, said it seemed that broadband Internet connectivity via satellite technology alone, was the least available economic alternative for the proliferations of broadband Internet connectivity in the developing world.
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