Prepared by: Pierre Dandjinou
SDNP/UNDP
sdnpaf@intnet.bj

While only four African countries achieved some sort of connection to the Internet by 1995, we note that practically all of them are now benefiting from an Internet access. The volume of Internet traffic varies from one country to the other and concerns may not be the same. However, a few common characteristics remain and need be assessed for a more genuine use and development of the net in the African continent. This paper intends to briefly analyze the growth of the Internet from diverse angles including infrastructures and access, applications , web content, and on going projects, costs and tariffs, regulatory mechanisms, role of private and public sectors and finally the nascent African Internet groups of interest.

Infrastructures and access in Africa

While Internet access is now widespread in Africa in the sense that all countries except Somalia and Erytrea are connected, the number of African Internet users is somewhere between 1.5 to 2 million out of a continental population of 750 million, and most of these (at least 1.5million) are resident in South Africa. Moreover, Internet access tends to be concentrated in capital cities where most users are employees of non-governmental organizations, universities, or private companies. Researchers note that the area of greatest use is by economic sectors involved with tourist industries and foreign investment. Government ministries are not currently making extensive use of the Internet for administrative purposes and students have limited or no access. Penetration to rural areas remains negligible.

A key characteristic of information media in Africa--whether telephone, radio, television, newspapers, or the Internet--is sharing. Thus, a relatively large number of people will use a single phone, listen to a radio, watch a TV, read a copy of a newspaper, or share an E-mail address. This accounts for the development of community access to the Internet, in the form of private cybercafes and telecenters. Countries such as South Africa, Senegal and Ghana are cases in point.

A most critical issue for Internet access is the poor infrastructure with ridiculous bandwidths in a large portion of countries. There is a move from the initial 64kbts to 128kbts and beyond. Close to a dozen countries now have bandwidths that go beyond 1 Gigabits and South Africa claims a total of 200 Gigabits. In the long run, a few on going infrastructure projects , namely submarine networks such as SAFE, SAT-3/WASC, the likely booming of the VSAT installations and the wireless possibilities may break the 'digital' isolation of the continent.

The donor Agency community has been instrumental for the development or upgrading of Internet gateways in a selected number of countries. The Usaid's Leland initiative and UNDP's Internet Initiative for Africa together targeted a total of 30 African countries to benefit from their assistance in a somewhat cost shared basis. Both projects had to deal with monopolistic P&Ts and have had to convince telecoms decision makers to invest in Internet gateways.

Internet applications and on-going projects

Internet connectivity density in Africa is low, but an even more disturbing aspect of this is that very little local or indigenous African content is being generated. Web sites which represent an excellent interactive tool for making information available globally, and thus a key to survival in the information age, are not common, even among institutional users who have direct Internet access. Government ministries and research centers in Africa, may have access to E-mail, but few have a web site. Thus where Internet is used, E-mail predominates. As was noticed by the UNESCO's 'Top50 Survey' of Africa content oriented websites in 1999, 'content on African sites is relatively poor, with the exception of public information sites. Education, sciences and community development sites have the lowest content'.

Applications such as ecommerce are still few and are far from yielding any tangible results: the role of local banks still needs to be clarified, but also, interest group need be formed and organized. E-governance applications are operational in countries such as Egypt, South Africa and Morocco, while Tunisia and South Africa are almost the only few countries that have worked toward a national regulatory framework for e-commerce. Distance education is mainly fostered by projects such as the African virtual University of the World Bank or the francophone UREF-AUPELF, while ITU, Unesco , IDRC and UNDP to some extent have joined forces to help implement community multipurpose telecenters in Mozambique, Mali, Uganda and Benin.

Major Internet related applications and projects are being implemented by international cooperation, namely the IDRC (Acacia project), ITU and Unesco (Multi purpose community Centers), UNDP (Sustainable Development Networking Programme, IIA and IT for Development), the USAID (Leland initiative, SchoolNet, EDDI…), ACCT and Francophony which has set up a special fund for sponsoring Internet related projects.

Regulatory environment

Government policies that do not foster competition among Information and Communications Technology (ICT) providers hinder the spread of access. The growth of E-commerce in Africa, for example, is held back by the reluctance of banks, particularly central banks, to issue credit cards. But except for Tunisia and South Africa to some extent, there are also few countries that have invested on the design of a regulatory framework for e-commerce.

Costs and tariffs

he Internet is making progress in Africa. It is assessed that Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are having the most advanced Internet sectors among sub-Saharan African states. Nonetheless its further development is slowed by the high cost of access for individuals and institutions, inadequate technical infrastructure, and the regulatory environment in specific countries. Dial-up calls in Africa remain expensive, especially for accessing websites

Capacity building: Nascent African Internet Groups

The impact of the Inet workshops on networking which have been on going since 1995 is more perceptible in Africa . In fact, most african internetworkers were trained at this important forums. We have assisted in a kind of decentralization of the training since 1998, with the assistance of international donor agencies such as the Francophone Agency, Aupelf Uref, Unesco and UNDP. Most of these resource persons are currently managing campus and country Lan and Wan as well as Internet gateways. But moreover, the international exposure of African professionals has generated formation of key african Internet groupings such as the African Isoc Chapters , AfriNIC, AfNOG, Afcctlds, Afisps, Afdns and the Africa Internet Group (AIG).

Two of these nascent groups, the Africa Network Operators Group (AfNOG) and AfriNIC organized an internetworking workshop and two major meetings in Cape Town, South Africa early May, 2000. While these events are likely to bring on board a large portion of Internet professionals from the southern african part, it also paved the way for the advancement of the AfriNIC project and more representation of the continent in international Internet community. Thus, African professionals are now observers to the Icann's ASO naming council, and are participating to the NCDHC, the At Large Membership Drive of Icann, and also to ISOC.

Possible solutions for a sustainable Internet of Development

Role of Internet in Africa

A useful exercise to conduct today is to assess possible role of the Internet in the African development in the near future. Thus, while it is now being recognized that the "digital divide" is broadening despite the overall pervasiveness of the Internet ,we need to envisage where high impacts can be generated. Thus, the question might be to know whether Africa, by say 2005 , will fall further behind the rest of the world with respect to Internet use or will have developed an Internet environment that will yield profound social, economic, and political change.

Role of the Public Sector

As in most developing countries, one should expect the African governments to build a conducive environment which could regulate the Internet and related activities. Thus, the governments should favor the development of a national information and communication infrastructure which recognizes and guarantees the role of each component of the society.

Role of the Private Sector

It should play its part in the development of the national information and communication infrastructure by taking part into privatization procedures and encourage local initiatives such as start-ups.

Penetration in rural areas: A universal & business issue

Telcos always have "business" reasons for not stretching out to rural areas. It then appears that only political will and commitment can urge P&Ts to build communication infrastructures in remote areas. An example of this is the 'deal' between the South African Government and the Monopolistic Telkom SA which now have boost the number of phone lines in the countries and have extented connectivity to hitherto 'forgotten' lands.

Necessity of Internet exchange points

Internet infrastructure, local content, and E-Commerce are all inter-related. There is a direction relationship between the emergence of local Internet eXchange Points (IXPs) and content with in a country. This is exemplified by what is happening in places such as Japan, Korean, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, where healthy IXPs are behind the connections. Thus, the ability of keeping local traffic local tends to be a key of success of Internet spreading. But are african countries in such situations? Though everyone agrees that using the or Europe as the place to exchange traffic for a country is the wrong thing to do, many ISPs are still going through these routes. As barry Ravenburg from Cisco points it, African PTTs also like loosing money, preferring not to sell local circuits of interconnection and/or blocking attempt by ISPs to build an IXP, instead of collaborating with international carriers and build interconnections.

Professional training and computer literacy

Professional training is still to be generalized, namely within Isp communities, not just technical but also business oriented. For Telecoms, through the building of Enterprise Networks they should be in a better position to understand the business of internetworking. It is noticeable that Telecoms would not invest in Internet if they fail to understand the value added it can bring to their business. Developing telecoms Intranets as a way of fostering communications and more efficiency within telecoms company can be one way of making telecoms more open to innovations. Once telecoms are on board, they will be in a position to build applications and services for the business and the users at large.

The driver in revenue generation on the Net is not Business to Consumer relationships but rather , it is Business to Business relationships . Yet, for B to B relationship to evolve, you need a LAN. To have a LAN, you need people who know how to build it, maintain it, and effectively build applications/services for the business to gain tangible benefits from this network. That means professional training.

Finally, there is a need for raising computer literacy in most countries if the continent should profit from the Internet. As young people are most apt to understand and use Internet technology, they should be the primer target people.

Conclusions

A steady development of Internet infrastructure in Africa, funded externally and internally, is likely to continue, with the convergence of technologies. The continuation of Internet connectivity, especially into rural areas, will certainly depend on continued external support and continued favorable attitudes on the part of African governments and the telecoms.

A few questions come to mind when reflecting on the spread of the Internet on the African continent : these are :

a) how can the Internet be used to meet the information needs of communities?
b) what tools and techniques are being used to carry out information needs assessment for different socio-economic groups?
c) how far are developers of web sites producing content that is culturally diverse i.e. taking into account language, socio-cultural circumstances, historical background?
d) are there any watertight methodologies that are Africa specific in place for use in the production and evaluation of web content?
e) are there any noticeable impact of the Internet on the information environment in Africa;
f) what is being done to increase intellectual ownership of information and knowledge generated by Africans?

Access to new technologies and the content of the information is pivotal in the positive transformation of every socio-economic activity in Africa. An exploration of the use of African languages would help to increase cultural diversity on the web.

All in all, Africa is getting connected through wireless and satellite technologies and the continent is gaining access to services undreamed of only a decade ago. Fibre optic links, data transmission and high-end applications reliant on greater bandwidth are coming ever closer; in some parts of the continent, they have already arrived. The message is clear: communications development brings economic development. This has spurred regulatory liberalization and already the fruits of increased market growth and diversity are being realized. As telecommunications improves, so do opportunities for computer networking. Already, private and public initiatives across the continent are connecting the business community. Broadcasting is booming. New satellite services have spread television throughout the continent. Improved rebroadcast and reception technologies are creating new markets for programme makers and sellers.

Satellite and mobile phones are making traditional telephone lines superfluous. New institutional arrangements are being developed to make telephone supply services more sustainable in remoter parts of developing countries. The use of the Internet, which depends on the availability of telephone connections, will increasingly impact on domestic and global markets. Will Africa as a whole be in a position to take advantage of these opportunities? African Telecoms should understand this and play their part of the game.