Techno impaired

Africa has a population of approximately 800 million but has been historically
limited by poverty, under-development and internal conflict.
STEPHAN MATTHEE investigates whether current shortcomings in
communications networks are limiting the media’s development.

Hundreds of years of slavery, colonisation and political and economic subjugation have left Africa poor and wracked with a litany of woes. With the “third wave of democratisation,” as Samuel P. Huntington called the period in which former African colonies democratised after 1974, it appeared as if Africa had finally escaped the ravages Western imperialism had wrought.

In these fledgling democracies, the media were presented with a new role. “Holding government and other powerful institutions to account is crucial,” says Dr Paddy Coulter of Oxford University’s Reuters Foundation. The late twentieth century saw the African media expanding and taking on the role of watchdog.
Simultaneously, the 1980s and 1990s heralded astounding progress in the field of digital media across the world. Africa and much of the developing world was “unsurprisingly tardy” in adapting to the new media, according to economist and political scientist Paul Collier. “Because of the colonial heritage, Africa’s relatively small states each have poor communications networks,” he maintains. With the vital role of informing the populace and keeping the new leaders liable, it may be problematic if these networks can’t keep pace with global developments.

The United Nations estimates of Africa’s population indicates that a seventh of the world’s population inhabit the continent. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) show that it accounts for only 3% of global internet usage in 2007. With global internet usage having risen approximately 290% since 2000, according to Netcraft data collection, Africa is punching far below its weight class in the cyber world. The digital divide looms deeper over time, but with the world media racing ahead, “Africa can ill afford to be left behind,” says Coulter.

What then is the problem? In simple terms, money. Africa’s telephone networks are old and largely outdated, and the costs passed on to consumers relatively high. Recent measures to improve the continent’s networks include new undersea fibre-optic cables along Africa’s East Coast and the opening of telecom markets, such as the granting of a new licence to Neotel in South Africa. As an alternative to the monopoly posed by Telkom, Neotel launched in 2006, but has yet to establish a meaningful footprint in the South African market. South African telephone and ICT costs are acknowledged as some of the highest in the world, and competition could lower costs and increase access to fixed-line telecoms. Fixed-line ADSL is increasingly the standard, and is vital to access many of Web 2.0’s more complex features, according to the ITU.

Though South Africa and several of its SADC partners may be ahead of the pack as there are more than 5 million internet users in SA’s population of 47 million, as OMD South Africa reports, it is leagues behind the former colonial powers, for example. The ITU reports that France, Germany and the United Kingdom each has upwards of 30 million internet users, more than triple the total number of users in the SADC.

Africa is making do without the terrestrial technology in parts, though. Cellular phone networks and satellite technology are already “leapfrogging” infrastructure shortcomings. Africa is the fastest growing cellular telephone market in the world. In South Africa, there are almost 40 million cellphone users according to OMD, compared to a mere 5 million landlines. Wireless internet is a possible solution, but even then it is only viable in urban centres and contingent on wireless servers. Cellular telephone-based networks are also a possibility — South Africa has some of the cheapest cellphone-based internet in the world, according to South Africa Online. Fixed-line internet is still fast, information -dense and efficient. Whether this will be enough incentive for the necessary capital investment is yet unclear.

South African telecommunications policy has historically meandered between the ideals of the Reconstruction and Deve­lopment Programme’s proposed national economic growth and impartial development within the internet, communication and technology (ICT) sector according to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA). The economic liberalisation of the post-1994 period came into conflict with the fact that a de facto telecom monopoly squashed competition and therefore lowered costs and improved services.

“South Africa needs deregulation of telecommunications,” says Naspers CEO Koos Bekker.
Instead, South Africa is a microcosm of sub-Saharan Africa’s digital divide from the developed world. While sub-Saharan Africa remains economically and developmentally inferior, information should be equal to us all. Policies throughout Africa need to be reassessed for the universal aim of improved networks, and therefore media, to be realised.

Instead, petty infighting between states seems to be the order of the day. The Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) is an initiative to connect countries of Eastern Africa using an ultra-high-bandwidth fibre-optic cable system to the rest of the world’s high-speed fibre-optic networks.

The project is a “milestone in the development of information infrastructure,” according to the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa. EASSy was planned to run from Mtunzini in South Africa to Port Sudan in Sudan, with landing points in six countries, and connected to other landlocked countries, none of which would then have to rely on expensive satellite systems. The system began construction in March 2008, and is due to be completed towards the end of 2009.

The only problem, as the BBC reported, is that Kenya has withdrawn from the initiative before the project even began. President Mbeki opted to rename the project the NEPAD-friendly moniker of the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network (NBIN).

The Kenyans have jumped ship to a cable system partnered with China in order to keep political bragging rights divorced from the multilateral NBIN.

Coulter says that competitiveness and one-upmanship have historically been a stumbling block for post-colonial Africa, where the prestige of infrastructure projects often overshadow their practicality or lack thereof.

Africa is already playing catch-up from a position of considerable disadvantage. Perhaps the smartest approach would be cooperation to aid one another in upgrading and going digital.

NBIN will be “a broadband network that links 54 African countries and will provide abundant bandwidth, easier connectivity and reduced costs,” says the NEPAD eAfrica Comission.

Africa’s media users hope so.