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Mobile Phones Soar in Internet-Starved Africa
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| Source: | IPS News |
| Date added: | 2008-07-31 |
| Theme: | Access | Infrastructure |
The beleaguered African continent continues to lag far behind the rest of the world in battling poverty, hunger and HIV/AIDS, but it is making dramatic progress in the field of information and communications technologies (ICTs).
The technological advances, however, are limited primarily to mobile phones.
"The African mobile (telephone) market has been the fastest-growing
market of all regions, growing at twice the rate of the global market,"
says a new U.N. report released here.
The number of subscribers leaped from 16 million in 2000 to a
staggering 250 million last year, according to the latest available
figures.
Mobile now outnumbers fixed (phone) lines by nearly five to
one in Africa, although it may not be evenly spread across the large
continent.
The study, which will go before the upcoming month-long
meeting of the U.N.'s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), beginning
Jun. 30, points out that investment in ICTs infrastructure in Africa
has also "improved dramatically", totaling 8.0 billion dollars in 2005:
up from 3.5 billion dollars in 2000.
"These figures reflect an increasingly vibrant private sector
investment environment which has been stimulated by the opening of most
African telecommunications markets, coupled with the establishment of
independent regulators in almost 90 percent of the countries in the
region," the report notes.
Still, according to the Geneva-based International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), fewer than four out of every 100
Africans have internet access while broadband penetration is below one
percent.
As a result, Africa's 900 million inhabitants -- nearly 14
percent of the world's population -- have access to less than a fifth
of one percent of the world's international connectivity.
Read the full article here.