Title: East Africa gets broadband: It may make life easier and cheaper
Source: The Economist
Publisher: The Economist Newspaper Limited
Date published: 18/06/2009
Date accessed: 22/06/2009
Type of information: Article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
A new telecoms revolution in the offing

The Horn of Africa is one of the last populated bits of the planet without a proper connection to the world wide web. Instead of fibre-optic cable, which provides for cheap phone calls and YouTube-friendly surfing, its 200m or so people have had to rely on satellite links. This has kept international phone calls horribly overpriced and internet access equally extortionate and maddeningly slow.

But last week, in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, a regional communications revolution belatedly got under way when Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, plugged in the first of three fibre-optic submarine cables due to make landfall in Kenya in the next few months. They should speed up the connection of Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as bits of Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan, to the online world.