AFP:
November 15, 2005
JOHANNESBURG — A giant underwater cable network connecting Africa to Europe and Asia provides Internet access to the planet’s poorest continent but only a handful of countries seem to be enjoying its benefits.
The 28,000-kilometer (17,500-mile) optical fiber cable, named SAT-3/WASC/SAFE, brings the Internet to Africa but seems to be giving an unfair advantage to coastal countries.
Its first segment, in the Atlantic Ocean, leaves Portugal and goes down to the Cape in South Africa. In the process it reaches eight coastal countries: Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon and Angola.
A second segment, in the Indian Ocean, connects South Africa to Malaysia while passing through Mauritius and India.
A joint project funded by 36 countries in Africa and spearheaded by South African telecommunications utility Telkom, SAT-3/WASC/SAFE cost more than $600 million (€510 million) and will be owned and operated by telecoms utilities in these countries for the next 25 years.
During its inauguration in May 2002 Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade optimistically saluted it as an “integrating project between African countries” where access to the Internet generally remains rare, slow and expensive.
But three-and-a-half years later that so-called “integration” is happening at a snail’s pace.
I wrote about being geographically well-placed in my undergraduate thesis:
• Senegal has excellent (second fastest on the continent behind South Africa) international bandwidth (310 Mbps). This function of responsible government action and geographic dumb luck — Senegal happens to be geographically well placed to connect to Atlantis-II, a major Internet backbone cable that runs through the Atlantic Ocean.
Bandwidth is a major limiting factor for Internet access — improved access requires better, faster and cheaper bandwidth. It is analogous to a road: the faster goods can travel on the road, the quicker they can arrive at their destination and the quicker the goods can be bought and sold. The quicker that information can be disseminated, people can make more informed decisions about the world in which they live. The Senegalese government has shown, through their constant willingness to upgrade the international bandwidth (the speed at which information can come into Senegal from the outside) via the government telecommunications monopoly Sonatel over the years, even before such large speeds are absolutely necessary shows prescience on their part and their willingness to invest in a technology that may not fully pay off for years down the line. Since Sonatel has been privatized, it has increased the bandwidth much further, to 310 Mbps.
