>
> African Internet Status
>
> Sept 2000
>
> Mike Jensen - [log in to unmask]
>
> The Internet has grown rapidly on the continent over the last few
> years. At the end of 1996 only 11 countries had Internet access,
> but by September this year all 54 countries and territories had
> achieved permanent connectivity. Liberia, however, currently has no
> local Internet services (Liberia was connected last year, but lost
> its link when the ISP failed to achieve commercial viability).
>
> Despite the rapid growth of Internet access in Africa it has been
> largely confined to the capital cities, although a growing number
> of countries do have points of presence (POPs) in some of the
> secondary towns (currently 16 countries - Algeria, Angola,
> Botswana, DRC, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco,
> Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia and
> Zimbabwe), and South Africa has POPs in about 100 cities and towns.
> However, in some countries the national telecom operators have made
> a special policy to provide local call Internet access across the
> whole country. ... so far only 15 of the 53 countries have adopted
> this strategy - Benin, Burkina Faso, Cap Vert, Ethiopia, Gabon,
> Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Tchad, Togo,
> Tunisia, and Zimbabwe.
>
> The total number of computers permanently connected to the Internet
> in Africa (excluding South Africa) finally broke the 10 000 mark at
> the beginning of 1999 and in Jan 2000 it stood at almost 12 000, an
> increase of 20% as measured by Network Wizards. The figure may
> actually be closer to 25 000 to 30 000 due to the measurement
> technique which cannot count hosts which are not referenced in
> domain name servers and those that are registered under the generic
> TLDs - .com, .net, .org. Nevertheless this still means Africa has
> about as many hosts on the Internet as a small Eastern European
> country such as Latvia, which only has a population of 2.5 million
> (compared to the 780m people in Africa's as estimated by Unicef
> 1998, about 13% of the total world population).
>
> The recent opening up of the Nigerian Internet market is beginning
> to change this picture as the telecom regulator has licensed 38
> ISPs to sell services and about 12 are currently active. With a
> fifth of Sub Sahara's population, Nigeria has been one of the
> slumbering giants of the African Internet world which until mid '98
> only had a few dialup email providers and a couple of full ISPs
> operating on very low bandwidth links - few were able to afford the
> $130 000 a year for an international 9.6Kbps leased line. Nitel has
> now established a POP in Lagos with a 2MB link to Global One in the
> US and has put POPs in 4 other cities..
>
> It is difficult to measure actual numbers of Internet users, but
> figures for the number of dialup subscriber accounts to ISPs are
> more readily available, for which it is estimated that there are
> now over 1 000 000 subscribers in Africa. Of these, North Africa is
> responsible for about 200 000 and South Africa for 650 000, leaving
> about 150 000 for the remaining 50 African countries. But each
> computer with an Internet or email connection supports an average
> of three users, a recent study by the UN Economic Commission for
> Africa (ECA) has found. This puts current estimates of the number
> of African Internet users at somewhere around 3 million in total,
> with about 1 million outside of South Africa. This works out at
> about one Internet user for every 250 people, compared to a world
> average of about one user for every 35 people, and a North American
> and European average of about one in every 3 people. ...
>
> There are now about 28 countries with 1000 or more dialup
> subscribers, but only about 11 countries with 5000 or more - Cote
> d'Ivoire, Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, South
> Africa, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Clearly a number of countries
> such as those in North Africa and Southern Africa have more highly
> developed economies and better infrastructures which would
> naturally result in larger populations of Internet users. ...
>
> Currently, the average total cost of using a local dialup Internet
> account for 5 hours a month in Africa is about $50/month (usage
> fees, telephone time included, but not telephone line rental).
> Nevertheless ISP charges vary greatly - between $10 and $100 a
> month, largely reflecting the different levels of maturity of the
> markets, the varying tariff policies of the telecom operators, and
> the different national policies on private wireless data services
> and on access to international telecommunications bandwidth.
> According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
> Development, in '97, 20 hours of Internet access in the U.S. cost
> $29, including telephone charges. Although European costs were
> higher ($74 in Germany, $52 in France, $65 in Britain, and $53 in
> Italy) these figures are for 4 times the amount of access, and all
> of these countries have per capita incomes which are at least 10
> times greater than the African average.
>
> Most African capitals now have more than one ISP and in early 2000
> there were about 450 public ISPs across the region (excluding SA,
> where the market has consolidated into 2 major players with 90% of
> the market and 40-50 small players with the remainder). Seven
> countries had 10 or more ISPs - Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria,
> South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe - while 20 countries had only
> one ISP. Although Ethiopia and Mauritius are the only countries
> where a monopoly ISP is national policy (i.e. where private
> companies are barred from reselling Internet services), there are
> other countries in which this practice still continues,
> predominantly in the Sahel sub-region where markets are small.
>
> In response to the high cost of full Internet based services and
> the slow speed of the web, and also because of the overriding
> importance of electronic mail, lower-cost email-only services have
> been launched by many ISPs and are continuing to attract
> subscribers. Similarly, because of the relatively high cost of
> local electronic mailbox services from African ISPs, a large
> proportion of African email users make use of the free Web-based
> services such as Hotmail, Yahoo or Excite, most of which are in the
> US. These services can be more costly and cumbersome than using
> standard email software, because extra online time is needed to
> maintain the connection to the remote site. But they do provide the
> added advantages of anonymity and perhaps greater perceived
> stability than a local ISP who may not be in business next year.
>
> There is also a rapidly growing interest in kiosks, cybercafes and
> other forms of public Internet access, such as adding PCs to
> community phone-shops, schools, police stations and clinics which
> can share the cost of equipment and access amongst a larger number
> of users. Many existing 'phone shops' are now adding Internet
> access to their services, even in remote towns where it is a
> long-distance call to the nearest dialup access point. In addition
> a growing number of hotels and business centres provide a PC with
> Internet access.
>
> The rapidity with which most African public telecom operators have
> moved into the Internet services market is also noteworthy. In the
> last three years PTOs have brought Internet services on stream in
> 31 countries and similar moves are afoot in three others (Liberia,
> Somalia and Tanzania). ...
>
> In all the countries where the PTO has established the
> international Internet backbone, it is the sole International link
> provider except in Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Mozambique, South Africa
> and Zambia where they compete with private sector international
> links. Usually the PTOs operate the international gateway and
> access to the national backbone, and leave the resale of end-user
> Internet access to the private sector. In a few countries the PTO
> also competes with the private sector in the provision of end-user
> dialup accounts, namely, Cameroun, South Africa and Zambia.
>
> As far as the multinational ISPs are concerned, AfricaOnline
> (http://www.africaonline.com), is the largest operation. The group
> is consolidating its year of growth which saw local branches open
> in Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, adding to its
> stable in Ghana, Kenya, and Cote d'Ivoire. AfricaOnline has plans
> to open up in additional countries over the coming months. ...
>
> Due to high international tariffs and lack of circuit capacity,
> obtaining sufficient international bandwidth for delivering web
> pages over the Internet is still a major problem in most countries.
> Until recently few of the countries outside of South Africa had
> international Internet links larger than 64Kbps, but today 24
> countries have 512Kps or more, and 15 countries have outgoing links
> of 1Mbps or more - Botswana, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Libya,
> Madagascar, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria,
> Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Tunisia. Excluding South
> Africa, the total international outgoing Internet bandwidth
> installed in Africa is about 60Mbps. However this means that on
> average about 6 dialup users must share each 1Kbps of international
> bandwidth, making for slow connections to remote sites.
>
> As a result, a growing number of African Internet sites are hosted
> on servers that are in Europe or the U.S. This is especially
> necessary for countries where ISPs operate their own independent
> international links without local interconnections (peering), such
> as in Kenya and Tanzania, which means that traffic between the
> subscribers of two ISPs in the same city must travel to the US or
> Europe and back. This makes it more efficient to host
> outside-country, and is also being encouraged because web hosting
> costs can be very high, while there are even a number of free
> hosting sites in the US and Europe. ...
>
> With the exception of some ISPs in Southern Africa, almost all of
> the international Internet circuits in Africa connect to the USA,
> with a few to the United Kingdom, Italy and France. However,
> Internet Service Providers in countries with borders shared with
> South Africa benefit from the low tariff policies instituted by the
> South African telecom operator for international links to
> neighbouring countries. As a result South Africa acts as a hub for
> some of its neighbouring countries - Lesotho, Namibia, and
> Swaziland.
>
> The major international Internet suppliers are AT&T, BT, Global
> One/Sprint, UUNET/AlterNet, MCI, NSN, BBN, Teleglobe, Verio and
> France Telecom/FCR. A number of other links are provided by
> PanamSat and Intelsat direct to private and PTO groundstations in
> the US and UK, circumventing local PTO infrastructure.
>
> Aside from the South Africa/Lesotho/Swaziland network and a link
> between Mauritius and Madagascar, there are no other regional
> backbones or links between neighbouring countries. The main reason
> for this is that the high international tariffs charged by telecom
> operators discourages Internet Service Providers from establishing
> multiple international links. As a result ISPs are forced to
> consolidate all of their traffic over a single high cost
> international circuit.
>
> Roaming dialup Internet access is now a reality for travellers to
> most African countries courtesy of SITA, the airline co-operative,
> which has by far the largest network in Africa. SITA's commercial
> division, SCITOR (recently renamed Equant), which was formed to
> service the non-airline market, now operates dialup points of
> presence in 40 African countries. Subscribers to Internet service
> providers who are members of IPASS (a group of ISPs, including
> SITA, who share their POPs) can access their home ISPs for about
> $0.22c a minute. See http://www.ipass.com. ...
>
> The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has now taken
> over administration of Internet IP Address space for Africa (along
> with North America, South America, and the Caribbean). This means
> that address space is no longer free and until a local African
> Registry can be set up, networks will now be required to pay ARIN
> USD$2500 per year to obtain a Class-C address. A proposal for an
> Africa Network Information Centre (NIC) has been discussed for some
> years only now is progress being made, partly because of the lack
> of on-the-ground national networking associations to support it and
> the political difficulties of identifying the appropriate host
> country and organisation to operate it. ...
>
> Evidence gathered by ECA suggests the average level of Internet use
> in Africa is about one incoming and one outgoing email per day,
> averaging 3 to 4 pages, in communications which are most often with
> people outside the continent. Surveys indicated that about 25
> percent of the email is replacing faxes, while 10 percent are
> replacing phone calls and the other 65 percent are communications
> that would not have been made in the absence of an email system.
>
> The highest number of users surveyed belonged to non-government
> organizations (NGOs), private companies and universities. The ratio
> of nationals to non-nationals varied between countries: 44 percent
> of users surveyed in Zambia were nationals as compared to 90
> percent in Ghana. Most users were male: 86 percent in Ethiopia, 83
> percent in Senegal, and 64 percent in Zambia. The large majority of
> users were well educated: 87 percent of users in Zambia and 98
> percent in Ethiopia had a university degree. ...
>
> Email is used for general correspondence and document exchange,
> technical advice, managing projects, arranging meetings, and
> exchanging research ideas, although its use is still limited for
> accessing formal information resources. Across the continent, users
> report that email has increased efficiency and reduced the cost of
> communication but as yet it is used almost exclusively for
> contacting individuals in other regions. The Web is still a
> relatively under-utilised resource, although 40 percent of Zambian
> users questioned had conducted literature searches on the web.
>
> Universities were initially at the vanguard of Internet
> developments in Africa and most of them provide email services,
> however in early 1999 only about 20 countries had universities with
> full Internet connectivity. Because of the limited resources and
> high costs of providing computer facilities and bandwidth, full
> Internet access at the universities where it exists is usually
> restricted to staff. Post graduates are often able to obtain access
> but the general student population usually has no access.
>
> In the area of Internet content development, the African web-space
> is expanding rapidly and almost all countries have some form of
> local or internationally hosted web server, unofficially or
> officially representing the country with varying degrees of
> comprehensiveness. However, there are still generally few
> institutions that are using the Web to deliver significant
> quantities of information. While increasing numbers of
> organisations have a Web site with basic descriptive and contact
> information, many are hosted by international development agency
> sites, and very few actually use the Web for their activities. This
> is partly explained by the limited number of local people that have
> access to the Internet (and thus the limited importance of a web
> presence to the institution), the limited skills available for
> digitising and coding pages, and also by the high costs of local
> web hosting services.
>
> It can be observed that the French speaking countries have a far
> higher profile on the Web and greater institutional connectivity
> than the non-French speaking countries. This is largely due to the
> strong assistance provided by the various Francophone support
> agencies, and the Canadian and French governments, which are
> concerned about the dominance of English on the Internet. ...
>
> Although there are a few notable official general government web
> sites, such as those of Angola, Egypt, Gabon, Mauritius, Morocco,
> Mozambique, Senegal, Togo, Tunisia and Zambia, there is as yet no
> discernible government use of the Internet for existing
> administrative purposes. ...
>
> ************************************************************
> This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
> Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC provides accessible
> information and analysis in order to promote U.S.  and
> international policies toward Africa that advance economic,
> political and social justice and the full spectrum of human rights.
>
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> http://www.africapolicy.org
>
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