Telecommunications development in Africa: Filling the gap
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Date
2004-02
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Telematics and Informatics
Abstract
There is a huge gap in the development of IT and telecommunications infra-structures in Africa compared to the rest of the world. While most industrialisedcountries have achieved more or less universal service, most African countries sufferfrom a severe under-supply of telephone lines. In 2001 the penetration of phone linesin Africa was at meagre 2.6 lines per 100 inhabitants. This is, indeed, a substantialimprovement compared to the 1.7 lines per 100 inhabitants in 1994, but still muchlower than in any other region of the world. Almost 80% of the lines are concentratedin Africa north of Sahara and in South Africa, and the penetration in Sub-SaharanAfrica is as low as 0.75 lines per 100 inhabitants (up from 0.47 in 1994). In most of these countries, the overwhelming majority of the lines are located in the capital, andmost rural areas are still without any provision of telecom facilities at all.Part of the explanation is that low levels of income imply that the demand fortelephones is too low to make extensions of the grid beyond the major cities viable.But this is only part of the explanation. The low income countries of the whole worldhave as a group a penetration four times higher than that of Sub-Saharan Africa andout of the 18 countries with less than one phone line per 200 inhabitants, only two(Bangladesh and Cambodia) are located outside Africa