The environment for networked readiness has improved relatively rapidly in most urban areas in Africa. Five years ago, only a handful of countries had local Internet access or mobile telephones; now, devices and access are available in virtually every major city. Hundreds of new radio stations and newspapers have been licensed over the last few years and digital satellite television has also become widely available. The “digital divide” however, is still at its most extreme in Africa. In absolute terms, networked readiness is still at a very early stage of development compared to other regions of the world. Of the approximately 816 million people in Africa in 2001, it is estimated1 that only: one in four have a radio (200 million); one in 13 have a television (62 million); one in 35 have a mobile telephone (24 million); one in 39 have a fixed line (21 million); one in 130 have a personal computer (PC) (5.9 million); one in 160 use the Internet (5 million); one in 400 have pay-television (2 million). These figures do not take into consideration the widespread sharing of media that takes place in Africa (often ten people may read the same newspaper or share an Internet account, and a whole village may use a single telephone line or crowd around a television set at night); nevertheless, it appears that sub-Saharan Africa may be slipping behind when compared to south Asia, the other least developed region. As Table 1 shows, the two regions are at the bottom of the list in Internet usage surveys around the world, but south Asia has caught up considerably since 1998.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 17:39:00 +0000
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