The global Internet continues to grow at an exponential rate, bringing with it new ways of transacting, communicating, learning, socializing, and transforming just about every aspect of daily life. But the benefits of the Internet are not yet evenly distributed. In Africa, despite a slow start, Internet use is now rapidly accelerating, and its transformative effects are increasingly accessible.
The Internet in Africa is growing fast. Internet penetration levels are about 20% and rising. Mobile subscriptions are just shy of 70%, and mobile broadband access accounts for more than 90% of Internet subscriptions. But the aggregate indicators mask glaring disparities. At the high end of the spectrum, countries such as Morocco enjoy penetration rates above 50%, but at the other end are countries with penetration rates below 2%, and the majority of countries have Internet penetration of less than 10% (well below the 20% threshold that has been found to be critical for countries to reap the economic benefits of broadband investment).
Nevertheless, recent years have seen the accumulated efforts of dedicated technologists, businesses, policy makers, civil society, and individuals bear fruit, pointing to improved outcomes and laying the ground for the social and economic benefits that the Internet can bring.
In the past five years, submarine cables have brought a twenty-fold increase in international bandwidth. In the same period, the terrestrial infrastructure also doubled. These developments have brought dramatic improvements in many areas. But to make the most of this capacity, more investment is needed in national backbones and cross-border connectivity.
Considerable work is now underway to improve the conditions that currently mean users in Africa pay up to 30 or 40 times more for Internet access than their peers in developed countries. One example is the establishment of Internet exchange points (IXPs) at the local level. Africa now has more than 30 IXPs and is well on the way to achieving the goal of at least one IXP per country. Efforts to establish at least one regional IXP in each of the five geographic regions are also well underway. IXPs can catalyse the build-out of terrestrial infrastructure, which in turn makes access to the Internet cheaper and faster.
Migrating from analogue to digital broadcasting offers more opportunities to increase Internet access by freeing up unused spectrum. However, this opportunity is not yet being grasped – by June 2014, only 19 countries had started their digital transition and by December 2014 only three (Tanzania, Rwanda, Mauritius) had switched off their analogue signals.
Another transition that Africa is not implementing fast enough is that to the new Internet addressing protocol, IPv6. IPv6 is necessary for long term Internet expansion, especially as the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a reality. To date, South Africa and Egypt registered 97% of the African IPv6 addresses, which means adoption in all the other countries is lagging.
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Source : Internet Society