Africa’s Internet access, mired by politics

It was only a few weeks ago when things were looking up, with talks being held to discuss how to get up to 80% of the continent’s people connected to the Net. But then politics got involved…

A story in South Africa’s Business Day newspaper reports that the government might block Eassy, one of the several pipeline projects, because of its “commercial nature”. As the story runs:

The 10000km Eassy cable will be 27% owned by Telkom, Neotel and MTN, and is designed to provide desperately needed cheap bandwidth to 21 African countries. But SA’s communications department has taken umbrage at what it sees as the commercial nature of the enterprise, and intends to withhold landing rights.

Instead, the government will use taxpayers’ money to roll out two rival cables heading east and west, jointly known as the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network.

Unfortunately, the government misses the point. Consumers everywhere want cheap, reliable Internet access. Until the market is opened up to competition, that won’t come. And we know all to well what relying on a state-run telco does for access costs.