Thursday, July 23, 2009

East Africa gets bandwidth

Long-time RTBH readers may recall post 311 from August last year, which referred to the new undersea cable gradually being laid along the East African coastline. It's all part of a grand plan to get Africa connected to high-speed internet services, with all that means in terms of tapping into knowledge and market opportunities. Well, now it's finished. According to the BBC article linked from the post title above, launch ceremonies were held in Kenya and Tanzania this week, and some large companies have already started exploiting the new bandwidth. Bit by bit, governments in the region - Kenya's, for example - are laying fibre-optic cable to connect towns to the network, in the hope that schools will be able to access an expanded range of educational materials. The question, as the article points out, is when smaller towns and villages will benefit. Surely something worth funding by international donors and local governments alike?

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