Infrastructure in Africa

ICT Indicators from ITU 2007  Main telephone lines – 3.77/100 people  Mobile subscribers – 27.48/100 people  Internet users – 5.34/100 people  Africa has some 280 million total telephone subscribers, of which some 260 million (over 85%) are mobile cellular subscribers, representing the continent with the highest ratio of mobile to total telephone subscribers of any region in the world. (ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators, 2007)

ICT Indicators from ITU 2007  It is the region with the highest mobile cellular growth rate. Growth over the past 5 years averages almost 65% year on year.  It accounts for 14% of the world’s population, but for only around 7% of all fixed and mobile subscribers worldwide.  It has some 50 million Internet users, for an Internet penetration of just 5%. Europe’s Internet penetration is 8 times higher.  It has a broadband penetration of more than 1% in only a few countries. Broadband penetration in OECD countries exceeds 18%. (ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators, 2007)

Bandwidth Costs $ 20 Kbps 2002$ 13 Kpbs 2003$ 8.90 Kbps 2004$ 5.0 Kbps 2004$ 4.2 Kbps 2005$ 2.33 Kbps Future$ 1.00 Kbps or less

What Does It Mean?  The data makes it easy to apply a deficit model to project planning, but we need to start with what we have and how we can build off it  OER projects must work with what is available now, not demonstrate what would be possible if only the constraints were different  BUT paradoxically we must hold in our minds a vision of a radically different future from the one that current trends project – change is always surprising because it takes so much longer to happen than people think it will but happens so much quicker than they expect

What Does it Mean?  OER projects will never resolve infrastructure gaps, but they can help to build demand  Given all of the above, the constraint is not infrastructure, it is institutional capacity  OER provides the tools to build that capacity from any starting point, and the problem is not a lack of human capacity, it is a lack of opportunity