UN report: African Net usage growing, but still lags
We have come far, but we still have so far to go. That is essentially the message presented by a new report from the United Nations Information and Communications Technologies Task Force regarding African Internet usage. Among other things, the report indicates that more Africans are online than ever before.
The study cites statistics showing that, during the last 18 months, the number of Internet dial-up connections
in Africa has increased by 20 percent, while the rate of growth in Internet connections through corporate or shared networks is still higher. Meanwhile, the number of mobile phones activated during the last 5 years has exceeded
the number of landlines installed over the past 100 years.
However, the extent of Internet connectivity in Africa varies greatly from
region to region, and generally falls far short of the levels seen on other
continents. In many areas of Africa, approximately 1 in 250 people use the Internet; by comparison, nearly half the populations of both North America and in Europe are online. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan stressed the importance of efforts to bridge this Digital Divide: "It is not, of course,
a magic formula that is going to solve all the problems. But it is a powerful tool for economic growth and poverty eradication, which can
facilitate the integration of African countries into the global economy."
Read "Internet, Mobile Phones Taking Off in Africa-UN," This Day (Nigeria),
3 October 2002 at http://allafrica.com/stories/200210030347.html
See "Africans embrace mobiles and the net," BBC News Online, 2 October 2002 at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2290486.stm
[source: GILC Alert, Volume 6, Issue 7]