The costliest web access on Earth is in Africa

According to the news published in TheStar InTech (23 May 2006, pg 27),

• African Internet users pay on average 90 times what US surfers pay - US$20 (RM76) for 1 gigabyte of data per month for US surfers but African users have to pay US$1800 (RM6840) for the same amount of data.

Why the costs of data and voice communications in Africa is the highest in the world?

• The infrastructure-strapped continent spends millions of dollars every year to route data and voice traffic from one African country to another through Europe or North American.

Only 1.5% of the 906 million of Africa's population are connected to Internet as compared to 70% of people in Hong Kong and 40% of Malaysian are online.


This is what we called "Digital Divide" - The gap between those who have and those who do not have the ability to access eclectronic technology in general and the Internet and E-Commerce in particular. This will also be causing unbalanced growth and crippling the efforts by the world's poorest continent to become competitive in a global economy driven by communications.


Other related stories:
1. High Speed Internet Connection in Togo
2. Nigeria's Communication Satellite Launched by China.