The last time a project of this importance occurred in East Africa was when the Uganda Railway integrated that part of the world into the British Empire. That project was scorned by its critics and referred to as the Lunatic Express.
According to a recent BBC article, Seacom, a company and project largely funded by African investors, has just landed the first undersea fiber optic cable on the East African coast. This time the project is fondly referred to as the Digital Express, and has far fewer critics.
Seacom is in fact only the first of several providers to bring undersea fiber optics to East Africa; other companies, such as Teams and Essay are expected to make landfall soon.
Digital Villages
This development looks to have a profound impact on East Africa and its economy. Current satellite access of 1 mbps costs $3,000 a month; the new digital access will only cost $300 a month, a price reduction of 90%.
And prices are expected to drop further as ISPs roll service out to those who can afford it, creating more demand, which will lower prices further. Targeted areas include rural villages that look to follow India's example of providing inexpensive offshore outsource businesses such as data entry and call centers.
East Africa, until now, has lagged behind the rest of the world in Internet connectivity, but this is now set to change.
If Africa's runaway adoption of mobile telephony is any indication, now that broadband has reached the East African shores, it may be in for a digital explosion including large-scale servers providing cloud computing to ever-growing hosts of inexpensive net computers.
And now that Africa is approaching equal digital terms to places such as India, a new, digital, economy may well give India and other outsourcing countries a run for their money.
The world is shrinking even as I write this. Amazing.
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