Seacom’s exhibition of “true broadband” speeds at the recent Sandton exhibition highlights an often overlooked issue with African Internet connectivity: it doesn’t matter how many people have access to the Internet if the connection is too slow. The text- and image-based Internet is a relic of last decade, although breaking …

African broadband redefined, how mobile Internet changes lives

SA broadband market worth R 12 billion in 2015, Nigerian broadband

Recently, a South African call-center business, frustrated with its slow Internet connection, decided to transfer data between two of its offices – via messenger pigeon. The pigeon traveled 50 miles with 4gb of data in just over 2 hours; only 100mb was sent over the hard line in that time. …

Produced by The World Bank: “East and Southern Africa is the only region in the world not connected to the global broadband infrastructure. This ‘missing link’ explains why the region accounts for less than one percent of the world’s bandwidth capacity.”

Dating from August 2009, this was the first post ever on the site. We wrote, “with some effort the entire continent will have viable Internet options.” What an understatement…