Connecting Africa

I came across an entry on the APC.ORG blog site the other day about the lack of submarine fibre cables to and from the African continent. They point to an interesting map of submarine cables throughout the world and point out the difference between the African continent and other parts of the world. While the difference is quite dramatic, I’m afraid the problem is more complex and serious than is implied.
Obviously, the map being referred to is very stylistic and perhaps not the most informative representation of the data. For instance, one thing that is not at all clear from this map is that Northern Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea, is probably the best connected part of the continent. But, more seriously, the map fails to show that the problem is not merely the lack of connections to and from the continent, it is in how those connections are managed inside and outside the continent. For instance, let’s consider Australia. On the map we can see that Australia does not appear to be significantly better connected than Africa (if we accept that the map is not accurately portraying submarine cables linking to Northern Africa). Yet, Australia is number 11 on the Network Readiness Index, far higher than any African country (Tunis is number 31).
For a more complete picture of the connectivity issues in Africa see the two articles linked to in this post.