“While there has been great value in focusing on the profound digital differences between developed and developing countries, the downside has been a potential and insidious distinction between civilized tool-users and uncivilized non-users. What is missing is a deeper focus on the “true” knowledge needs or particular cultures and communities, and the relevance of ICT to individual social contexts.”

-Perspectives and policies on ICT in society, ed. Chrisanthi Avgerou and Jacques Berleur, IFIP TC9, 2005, 16.

Africa: 50+ nations constituting 1/7th the world’s population, but only 1/25th the world’s Internet user base. Indeed, Internet access and options for the African continent have greatly expanded over the past few years. However, consumer adoption, connectivity and technology infrastructure, business environment, social and cultural environment, government policy and vision, and legal environment all determine a nation’s successful implementation of the Internet. Steady growth of this industry is expected, but recent opinion dictates that the average Internet user needs to be online for 5 years or more before engaging actively with high-level online applications (like online retail).

Relatively few sites are dedicated to disseminating information relating to the African Internet. Many exist, but are no longer updated. Other sources provide very targeted information on the mobile industry, social policy, business developments, tech applications. The rest are foundations or organizations. Online Africa, however, strives to aggregate and provide the latest news, articles, and statistics relating to the Internet in Africa. Raising awareness of this issue is one more step toward the goal of providing every African the opportunity to be connected with the rest of the world.

This site plans on addressing every aspect of African connectivity, from infrastructure to  education, with an understanding that every nation has different tools and ideologies to utilize. Furthermore, Online Africa attempts to look beyond pure numbers when making assumptions and conclusions. Africa is unique from the developed world and its Internet successes cannot necessarily be tracked by the same means.

Screenshot from Google Analytics Map Overlay for a typical website.

Online Africa…

• is a one-stop shop for everything related to the progress of the African Internet
• focuses predominantly on Sub-Saharan Africa, but often references North Africa
• gathers dozens of current and past articles and reports written by experts in the field
• features current news items and African infrastructure developments from dozens of sources
• examines rapidly changing connectivity statistics plus provides links to stats
• has links to detailed country-by-country online information
• challenges visitors to not take their bandwidth for granted
• promotes active discussion of Africa’s ICT field
• receives 25% of its traffic from African visitors

Near-future goals for this site:

• update relevant country & region information
• create original articles
• focus on nations that receive less online attention