For years, Africa had only a tenuous link with the Internet: a single undersea cable, the South Atlantic 3 (SAT-3), linking southern Europe to western Europe Africa. Seven years later, many projects have been launched with the promise of a significant increase in throughput for the users. Since 2009, the fiber optic cable Eastern AfricaSubmarine Cable System (EASSy), along 10,000 miles, the east African coast feeds.
And two large projects, Globacom-1 and Mainone, now serving the west of the continent, to Lagos, Nigeria. Others, like West AfricanCable System (WACS) and the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), should also be operational in 2012. "Since 2009, the landscape of the continent's connection to the world is changing dramatically, so much so that one wonders if we do not go from one extreme to another, a situation scarcity to a situation of overcapacity in respect of optical fiber cables, "Annie Chéneau-Loquay analysis, research director at CNRS, in a study entitled Africa on the threshold of the telecommunications revolution.
The total amount of available flow will indeed move to 340 gigabits per second to over 20 terabits per second, or sixty times. "Africa has always been weaned in flow, due to lack of adequate infrastructure. Most communication was by satellite connections extremely expensive, and the fact that SAT-3 was the only submarine cable was in place that bandwidth prices have remained very high, "said Boubakar Barry, professor at the University Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (Senegal).
The increase in the number of cables in Africa logically resulted in increased investment in the region. To finance all these recent projects, over $ 2.6 billion ( 1.95 billion euros) are or have been invested, mainly by telecommunication operators. This is the case, for example, the ACE, a proposed $ 700 million (530 million) including funded by a consortium led by France Telecom and Orange, including several of its African subsidiaries.
Owned by a consortium of banks including Nigerian and South African investors, the Mainone, which counts among its investors no operators, made for her portion is exception. But these new links and recent investments they resorb the African digital divide? In the Internet boom in the late 1990s to today, Africa is still lagging far behind compared to other continents .
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the specialized UN agency, estimates that in 2010 only 77 million Africans, or only 9.6% of the continent's population, had access to the Internet from their computer. Growth is still important, as there was in 2007 that 27 million Internet users in Africa.
In 2009, only Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Nigeria show averages of users well above this low continental average. But worldwide, Africa is not even a tenth of Internet users in Asia (755 million, 450 million Chinese) and is far behind the United States (514 million) and Europe (401 million).
LOGIC "COUNTERS" For some, the delay of the Internet in Africa is primarily explained by the economic logic at work in infrastructure financing. "We are in a logic of capitalism: operators only invest when they are sure to return," warned a source within the France Telecom group, under cover of anonymity.
"With a development of linear cables, only along the coast, we follow a logical counters. It is not even a concept of a continental network that interconnects African capitals," complained Jean-Louis also Fullsack, administrator NGO Co-Development and Solidarity with the PTT. For the former project coordinator of the ITU, the creation of a continental network interconnection cost at least 1 billion euros.
Far from establishing a rational grid, mapping current submarine cable Internet reveals, on the west coast in particular, duplicate or even tripling. The mesh also responds to logical operators: LION cable, which passes by Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion, serves only areas where the operator Orange is present.
For a French band Orange, whose services range from countries like Ivory Coast and Madagascar in Botswana through Guinea, Africa is an area of increasingly strategic. This market represents nearly ten million customers for Orange (from a total of over 183 million) and a share of 2.5 billion euros in sales (45.9 billion euros in 2009) .
The French company has also recently invested $ 20 million in cable ships. But other major groups are also trying to penetrate the African continent, such as Vivendi, present in Morocco, Mali and Gabon. Transnational operators like Vodaphone or British Indian Bharti are also trying to gain market share.
And only three African groups still seem to be able to face this global competition: the NTN South African, Nigerian Globacom and Egypt's Orascom, however, stalled. These actors "have deployed terrestrial networks and want to 'keep their traffic, to deliver it to their international networks and thus reap the maximum revenue.
This is a variation on a large scale but very profitable from' roaming '(international roaming ) "Mr. Fullsack analysis. This situation, in which investors in the cable operators are also on the African territory, can lead to complicated situations. "If a country lacks a dominant operator, the quality of its links is deplorable.
African countries are almost forced to concede a dominant operator," complained an anonymous source. "Governments, financially dependent, have little weight compared to outside operators, who impose their views, while their national public operator is dismantled through deregulation," explains Jean-Louis also Fullsack.
RISE OF THE MOBILE INTERNET? With low traffic between African countries, Africa also impose penalty in peering (pairing) with major international providers. Because in the Internet economy, the shares are not free traffic between networks of equal size. "Increasing and keep local traffic implies a policy of accommodation and creation of local exchange points," Ms.
Gutter-Loquay. But for reasons largely political, or economic, the number of these "exchange points" remains low in Africa. The final difficulty concerns the "last mile", that is to say the arrival of the network to the end customer, particularly in sensitive rural areas. All these problems are they intractable? If the fixed Internet is progressing with difficulty, the 3G mobile networks seem to take over.
With over 400 million subscriptions in 2010, Africa widely used in mobile telephony. And according to the latest statistics from the IUT, 29 million people have already subscribed to Internet services on mobile broadband in Africa. There were only 7 million in 2008 ... "Given the low purchasing power of the majority of the population, it is expected that soon, most Internet traffic will be through mobile networks rather than through fixed networks," analyzes the researcher Boubakar Barry.
But for Jean-Louis Fullsack, if the mobile "is probably a 'lucky' for Africa, (...) it is a mistake to think that this means the end of the cable. To make accessible to the 3G speeds users are not radio networks, but rather fiber optics that are necessary. " 
And two large projects, Globacom-1 and Mainone, now serving the west of the continent, to Lagos, Nigeria. Others, like West AfricanCable System (WACS) and the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), should also be operational in 2012. "Since 2009, the landscape of the continent's connection to the world is changing dramatically, so much so that one wonders if we do not go from one extreme to another, a situation scarcity to a situation of overcapacity in respect of optical fiber cables, "Annie Chéneau-Loquay analysis, research director at CNRS, in a study entitled Africa on the threshold of the telecommunications revolution.
The total amount of available flow will indeed move to 340 gigabits per second to over 20 terabits per second, or sixty times. "Africa has always been weaned in flow, due to lack of adequate infrastructure. Most communication was by satellite connections extremely expensive, and the fact that SAT-3 was the only submarine cable was in place that bandwidth prices have remained very high, "said Boubakar Barry, professor at the University Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (Senegal).
The increase in the number of cables in Africa logically resulted in increased investment in the region. To finance all these recent projects, over $ 2.6 billion ( 1.95 billion euros) are or have been invested, mainly by telecommunication operators. This is the case, for example, the ACE, a proposed $ 700 million (530 million) including funded by a consortium led by France Telecom and Orange, including several of its African subsidiaries.
Owned by a consortium of banks including Nigerian and South African investors, the Mainone, which counts among its investors no operators, made for her portion is exception. But these new links and recent investments they resorb the African digital divide? In the Internet boom in the late 1990s to today, Africa is still lagging far behind compared to other continents .
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the specialized UN agency, estimates that in 2010 only 77 million Africans, or only 9.6% of the continent's population, had access to the Internet from their computer. Growth is still important, as there was in 2007 that 27 million Internet users in Africa.
In 2009, only Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Nigeria show averages of users well above this low continental average. But worldwide, Africa is not even a tenth of Internet users in Asia (755 million, 450 million Chinese) and is far behind the United States (514 million) and Europe (401 million).
LOGIC "COUNTERS" For some, the delay of the Internet in Africa is primarily explained by the economic logic at work in infrastructure financing. "We are in a logic of capitalism: operators only invest when they are sure to return," warned a source within the France Telecom group, under cover of anonymity.
"With a development of linear cables, only along the coast, we follow a logical counters. It is not even a concept of a continental network that interconnects African capitals," complained Jean-Louis also Fullsack, administrator NGO Co-Development and Solidarity with the PTT. For the former project coordinator of the ITU, the creation of a continental network interconnection cost at least 1 billion euros.
Far from establishing a rational grid, mapping current submarine cable Internet reveals, on the west coast in particular, duplicate or even tripling. The mesh also responds to logical operators: LION cable, which passes by Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion, serves only areas where the operator Orange is present.
For a French band Orange, whose services range from countries like Ivory Coast and Madagascar in Botswana through Guinea, Africa is an area of increasingly strategic. This market represents nearly ten million customers for Orange (from a total of over 183 million) and a share of 2.5 billion euros in sales (45.9 billion euros in 2009) .
The French company has also recently invested $ 20 million in cable ships. But other major groups are also trying to penetrate the African continent, such as Vivendi, present in Morocco, Mali and Gabon. Transnational operators like Vodaphone or British Indian Bharti are also trying to gain market share.
And only three African groups still seem to be able to face this global competition: the NTN South African, Nigerian Globacom and Egypt's Orascom, however, stalled. These actors "have deployed terrestrial networks and want to 'keep their traffic, to deliver it to their international networks and thus reap the maximum revenue.
This is a variation on a large scale but very profitable from' roaming '(international roaming ) "Mr. Fullsack analysis. This situation, in which investors in the cable operators are also on the African territory, can lead to complicated situations. "If a country lacks a dominant operator, the quality of its links is deplorable.
African countries are almost forced to concede a dominant operator," complained an anonymous source. "Governments, financially dependent, have little weight compared to outside operators, who impose their views, while their national public operator is dismantled through deregulation," explains Jean-Louis also Fullsack.
RISE OF THE MOBILE INTERNET? With low traffic between African countries, Africa also impose penalty in peering (pairing) with major international providers. Because in the Internet economy, the shares are not free traffic between networks of equal size. "Increasing and keep local traffic implies a policy of accommodation and creation of local exchange points," Ms.
Gutter-Loquay. But for reasons largely political, or economic, the number of these "exchange points" remains low in Africa. The final difficulty concerns the "last mile", that is to say the arrival of the network to the end customer, particularly in sensitive rural areas. All these problems are they intractable? If the fixed Internet is progressing with difficulty, the 3G mobile networks seem to take over.
With over 400 million subscriptions in 2010, Africa widely used in mobile telephony. And according to the latest statistics from the IUT, 29 million people have already subscribed to Internet services on mobile broadband in Africa. There were only 7 million in 2008 ... "Given the low purchasing power of the majority of the population, it is expected that soon, most Internet traffic will be through mobile networks rather than through fixed networks," analyzes the researcher Boubakar Barry.
But for Jean-Louis Fullsack, if the mobile "is probably a 'lucky' for Africa, (...) it is a mistake to think that this means the end of the cable. To make accessible to the 3G speeds users are not radio networks, but rather fiber optics that are necessary. "
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