A Giant Leap in 2016? Africa Is Narrowing its Techno-Gap
[Commentary] Though for many of us the year ahead may look pretty dismal, 2016 promises one great breakthrough - a major step toward ending Africa's particular and hobbling form of the great Digital Divide. Poor connectivity has bedeviled much of the continent's internet access (or often sheer lack of access) but now a huge improvement is in the offing.
It's a new subsea cable, to be laid off Africa's eastern coastline, enabling a reliable and affordable international connectivity service to both coastal and landlocked countries in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. The project is being developed by Liquid Sea, a literally offshore subsidiary of Liquid Telecom, which already runs a pan-African network based on terrestrial fiber-optic cable supplemented by satellite links for rural and remote areas. Altogether, with offices from South Africa and Botswana in the south to Kenya in the East, taking in Democratic Republic of Congo in the center, it makes up the continent's largest single contiguous network crossing multiple national borders.
