The Internet in Africa: How much do governments matter?

[Commentary] There’s a flood of innovation happening in Africa, particularly on mobile networks. Governments can pass laws which either hinder or enable competition, innovation, and freedom of expression. Based on those laws, a nation and its citizens might have a single, state-run telecommunications network or fierce competition among several networks and technologies. They might encounter a bounty of diverse views online, or they might only have a single set of government-approved opinions there for them to find.

Good governance can, in turn, foster decentralized, resilient networks that are far more difficult for governments to censor or shut down, and which are far more useful to the people who rely on them. To be sure, governance isn’t all that matters for Internet deployment. Other factors — such as the size of a country, whether it is predominantly urban or rural, and precedents in telecommunications deployment — have an influence on how easily the Internet can be expanded and adopted. However, governments and the laws and regulations they pass are significant, and efforts to improve global Internet access absolutely must take them into account. Africa’s governments are no exception.