Fostering pro-competitive regional connectivity in Sub-Saharan Africa

A growing number of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, governments, regional organizations, and private sector operators have identified the development of affordable cross-border backbone infrastructure as a top priority for improving connectivity in the region.2 Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest levels of connectivity in the world and the region relies mostly on satellite systems, which are more expensive and of lower quality than terrestrial alternatives such as fiber, thus hindering the region's potential for economic development. Wholesale bandwidth prices are 20 to 40 times higher than in the United States. The East Africa region is in particularly bad shape, being the only part of coastal Africa that does not have direct connections to global fiber optic networks.3 Africans made information infrastructure development and access a priority at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in 2003 and again at the meeting of NEPAD Head of States in Algiers in November 2004.