“It’s Called the Last Link…”

The Red Herring recently published this article by Alex Gronke about connecting Africa. This paragraph in particular caught my attention…

It’s called the last link. The roughly 5,000 miles of coastline between Djibouti and South Africa is the longest stretch of land untouched by submarine fiber-optic cable. That means the sub-Saharan African countries bordering the Indian Ocean, which include some of the continent’s most prosperous and stable nations, rely on satellite for the bulk of their Internet connections. Satellite is not only slower than fiber, it’s more expensive. Paying more for Internet access than just about anywhere else in the world doesn’t help the region’s struggling economies.

Prices for internet here in Africa can range, but for anything considered to be a ‘decent’ connection by western standards, it’s often several hundred or thousand dollars per month in regions where the majority of people make less that per year.