Connecting Africa

By Gamal Nkrumah
E-touch might well be the conduit to bridge the international digital divide. Now, two of Africa's most ambitious Internet service providers (ISPs) stand poised to extend the use of the Internet in Africa. The acquisition this week of MenaNet, one of Egypt's leading ISPs, by Africa Online, the continent's largest outside South Africa, is a positive development intended to increase the range and scope of dial-up services, leased lines and Web design in Africa, the world's least connected continent.
There are currently fewer than 36 Internet users for every 10,000 people in Africa. It is hardly surprising, then, that there are barely three ISPs for every 10,000 users on the continent. The comparative figure for Asia is 26, Europe 202 and North America 1,700 respectively. Africa Online has emerged as the pioneering ISP providing Internet access, online content, e-business services and Information Technology (IT) distribution.
Africa Online runs hugely successful e-touch centres or cyber cafés giving e-mail and Internet access to customers who cannot afford a personal computer or ISP. Its network of more than 700 walk-in centres attracts about 27,000 regular users in Africa, many of them in remote rural areas. It has a subscriber base of more than 25,000 dial-up users, of whom about 11,000 are in Kenya alone. E-touch service users are estimated to number more than 70,000 in the eight countries served by Africa Online -- Ghana and Ivory Coast in West Africa; Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in East Africa; and Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe in Southern Africa. Last year, Africa Online embarked on a joint venture with UUNet of South Africa to create a 14-country African Internet network to bolster its operations.
MenaNet, too, has developed a toll-based Internet access service, FreeNet. "MenaNet's goal is to make it possible for anyone, anywhere to enjoy the benefits of the Internet," Gamal Marawan, chairman and CEO of MenaNet Communications, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "This week we opened a new cyber café in Assiut, and next week we shall open another in Hurghada. MenaNet Network also includes Alexandria, the Delta cities of Tanta and Mansoura, and Sharm Al-Sheikh, Sinai."
Ayisi Makatiani, chief executive and co-founder of Africa Online, said the group was planning to cover the entire continent. Makatiani told Al-Ahram Weekly that the Kenyan market was estimated to have fewer than 65,000 regular users and 250,000 cyber café users, but Africa Online was confident of expanding its business there and had used its success in Kenya as an example for the rest of the continent. "Africa's challenges also represent its opportunities. We do not operate from the basis that e-mail, the Internet, mobile phones and computers are high-tech systems for the rich and industrially advanced countries. People think that because Africa is poor, therefore Africans are incapable of understanding the communications revolution and are unable to afford widespread use of the information superhighway. This thinking is wrong. So spectacularly wrong that the knee-jerk reaction to Africa's potential is not only short of the truth, but the exact opposite of the truth," Makatiani said.
The story of the group's spiraling success is highly inspiring. "Africa Online is always ahead of the game," Makatiani boasts. He sees its achievements as a pointer to the future of IT in Africa. Makatiani set up the Boston-based e-mail network known as KenyaNet in 1989 with two other Kenyan students in the US. In 1994, Makatiani changed KenyaNet's name to Africa Online and expanded its e-mail services. He approached Prodigy, which bought into Africa Online and laid the basis for its rapid progression into Web access and the Internet business. Makatiani never looked back.
The partnership was short-lived: Prodigy was bought out by a US-based ISP firm with no interest in African operations. TelCorp of the US took control, but later lost interest. The British-based Africa Lakes Corporation (ALC) then bought most of TelCorp's shareholding in Africa Online. Africa Lakes is quoted on the London Stock Exchange (which was one of the reasons MenaNet was interested in securing the tie-up with Africa Online). Next, Africa Online collaborated with the British-based Barclays Bank on a so-called "clicks-and-bricks" deal to enhance IT and financial services in Africa.
So why MenaNet? "MenaNet is already an established company and a brand name in one of the key North African markets, which makes it ideal from the point of view of penetrating the potentially huge Egyptian market," Sam Nganga of Africa Online told Al-Ahram Weekly.
MenaNet, which has more than 7,500 subscribers and 10,000 freenet users, will now become a fully-owned subsidiary of Africa Online, which will continue to use its brand name to deliver services to countries south of the Sahara and that of MenaNet to North Africa and the Middle East. MenaNet uses the Nilesat satellite to bring Internet access to North Africa and the Middle East.
MenaNet, through its joint venture with Nilesat, created Egypt's first readily available broadband Internet infrastructure. MenaNet also provides services like WAP, Web mail, e-calendar, global roaming, ISDN, XDSL service and ASP. "The tie-up with Africa Online allows MenaNet to retain management and enables Egypt to become the regional hub of IT and telecommunications," Marawan added.
Recommend this page
Related links:
MenaNet
Africa Online
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor