East African Business Week (Kampala)
7 November 2009
editorial
Burundi has one of the lowest internet usage in the world with only 0.7% of the total population of 8million people connected. This ranks Burundi 11th from bottom, the worst being East Timor, an island nation in the East Indies with 0.1% and a population of 1.1 million people. In the western world, the usage in some countries goes as high as 82% in the Netherlands and 74% in the USA and Japan. Needless to say, these countries are very highly developed.
The rest of East Africa is not much better with Rwanda at 1%, Tanzania at 1%, Uganda at 2.4% and the highest, Kenya, at only 7.9%. Now with the advent of broadband and nations coming together to avail broadband internet connectivity and efforts being made to connect the East African Community (EAC), these figures ought to go up.
Information is power, as has been said, and it is also said to be the paramount factor of production. There are many uses of information and when one is deprived, there are dire consequences. Maternal mortality in Africa can be reduced by knowledge, so can the spread of disease and poverty. The world would not be having issues of global warning if information was properly disseminated to all.
The creators of the World Wide Web realized the importance of information and rather than enrich themselves with their creation, they elected to avail this awsome tool free of charge to all and sundry.
Now, the people who control access to the World Wide Web i.e. internet service providers (isps), computer hardware and software manufacturers, owners of satellites and fiber optic cables, are making a financial killing. In East Africa, this greed is the major cause of the low internet connectivity.
The EAC has to take on the example set by the creators of the World Wide Web in championing the providision of access to the internet that would be affordable to at least 50% of the population if we are to address disease, poverty, hunger and the digital divide.
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What does this article have to do with Burkina Faso? Maybe the title should be "Burundi: Country Has Lowest..." I came here thinking I would read something about Burkina Faso.