I ran across a CNN Technology report today:
Official: Africans pay $1,800 for 1GB of data
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/05/18/Africa/index
You can read it for yourself, but apparently the Minister for Information and Communication Mutahi Kagwe stated that the cost of consumer internet service in Africa is around $1800 compared to the roughly estimated $20 in the US and other parts of the world. This is apparently cause by the lack of cable infrastructure in Africa and the hassle of routing services to all parts of the world in order to get a signal.
I fell for my African brethren, because I would have a hard time dealing with the forays of today's world without the ability to connect to the world wide web. I would have trouble finding out what is hot in the streets. I would have to go back to placing my sports bets through a bookie and avoid him when I lose big. And god forbid that I would have to lift a phone to communicate with the outside world. And yes, I would have to renew my porn subscriptions.
Minister for Information and Communication Mutahi Kagwe delivered his report on the deprived state of his country by way of an interpreter and this is where this whole thing is sitting worse than those three day old Chinese pea pods that my wife warned me not to eat. Anytime a story is filtered through an interpreter there is too much gray area for mis-interpretation or deception. I believe what we are facing here is a prime example of how rampant dishonesty is by people of certain positions in under developed nations. I can not fault Kagwe because I think that he is simply unaware, but the interpreter Bitange Ndemo may be in a plot to pull some wool.
How can it be so expensive for Africans to use the internet? How is it that they don't have the money to build the infrastructure for cheaper web services? Just yesterday, I received an email from a gentleman that was the comptroller for a courier service there that was holding $15M cash that was supposed to be delivered to a long lost relative of mine. All he needed is my personal financial information to have the funds released to me. Now I just would not feel right accepting that cash knowing that there are people in that country that would have to pay almost 2G's to download porn. Plus, if it is so hard to get the internet, then how did this guy find me?
Something is just not right .....
