Inside Africa. Internet, phones etc.

April 21, 2012 12:56 AM

Inside Africa. What about the digital frontier? How is the broadband download performance? How many mobile phones are there in Africa? And mobile subscriptions? How is Twitter doing in South Africa? And how many internet users are there in South Africa anyway? Yes, the other stuff like GDP growth rates, nation brand values and Sino-African trade are there too. And female entrepreneurship..
posted by travelwithcats (4 comments total)

This is great! Thank you.
posted by mdonley at 2:09 AM on April 21, 2012

Mama Africa's gonna get loud very soon.
posted by New England Cultist at 6:41 AM on April 21, 2012

I am generally interested in information technology in Africa, mainly, because I see it as a place where the phone is far more important than the personal computer. This change in focus might provide some answers to the challenges of the digital divide, although, unless Africa can stop being a place that is always "fixing its problems" or, worse "having its problems fixed for it," I don't see how it can develop real global agency, instead of just being a resource and market for powers elsewhere.

Obviously, reducing a whole continent to one situation is part of the problem....

All that waffling aside, these infographics annoy me. The Sino-African Trade page should really tell us those are percentages to the side, since they look like they might be some sort of ranking. The shading on the map to show countries in "Broadband performance" makes it hard to see which category the countries belong in -- this is an infographic that confuses, rather than clarifies the issue. And the "mobile phone" page uses a lot of pixels to tell a story that would have been clearer in a few sentences of text. I love graphic display of information, but it's not always the best tool....
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:26 AM on April 21, 2012

After reading the infographic about Ghana having comparable speeds to the US I can only assume this conversation took place at the last Meeting of the Evil Telecommunications Company Cabal™:

AT&T: "Broadband speeds are like golf, right? The objective is to lower your score?"
Verizon: "I think so... That's why we stopped deploying FiOS."
Comcast: "Oh shit I'm doing this all wrong then!"
posted by Talez at 10:42 AM on April 21, 2012