Comments on: Web Foundation Workshop in Egypt

By: Anthony Makumbi

Anthony Makumbi — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:43:32 +0000

Thanks steve i do love your optimism and i think thats the way to go. I d hope you do encourage public prvate partnerships to see this through. I am yet to understand what this whole internet governanec thing is all about. Wish you the best and do support your current move a the WWW foundation.

By: Steve Bratt

Steve Bratt — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:30:19 +0000

(posted for Stephane Boyera, traveling in Kenya and Uganda)
The cost of accessing internet and therefore the Web is indeed a barrier. I just want to make two comments:
- the prices are largely impacted by regulations, taxation and competition. It is essential that government promote access and use of the Web by adopting appropriate regulatory framework. This is a point we are making each time we are meeting with officials and government.
- the second point, which is more in the scope of the Web Foundation, is on the notion of return on investment. It is indeed expensive to access the Web today, but it is far more important to note that there is a lack of content and services that could really improve the lives of people accessing them. As a comparison, telecom operators thought 6-7 years ago that people in developing countries would not be able to afford mobile telephony. We know the situation today. This was due to both a change in the business model (prepaid vs postpaid) and to the fact that person-to-person communication really is a critical service in many activities, and really ease and improve people lives.

I believe that it is possible to create a circle of value where new locally-oriented content and services will motivate more people to use the Web, which in turns will extend the market, bring more players and competitions, and attract entrepreneurs, lower price of access, enable more services to be developed, and attracting more people (and so on).

For more details on this topic, you might be interested to look at the related section in the W3C Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap.

By: Anthony Makumbi

Anthony Makumbi — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:57:48 +0000

Thanks very much for this insight, just one other point that should be carefull considered and does affect web access in Africa is the cost associated with accessing the web. In East Africa they just launch the landing of the Seacom fibre cable that is projected would drastically reduce the costs of accessing the internet. There haven’t been any direct results sofar as many players in Governement and private sector are looking at this as an opportunity to make bigger mergins and are now transparently declaring the true costs of accessing the internet. Its still costly..Governements are not doing much to help as many of they do have stakes in some of the big internet providers particularly Mobile web access. many of the mobile service providers are run by governements and have played a major role in aleanating many communities from even thinkng of accessing the net. Net for major policy influencing at various levels globally.