A few months ago, I chatted to a top telecoms executive about a new development in the market: Afrihost’s mobile broadband router and aggressive pricing strategy. The executive commented positively on this and we could both envision an aspirant coder in the townships finally connect to the online world. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I know such a guy – and that even at Afrihost’s prices, he has no hope of affording a functional connection online.

Much is being written about Africa’s rise, pinned by the fact that mobile phones have exploded in numbers. There were roughly 600 000 mobile phones in Africa around the mid-‘90s – today, the figure stands at over 750 million. The continent leapfrogged fixedline connectivity and got its people online through mobile devices. This has resulted in some great successes, such as the rapid technification of Rwanda, and Kenya’s mobile money monolith known as M-Pesa.