In 2012, we will be seeing over 20 terabits per second in broadband on the continent of Africa. There is still no way of telling whether this will meet or exceed demand, but Africa needed a change from having less than one terabit per second broadband capacity only a few years ago.

Since international broadband access has been addressed, the two key infrastructure issues remaining are terrestrial backhaul and access. According to Kerem Arsal, an analyst at Pyramid Research, East and Southern Africa are well underway with their terrestrial backhaul. In particular, the countries of East Africa – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania – have worked to provide fibre backhaul within each country and then connected themselves together.