For those of us who are fully wired (and wireless) it seems hard to imagine not having regular access to high-speed Internet.  For many, withdrawal would be acute.  But for people living in a world that lacks the infrastructure to support low-cost, high-speed Internet access, the absence of this fundamental product is also acute.

Calestous Juma , a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, notes that the severe shortage of low-cost, high-speed Internet access in African Universities is a major obstacle to the development of a knowledge economy throughout Africa, particularly in the fields of science and technology.  In advance of the G-8 summit in Japan this July, he exhorts ” leaders of the world’s major countries [to] commit themselves to helping Africa provide [this] access.”  Although the Bandwith Consortium and other such initiatives exist to help wire the continent’s universities, Juma acknowledges that “a more robust response with specific targets on helping to reduce cost and installing communications facilities such as satellite links [is] urgently needed…Providing low-cost, high-speed Internet access to African universities will help Africa build the capacity it needs to solve its own problems. It is one of the most strategic investments that the G-8 countries can make in Africa in the coming few years.”

Tags: internet

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Neil Turok's Wish Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.