Digital Citizens Indaba

Today is the first day of the Digital Citizen's Indaba at Highway Africa. We have just heard an interesting presentation by Henk Kleynhans, CEO of Skyrove about community owned internet and connectivity in Africa. The exhorbitant costs of broadband in Africa is a big issue here. At an Association for Progressive Communications (APC) meeting in Johannesburg earlier this year, Willie Currie, presented a paper about broadband in Africa. He said that cheaper broadband, will only be possible however if there is:

* More competition and innovation in the Internet and telecom sector
* Much more backbone fiber, national and international
* More effort to build demand, especially by national governments to build useful local applications
* Improved availability of electric power
* Better indicators for measuring progress

I am looking forward to hearing what others here have to say