climate and comms

I have been waiting for Jeremy Rifkin to get with the African program.   It was only a matter of time.   For those of you who don't know, he is the guy who wrote ‘ The Third Industrial Revolution’ ( http://thethirdindustrialrevolution.com/ ) which is the story of the convergence of the communication and energy revolutions.   In it he talks of the rapidly emerging trend of local power generation and the sharing of that power laterally across the grid analogously to WiFi sharing between adjacent WiFi networks.    This is very powerful because it obviates the need for large capital projects for power generation – which have the downsides of : long lead times, centralised monolithic infrastructure, large expensive and wasteful distribution networks - all well illustrated by the current Eskom debacle. It is not widely known that only about 15% of Africans have access to power.   Millions of African children are forced to read by the light of a kerosene lamp.  

Starting in the mid 1990’s Africa underwent a ‘mobile revolution’ whereby from a standing start of below 1% telephone penetration (tele-density) -   the Continent now boasts over 800 million mobile phones.     By skipping the so-called ‘landline’ technologies the mobile operators leapfrogged a technology generation.   These mobile networks, it can be argued, have been a major contributor to the economic upswing the Continent has experienced since the start of the new millennium.     The mobile revolution is now over as growth has moderated and penetration levels started to peak.     However, a new revolution beckons - the Internet revolution.   Africa falls behind the Rest of the World when it comes to broadband with less than 15% penetration, mainly in the cities.    During the last 5 years numerous submarine cables have been installed, connecting Africa to the Globe.   These fibre-optic cables are like a 10 lane highway, but with only a single bicycle riding