Down to the wires: Africa's digital lag

This episode delves into the substantial digital divide in Africa, focusing on the region's lagging digital infrastructure and its implications.

1. Africa's digital infrastructure is woefully inadequate compared to global standards.
2. Regulatory hurdles and high taxes inhibit the growth of digital services and infrastructure.
3. The lack of reliable power and internet connectivity poses major obstacles to adopting new technologies like AI.
4. Infrastructure deficits could cause Africa to miss out on economic benefits from technological advances.
5. Investment in digital infrastructure is crucial for bridging the digital divide and boosting economic development.

1: Introduction to Africa's Digital Challenges

Discusses the foundational challenges faced by Africa in upgrading its digital infrastructure. Jason Palmer: "Africa, a whole continent, had less international bandwidth than Brazil."

2: The Impact of Inadequate Infrastructure

Explores the severe impacts of Africa's digital lag on economic growth and technological adoption. Ory Ogunbi: "Without good Internet connectivity, Africa is going to miss out on most of the gains in productivity and innovation."

3: Solutions and Barriers

Addresses potential solutions to Africa's digital divide and the barriers imposed by regulation and taxation. Ory Ogunbi: "Governments need to chill out with regulation... and stop taxing this industry so heavily."

1. Support local initiatives that aim to improve digital literacy and infrastructure in Africa.
2. Advocate for policy changes that reduce regulatory and tax burdens on digital innovations.
3. Invest in renewable energy sources to provide reliable power for data centers and other digital infrastructure.
4. Encourage the development of local data centers to reduce internet latency and improve service quality.
5. Promote the use of satellite internet to bridge connectivity gaps in remote areas.

The dearth of fixed-line infrastructure that allowed the continent to leapfrog into the mobile-phone age now holds it back. We ask how to ensure the even spread of AI’s dividends. A stinking Seine has delayed the Olympic triathlon, but the river could one day help clean up Paris (7:09). And how “The Blair Witch Project” changed horror films (14:33).

People

• Ory Ogunbi
• Jason Palmer

Companies

• MTN
• PwC
• McKinsey

Books

• None

Guest Name(s):

• Ory Ogunbi

Content Warnings:

• None

Nickayla
Hey, it's Nickayla from side hustle Pro. From a local business to a global corporation, partnering with bank of America gives your operation access to exclusive digital tools, award winning insights, and business solutions so powerful you'll make every move matter. Visit bankofamerica.com bankyforbusiness to learn more. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America na Copyright 2024.

Jason Palmer
The Economist.

Rosie Blore
Hello, and welcome to the intelligence from the Economist, I'm Rosie Blore. And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Oh, Paris, the enchanting buildings, the tranquility of the Seine. Or perhaps not. The Olympics has put the famous river in the news, and it's making a bit of a stink.

Jason Palmer
And 25 years ago this month, the Blair witch project scared the crap out of me and a whole generation of cinema goers. Was it real? If it wasn't, was the cast in on the ruse? We look at how one dirt cheap movie changed the whole genre.

But first.

Ory Ogunbi
What are you doing? Sending some MTN credit to my mom in Nigeria. So you send her the pin number and she has to struggle with, no, I send the credit directly to her phone. She doesn't have to do anything. It's like magic.

Look.

Jason Palmer
Two decades ago, a digital revolution transformed the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.

As mobile phones swept across sub saharan Africa. They allowed farmers to get weather forecasts. They allowed the unbanked to move mobile money around. They allowed people to just keep in touch. Now, artificial intelligence could spark another revolution that transforms lives.

But weak digital infrastructure is holding the continent back. As you can hear when we recently tried to speak to our newly minted Africa correspondent in Nigeria, my former co host, Ory Ogunbi. No, no. That's why. Okay.

Ory Ogunbi
Oh, so. We lost you at the same time. Okay, you know what? Let me switch Internet. Give me a second.

This is the bane of my life. One sec. Ever since moving back to Lagos, I've had to endure subpar Internet speeds, freezing, and a whole lot of buffering. But it's not just an annoyance that's making streaming Netflix a bit difficult or just making my Zoom calls a pain. These large infrastructure gaps in Africa are creating a new digital divide.

Jason Palmer
Ori, paint us a picture. What is Internet service like, in a general sense, in Africa these days? More than two decades ago, the economists calculated that all of Africa, the whole continent, had less international bandwidth than Brazil. And that was still true until just last year. So just to give you a sense of how behind things are where I am in Nigeria, the average download speed of a wired Internet is a 10th that of Denmark.

Ory Ogunbi
And Nigeria has it even better than most other countries. I mean, I'm complaining, but at least I have fiber, because most users are actually limited to mobile Internet, which is even slower. So why is it that far behind already? So, one reason is actually the flip side of the success of the mobile boom. By prioritizing mobile, the phone operators deprioritized connecting a whole bunch of people to landline.

And so what happens is, today, the continent still lacks a lot of that landline infrastructure. And it's not because people need phones now, but those same cables, the telephone boxes that run into your house, can then be repurposed, give people fast fiber optic broadband. But in most african households, which have never had a landline, connecting people to fiber basically means starting from scratch and. Beyond, making it difficult to have an uninterrupted Zoom call. What effects is that having on the continent?

Well, without good Internet connectivity, Africa is going to miss out on most of the gains and productivity and employment and innovation and all the like. I mean, the AI boom that is taking the world by storm and all the economic potential that comes with it, again, could completely leave Africa behind. So PwC, a consultancy, reckons that AI could add almost $16 trillion to the global economy by about 2030. McKinsey has a similar figure as well. But with Africa, even though it has 17% of the world's population, its boost from AI is only going to be about 2.5% of its gdp.

So that kind of gives you a sense of how much we could be losing out here. And that's really down to a lack of infrastructure that much of the rest of the world enjoys. Well, exactly. And it's not just poor Internet. It's also data centers, which are a vital piece, especially for AI, but also just for cloud computing and a bunch of other things that we need the Internet for, like Netflix, Africa has far fewer of those than it needs.

And without enough data centers, basically all the content that you're trying to load up on your screen needs to travel even further to cities like Marseilles or Amsterdam. And that then leads to lags. So if you build more of those data centers closer to users and host more data locally, then basically your Bridgerton loads a bit quicker. So you need more data centers. But all these new data centers will also need more energy, which adds to the burden that the continent already has when it comes to energy.

I mean, Africa is so short of electricity that 600 million Africans have no power at all. Nigeria, where I am, suffers 4600 hours of outages on average a year. So sometimes my zoom calls are just cut off because there's no power. And then you have renewables that could fill the gap, but then they're a little bit too erratic to constantly supply a data center. So, yeah, it's part of a bigger infrastructure problem, basically.

Jason Palmer
So an enormous shortfall in infrastructure. The way you're describing it here, I mean, what is to be done, do you think? Well, there are a few things. Firstly, governments across the region need to chill out with regulation, and I think that's a lesson that they can learn from the mobile boom cutting red tape for the private sector. So take Starlink, for example, Elon Musk's satellite Internet firm.

Ory Ogunbi
They could be a really useful tool, especially in connecting the more far flung rural areas. But regulators across the region just keep blocking it, even in South Africa, which is supposed to be a front runner when it comes to this tech. In addition to that, governments are also taxing this industry quite heavily, which drives up the cost of data for consumers and also discourages people from investing in it and providing it. Basically, governments need to just kind of get out of the way. But it's not just governments.

I mean, development institutions too, could definitely do a lot more to prioritize this vital infrastructure because it has lots of developmental benefits as well. So investing in it and encouraging investment in it could help Africa catch up with rich countries instead of seeing them fall further behind. Ori, great to have you back on the show. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Jason.

It's great to be back.

Nickayla
Hey, it's Nickayla from side hustle Pro. From a local business to a global corporation, partnering with bank of America gives your operation access to exclusive digital tools, award winning insights, and business solutions so powerful you'll make every move matter. Visit bankofamerica.com bankyforbusiness to learn more. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America na Copyright 2024.

Sophie Petter
It was an amazing event. It was just an extraordinary spectacle. It really was, to me, the best of Paris, both past and future. As the economist, Paris bureau chief Sophie Petter was lucky enough to watch the Olympic opening ceremony in person. It was timeless elegance against crazy, chaotic, disorderly dancing, mad visual scenes.

We had Marietoinette head chopped off. We had blood pouring out of the conciergerie. Then we had the republican Guard, very formal defense of the french republic, dancing and swaying to Ayan Akamura, the french Franco Marley and singer. Just a sort of burlesque, really. And it was fabulous.

Off there went the boats down the Seine, cheering from the sides of the rivers as each national team went by. And I watched all this from the rooftop right above the pont Neuf, and it really was, I thought, completely sensational. And it was very unusual, possibly unique, that Paris chose not to hold the opening ceremony in a stadium and instead use the whole city as a backdrop. Is that right? That's exactly right.

The whole idea was to make Paris the backdrop, because there is hardly any other city in the world you can imagine that would provide such a stunning visual scene on which to enact this spectacle. And so the river became the stage. But in just a few short days, the Seine has gone from being the subject of glory to something of an embarrassment, hasn't it? The men's triathlon that was due to be held this morning is being postponed until tomorrow at the earliest because of pollution. Well, it's obviously a huge disappointment for Paris.

It had really hoped to have that emblematic moment with the men swimming down the Seine today. They've spent an absolute fortune on trying to clean it up. The total bill has come to €1.4 billion. It's been a long time in the planning, but every time there's heavy rainfall, there is still dangerous, often human fecal matter that is swept into the Seine and it drives the levels of bacteria up to unsafe levels. The mayor of Paris herself, and Hidalgo, she had swum in the Seine only recently to show that it's possible to do.

They want to make the city clean, pull residents in future to be able to swim at bathing sites. So it's a lot of disappointment in Paris today about this. Well, let's hope that the race does take place tomorrow and that the vision of all these athletes in the river will banish all sort of shit in the Seine. But after this olympic river activity ends, would be returning to a beautiful, tranquil tourist river. Is that right?

Well, it's interesting because that is the vision most people have of Paris. But in fact, the river Seine has a huge amount of commercial traffic. If you go and look and stand on one of the bridges, you will see barges going up and down carrying sand, cement, cereal, barley, wheat, that's come down from the agricultural regions further upstream and gets transferred onto barges taken through the river and down the river for export. And I went on a container ship, actually, from the Paris docks. So a huge container ship, longer than a soccer field, to see how the river is used for very different sorts of commercial activities.

Rosie Blore
Sounds like fantastic tourism. To go on a container ship on the Seine. What did you see? Well, you know, obviously we got kitted out first with life jackets and were given a sort of security drill, because these are big vessels that are taking cargo all sorts. It can be cars, sometimes luxury goods, champagne, wine, anything that is destined for export.

Sophie Petter
And it's taken down river to Lou Havre, at the channel port, and then on to markets around the world. But what's astonishing is that the port of Paris where we set off from is this vast port almost hidden, you wouldn't know from the river. It's the there, it's hidden behind sort of banks of grasses. If you look at some of the early 20th century paintings of the Seine, you can see how much traffic there used to be. There were barges filled with coal, with wood, with wine, moored end to end along the quays.

And there was at one point, before the second world war, three times more cargo was transported up and down the river than is the case today. And there's still quite an impressive amount of traffic. That's nearly 20 million tons of goods transported each year. But often when Paris thinks about how to create a greener city, it's always about public metros, it's about cycling more, it's about walking, but it's not often about the river. And that's the bit of the puzzle that sometimes gets overlooked.

Rosie Blore
And could the river do more heavy lifting? Well, when I spoke to Stephane Raison, who's the director of Europa, that's a firm that links together the ports of Paris with Rouen and Lou Havre, he very much thinks that there could be a lot more to transport goods along the river. It's a very quiet form of transport, of course, and when they have more hydrogen fueled barges, it'll be quieter still. I went upstream to the Port de Bercy. Now that used to be the centre of wine distribution for France.

Sophie Petter
These days it's pretty quiet, there's very little going on. But on the side there, I found a whole row of electric vans waiting for Ikea to deliver by barge entire pre packed orders for home delivery within Paris. And every morning at about 05:00 a.m. before dawn, the barge arrives with these crates. They're put onto the electric vehicles and off they go.

So it felt like a good example of what could be done in Paris to use the river more and make the transport greener. So the future is a working seine with much more functionality then, of course. It depends, I suppose, how much more commerce you put on the Seine. I think that there could be a conflict if it got to the point where tourists felt that every time they tried to take that photo from the bridge and under their feet was going a barge full of waste. It might not be the picture they wanted, but I think from listening to people who are working on exactly this subject, I got the impression that it could do a lot more without necessarily reaching a point where the SEN felt to chock a block with commercial vehicles spoiling the view.

Rosie Blore
What, if any city can get the aesthetics versus functionality right? I'm sure it will be Paris that manages it. Sophie, thank you so much. Enjoy the Olympics. Thanks very much.

Sophie Petter
I will do.

Rosie Blore
Have you already listened to the first four episodes of Boom, our new podcast on the generation that blew up american politics? If not, you're gonna look and sound really uncool. The first one is free. You'll have to subscribe to listen to the rest. Go on, listen.

Boom. It's brilliant.

John Bleasdale
In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkettsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. A year later, their footage was found. John Bleasdale writes about films for the Economist. The tagline was designed to confuse fact and fiction and create doubt in the viewers mind as to exactly what they were seeing. Was this a movie?

Was this a documentary? Were the people involved actually Harmedhez? When the Blair Witch project premiered 25 years ago at the Sundance Film Festival, flyers were distributed by the publicity department featuring the faces of the protagonists, with a phone number asking anybody who had information to call a local sheriff's office, thus furthering the confusion.

This campaign of posters and flyers and word of mouth, coupled with one of the earliest Internet campaigns of any movie, was a huge success in creating massive buzz for a movie with an extremely low budget, the film had cost a mere $35,000 to shoot. Post production boosted that budget by about ten times the figure, to $300,000. But the film would then go on to earn a whopping $250 million, making it, dollar for Dollar, one of the most profitable films of all time. Not only was the film commercially successful, it became a cultural phenomenon, arguably the first film to go viral. The Blair Witch project is probably the most famous example of a found footage film, that is a horror film which purports to be taken from existing footage filmed by people while things are really happening.

Sophie Petter
The daily violence of the strong overcoming of the weak. Jack.

John Bleasdale
One of the first really influential found footage films was a 1980 shocker from italian filmmaker Ruggiero Deodatto called cannibal Holocaust. Ready? Ok. This film is extremely gruesome and not for the faint hearted. And though appreciated by horror aficionados, many of the filmgoers were unaware of the film when the Blair witch project hit the cinemas.

In some ways, the cannibal Holocaust was a victim of its own success. The actors all signed contracts which forbade them from doing publicity for a year while the film was in cinemas. This led many to believe that the actors had in fact been killed during the film, and what was being shown was in effect, a snuff movie. You look a little blurry there. Let me zoom out on you.

The Blair Witch Project tells a story of three student filmmakers who decide to go into the woods to discover the facts around a local legend involving the titular blair witch. However, things soon start to go wrong as strange noises are heard at night, small piles of stone start to appear, and the gang of three intrepid explorers can't find their way back to the car.

Rewatching the film a quarter of a century after it was first released is an exercise in timeless terror. For all its use of modern technology, this is a film that plays into an atavistic fear. Being lost in the woods with night closing in. It manages to create this fear with no special effects, no gore, no monsters, no CGI, just the sense that things are making noises close by or far away, and we don't know what they are.

The acting is completely convincing, and unlike many horror films, we actually do care what happens to these three who really haven't done anything wrong. Especially Heather Donahue, who is the leader of the group and who finally finds herself taking responsibility for what she has unwittingly brought them to. I am so, so sorry for everything that has happened. Some of these performances were to a degree provoked by the filming conditions in which the director insisted that their real names be used as part of the film. And also the film crew would move things around at night, disturb their sleep, and generally make them feel similar to the state of mind and distress that their characters would feel.

The long term legacy of the Blair Witch project is far reaching. There were a whole swathe of found footage horror movies that followed in its wake, from the massively successful paranormal activity to films such as the spanish horror film rec. More directly, the Blair Witch Project also inspired direct sequels. Book of Blair Witch two was critically panned, and there have since been remakes of the original, but none of them captured that zeitgeist which the 25 year old horror movie had managed.

Rosie Blore
That's all for this episode of the intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch@podcastconomist.com. we'll see you back here tomorrow.

Nickayla
Hey, it's Nickayla from side Hustle Pro. From a local business to a global corporation, partnering with bank of America gives your operation access to exclusive, exclusive digital tools, award winning insights, and business solutions so powerful you'll make every move matter. Visit bankofamerica.com bankiforbusiness to learn more. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America na Copyright 2024.