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n 2011, visitors to Africa looking for war, famine and pestilencehave to dig a lot deeper than in the past. At Nairobi’s JomoKenyatta International Airport, hardened missionaries have beenreplaced by gap-year students clustered around iPads, and on thestreets the bad old days have given way to another holy trinity:Premier League football, Toyota Hiace minibuses and cellphones.Africa’s national economies have grown consistently over thelast decade. Even in the depths of the financial crisis, GDP growthexceeded three per cent: more than in any other region of theworld. Improvements in security, Chineseinvestments and soaring commodity priceshave all played a part in transforming thecontinent’s prospects.Beyond macroeconomic factors, though,technology is driving profound changes toeconomies and societies across the con-tinent. The hundreds of millions of mobilehandsets and billions of airtime minutes onlygo some way to describe the scope of entre-preneurship that underpins Africa’s techno-logical revolution. From mobile paymentsto telemedicine andadvertising, there is acommon pulse of in-novation, driven byan irrepressible com-bination of aspirationand necessity. This isthe new Africa.
25,000
M-PESAAGENTSINKENYA
ow popular are mobile phones in Kenya?
Just ask the hordes of airtime vendors work-ing Nairobi’s gridlocked traffic, selling scratch-cards from garlands around their necks. Thecountry has a population of 40 million. At theturn of the century, the number of mobile-phone users wasaround200,000.Therearenow22million.The devices have supplanted not just the country’s fixed-line telephony industry, but also the manner in which moneyis spent. Companies led by Vodafone’s mobile-payments giantM-PESAhavefilledthevacuumleftbythemoribundlocalbanksin a country in which, according to the World Bank, aroundhalfthepopulationliveunderthe$1.25(77p)-per-daypovertyline.One such company is PesaPal, a web- and mobile-paymentplatform set up by Agosta Liko, 35, that integrates withKenya’smainmobile-payment services.M-PESA (M for mobile; “pesa” is Swahili for money) emergedfrom a joint project between the UK’s Department for Interna-tionalDevelopmentandlocaloperatorSafaricom.Itsmodelwastousetheexistingnetworkofmobile-creditsellersthathadsprung
upinpetrolstations,generalstoresandbarsacrossthecountry.Peoplewerealreadyexchangingairtimeasawayoftransferringmoney.M-PESAformalisedthevalueexchange,turningthousandsof sales agents into micro bank branches and millions of mobilephones into wire-transfer services. Users can store up to 50,000shillings(£350)intheiraccount,withSafaricomtak-ingatransactionfeeofbetween30and150shillingswheneverausersendsmoney.In2010therewere9.5millionM-PESAaccounts,comparedto8milliontra-ditionalbankaccountsinKenya.A 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technologyreport said that 75 per cent of all households withan M-PESA account used the service to store money. Its successhas opened the door to an economy that is no longer entirelycash-based,sparkingawaveofinnovationfromlocaltechnologyentrepreneurssuchasAgostaLiko.When M-PESA was emerging, Liko was in the US, work-ing on payments, wire transfers, fraud management and loansprocessingasasystemsengineeratFirstCitizens’BankinRaleigh,NorthCarolina.In2007hetookthisexperiencehometoKenyatofound Verviant, a software-services business. Here he saw thattheemergentmobile-paymentsindustrychainwasmissingalink.“Mobilepaymentsarefortransferringmoneytoyourgrandmotheror your children,” he says. “There was no world-classpaymentsystemtargetedatconsumers.Thereare two million Visa-card accounts versus morethan16millionmobile-moneyaccounts,sowebuiltasolutionthatwouldallowanyKenyantopayusingmobilemoneyandalsoallowKenyanbusinessestoacceptVisapaymentsfromabroad.”PesaPal aims to bridge the gap between mobile accounts andcompanybankaccounts,intheprocessbreakingdownamajorbar-rierinthedevelopmentofecommerce.ItisalreadypartneringwithZuku(
see next page
),thefastest-growingISPinKenya,aswellastheNairobiStockExchange,wherethepubliccanbuystockinfor-mationusingmobilecredit,and,hehopes,tradestocksdirectly.“Right now, Kenyans pay to pay, or pay to make payments.Wewanttodoawaywiththis.”
 
Above 
: Agosta Liko, Nairobi
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f anyone qualifies as a grandee of 
Kenya’sonlineecosystemitisJoeMucheru.Like many of his generation of entrepre-neurs,Mucheru,42,returnedtohishome-land after a stint working abroad – in hiscase, the UK – attracted by the untappedpotentialoftheinternetineastAfrica.“When I got my first installation of Netscape [in 1997] it came on a floppy disk with Netscape 1.0.It cost $1,000 [£620] for the installation, and the installer thenwent o with the floppy disk,” says Mucheru, now regional leadforsub-SaharanAfricaatGoogleandoceleadforEastAfricaatGoogleKenya.Therewasgovernmentresistance,too.Muchoftheindustrywasstillnation-alised and there was unease over the proliferationof communication technology. “The president hadbannedfaxmachines;therewasthiswholeideathatinformationbeingspreadbyfaxeswasdangerous,”Mucherusays.“[PresidentDanielarap]Moihadputoutadecreethattherewasnoemailingovernment.”In 1998 a new telecommunications act broke up the statemonopolyoverthesectorandaninfrastructurestartedtodevelop.The state-owned internet service provider Jambonet began toexpand its coverage and lowered prices. “But sometimes therewere seven-day timeouts when Jambonet was down,” Mucherusays.“Thewholecountryhadtowaitfortheinternet.”
Below 
: Joe Muchero, Google Kenya Nairobi office
Mucheru, together with Njeri Rionge, launched Wananchi,which means “citizen” in Swahili. An internet service pro-vider, the company pioneered “triple play” – TV, internet andtelephoneservices–inKenya.Businessgrewasthetelecomssec-tor began signing distribution deals with international broad-casters to feed the local appetite for European football. (LastAugust the group signed a merger deal with Mitsumi CableVisionandrebrandedasZuku.)InJune2007MucherujoinedGoogleasheadofitsnewAfricaoperation. At the time, the company was unsure of its strategy;it just knew that there was potential in the huge concentrationof local 15- to 25-year-olds with anappetiteforinformation.WithGoogle’smuscle behind him, Mucheru is work-ingtoremovetheremainingconstraintsto the sector’s development – accessand content. Bandwidth prices mayhavefalleninAfrica, butthecost totheconsumer has not fallen in step asoperatorshavebeenslowtoupdatepricingstructuresorrolloutwirelessnetworksand3Gservices.MucheruhopesAfricanbusinessesandindividualscanbecomecontentcreators.To“seedthemarket”forcontentgrowth,GooglelaunchedclassifiedplatformGoogleTraderontothewebin2009.“You have to have sufficient content that people can actuallymonetiseitandbeabletodotheadvertisingandsoon,”hesays.“Right now the world average is one domain for 90 people. InAfricait’sonedomainfor10,000people.”
 
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Toamasina,MadagascarSt PaulReunionBaie duJacobet,MauritiusToliara,MadagascarMaputo,MozambiqueMtunzini, SAMelkbosstrand,Cape TownSwakopmund,NamibiaMogadishu,SomaliaMombasa,KenyaDar esSalaam,Tanzania
Cacuaco, Angola
Pointe Noir, CongoMuanda, DRC
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Sao Tome,and Principe
Altavista,
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Cacuaco, Angola
Pointe Noir, CongoMuanda, DRC
Luanda,Angola
Sao Tome,and Principe
Altavista,
Canary Islands
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Tripoli,
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In2001,asinglefibre-opticcableranthelengthoftheAfricancoastline,connectingSouthAfricatoEuropeviathecontinent’swestcoast.Africahassincelaidanothernineunderseacables,withmoretocome.In2009,whenthreecablefirms–EASSy,SeacomandTEAMS–racedtomakelandfallinKenya(
 see
WIRED
07.09
).Therewereconcernsthattheywouldcannibaliseeachotherinanoversaturatedmarket.Allthreearestillinrudehealth.Africa’sappetiteformobiletelephonyanddatacreatedademandthathasconsistentlyoutstrippedthesupplyofbandwidthandtheexpectationsoftheglobalmarket.
 WEST COASTMEDITERRANEANUNDERSEA CABLESEAST COAST
SAT3/SAFEMaIN OnEGLO-1WACSACESAexSEASTEAMsSeacomLion2LionEASSyAtlas OffshoreSEA-ME-WE-4I-ME-WEEIG
ActiveActiveActiveQ2 2011Q3 2012Q3 2012Q2 2012ActiveActiveActiveActiveActiveActiveActiveActiveQ2 2013
340 Gbps320 Gbps320 Gbps1,920 Gbps1,280 Gbps1,280 Gbps1,280 Gbps1,280 Gbps1,300 Gbps2,500 Gbps5,120 Gbps5,120 Gbps4,720 Gbps3,840 Gbps3,840 Gbps12,800 Gbps
NB Several smaller Mediterranean cables not shown
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