Africa may leapfrog infotech infrastructure

Africa’s size, geography and historical legacy prevented or stymied many early attempts at connecting cities and sometimes entire regions to communication networks.

This lack of legacy wiring, and huge gaps in networking infrastructure may actually turn out to be a benefit. Smarter Technology has a new post up on the leapfrog effect that may come into play in African infrastructure development. Without the need to repair and improve systems there is an opportunity to jump ahead to the latest innovations in wireless, cloud-based information technology systems.

Internet use is still fairly low (as a percentage of the population) in Africa, based mainly on wireless and cellphone devices. As cloud services and wireless systems expand these numbers may change radically.