The right connections: Beefing up mobile-phone and internet penetration in Africa

Print section Print Rubric:  Beefing up mobile-phone and internet penetration Print Headline:  The right connections Print Fly Title:  Connectivity UK Only Article:  standard article Issue:  The leapfrog model Fly Title:  The right connections WITH ITS SNAZZY technology hubs and army of bright young programmers, Kenya can rightly claim to be east Africa’s tech startup nation. It was here that mobile money first took off, and it is here that off-grid solar power is making its biggest impact. Even the election in August was meant to be a showpiece of tech wizardry, with voting stations automatically beaming the results via mobile internet to a computer in the capital, Nairobi, to prevent tampering. But it turned out that about a quarter of the country’s 41,000 polling stations did not have mobile-phone reception and sent in incomplete results, leading to allegations of vote-rigging. That helped persuade the courts to order a ...