“The wind of change is blowing through this continent and, whether we like it or not, this growth of [African] national consciousness is a political fact” I had the privilege to go to Togo in West Africa last year at the invitation of Togo Telecom, a member of the West Africa Festoon System consortium. Finding that there was no direct flight from the U.S. to Togo did nothing to dispel my qualms about going there, nor did the doctor’s advice which ran to ten pages. However, the sixteen hour flight punctuated by a stop in Paris was not unpleasant and, as we touched down at Lome airport, I remarked to myself on how lush this sub-Saharan strip of territory is.
AFRICANS ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES (WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS)
By Julian Rawle
The passport stamping process was disappointingly efficient and conducted in a very relaxed atmosphere, transport was laid on, and soon I found myself in the hotel lobby. A room in noticeably pristine condition was waiting for me and all the amenities worked. “Aha!” I thought, “I bet there’s no international telephone line.” Shortly thereafter, I was talking to my wife on a line that was considerably clearer than the one I get from Verizon Wireless in Massachusetts and the tariff was similar! The point of my anecdotal ramblings is to highlight how we, representatives of the developed world, have preconceptions and prejudices about the developing world which create a sense of reality ranging from rabidly delusional to just a little skewed. These stereotypes prevent us from seeing a continent, a people, an economy, and a business environment with its fair share of problems and some potential. And it is not just about Africa that I make these comments. Sitting down to dinner with the family of a former Foreign Minister of Cyprus, I was quizzed by a couple of glamorous aunts about my experiences of living and working in Russia. Having explained to them that not everything you see in the Media is what it appears to be, one of these fine educated ladies asked, “But do they have television?”
So I say that it is time to look at Africa with a fresh perspective and clearly I am not alone. Yes, of course Bono and Bob Geldof are with me and maybe also, for the time being at least, Paul Wolfowitz. But there seem to be a lot of less prominent entities that are also sensing the wind of change. Among these entities are the telecom investors, some entrepreneurs and some blue chip incumbents, who have suddenly developed the nerve to suggest that a submarine cable system connecting a region of well over 800 million albeit mainly impoverished people to the rest of the world might actually make economic sense. The quotation at the top of this article is from a speech made by Harold Macmillan, British Prime Minister, in Cape Town in 1960. Yes, that’s right. His words appear to be relevant today, almost fifty years after they were uttered. Things take a long time to develop in Africa. In the last fifteen years, only ten submarine projects which included landings on the African continent outside of the Mediterranean were proposed. Interestingly, of these ten seemingly risky projects, only one crazy notion to encircle the entire continent with a single cable system was actually abandoned! Now, the revival of the worldwide submarine fiber optic market has touched even the shores of Africa. Suddenly, we have fourteen domestic and international projects with African content at various stages of development (see Exhibit 1). For sure, there is a lot of posturing and competition for the same limited amounts of available capital so this time round, the percentage of “drop-outs” will be higher but it is clear that Africa is finally going to become better connected to the rest of the world and maybe also at lower prices. There are a number of reasons to think that this time the prospects for an African submarine fiber optic market are real. First of all, I go back to Macmillan’s words and focus on the premonition of a developing national consciousness. In today’s parlance, I think this means that “Africans are doing it for themselves”. Until recently, African 31