To Americans, it may seem as if the whole world is wired. It isn’t, as the case of Africa shows. But, as the same case also shows, it seems to be slowly getting there.

Only 11 of Africa’s 54 countries had local Internet access at the end of 1996, but by last February all 54 did, at least in their capital cities, reports Jensen, an independent consultant based in Port St. Johns, South Africa.

With an estimated population of 780 million, Africa now has some 25,000 computers permanently connected to the Internet and about 1.5 million Internet users. One million of these wired folk are in South Africa, leaving only about 500,000 among the 734 million people on the rest of the continent—a ratio of about one Internet user for every 1,500 people. In North America and Europe, the average is about one Internet user for every four people, and the worldwide average is about one for every 38. Though Internet use is less common in Africa than in much of the rest of the developing world (Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, have one user for every 125 people), Africa is ahead of South Asia, which has one user for every 2,500 inhabitants.

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