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African Internet Users Pay about $1,800 for 1GB of Data

If you think that you`re paying a lot of money for your Internet connection, then think again. African Internet users pay an average sum equals to 90 times the amount of money American Internet users are paying for their connection. The price for Internet usage in America currently stands on $20 for 1 GB of data per month, but their African counterparts are asked to pay about $1,800 for the same amount of data.

Minister of Information and Communication, Mutahi Kagwe, addressed the participants at the Africa Information and Communication Technology conference, and said that the high cost of the Internet is due to the fact that there`s only one fiber optic cable that connects Africa to the rest of the world and that traffic on the cable is very expensive. "The only undersea fiber optic cable to connect several African countries and the rest of the world ... remains the most expensive in the world and contributes to the high costs of bandwidth in Africa," said Kagwe.

Africa has the lowest Internet users` percentage in the world with only 1.5 percent out of Africa`s estimated 906 million people is using the Internet. Hong Kong, for example, has more than 70 percent of the people connected to the Internet. Kagwe believes that this is an impossible situation that slows down the progress of the already poorest countries in the world.