Hey Jon, Thanks so much for this! I spoke to a guy working for MIH in Kenya and there are talks of serious broadband improvements in Kenya by next year, which would be fabulous. Maybe you should find out more for all of us? Cheers man! - Stii via FriendFeed MT Plugin

The applications to follow are definitely the ones that leverage the mobile telephony infrastructure. An overwhelming portion of African users have no convenient access beyond cellular terminals - and that has spawned very innovative solutions based on existing and widely accessible technologies such as SMS. Examples abound such as <a href="http://www.safaricom.co.ke/index...">Mpesa</a>, <a href="http://www.celpay.com/zm/">Celpay</a>, <a href="http://www.etranzact.com/Web...">Etranzact</a> and everyone else who is thriving in that formerly almost entirely cash-bound insecure environment. Underdeveloped banking and underdeveloped fixed telecommunications infrastructures are huge opportunities. - Jean-Marc Liotier via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Hey Jonathan, Great article, and its nice to see Africa getting some focus for a change. Often, tech news here is shadowed by what is happening in the rest of the tech world. There's a lot happening in South Africa, and not just by start-ups. Companies like Naspers/MIH/Media24 are investing heavily in internet initiatives too. As an example check out http://blogs.24.com to see a highly active blog community using platforms built and hosted in South Africa. I look forward to seeing future African articles. - Neill Adamson via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Less interesting in my opinion are the aggregators such as <a href="http://www.afrigator.com/">Afrigator</a>and social networks such as <a href="http://www.phpizabi.net/">PHPizabi</a> based <a href="http://www.naijapals.com/">Naijapals</a> (hi Dguy !) who are busy at niche marketing replicating existing technological models to fill the nooks and crannies that mainstream social sites are neglecting. But because of the low penetration of PC-type personal computers, they will only thrive among the diaspora and the educated elite. - Jean-Marc Liotier via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Sorry for the spam. Please RWW moderators remove my duplicated and truncated post. Apparently Friendfeed has a comment length limit... And in addition the edits made on FriendFeed are not reflected back on RWW... - Jean-Marc Liotier via FriendFeed MT Plugin