Ugandans spend $18 million per annum on Internet access

That's a headline from yesterday's New Vision.

The story excludes vital pieces of information to understand that number:

1) How much of that money is spent by individuals? Corporations? NGOs? One guy watching YouTube at UNDP?

2) How much of that money is for a permanent connection versus small fees at Internet cafes?

3) How many people are actually using the internet?

The answer to the third question, according to Google, is 750,000 as of September 2007, about 2.6 percent of the population. According to Wikipedia, which is getting its information from the CIA World Fact Book, Uganda ranks 86th in terms of the raw number of Internet users, but the ranking cannot be sorted according to the percent of people who use the Internet.

This map shows connectivity as a percentage of the population, but alas, everything in the 1 - 10 percent range is the same ice-blue color. (The image is a little small here - try this for a bigger view.)



The Wikipedia article, however, ranks Kenya at 54th in terms of the number of users (just below 3 million), and this is 7.5 percent of the population. That's a pretty big difference in the number of users considering that the populations of Uganda and Kenya are about 30 million and 35 million respectively.

Part of this could be explained by the Vision article, which says,

Uganda's Internet costs are the highest in the region. It costs $2,300 for accessing 512 mega bits per second per month whereas in Kenya, the 512 mega bits cost $500.

That's a huge price difference. Internet in Uganda is prohibitively expensive. At a fast internet cafe, it will cost about Ush 3,000 per hour ($1.70). It may cost less per hour somewhere else, but the speed of the connection may be so slow that the users ends up spending more time, and therefore more money, to get the same information.

Home internet is also ridiculously expensive. The MTN Broadband Plan, newly launched and one of the CHEAPEST services available, is Ush 295,000 for set up alone. That's about $174. That's a lot of money - anywhere - but especially in Uganda. And that only gets you the basic set up - a monthly subscription package is on top of that.

A doctor at Mulago, Uganda's top referral hospital, makes about Ush 500,000 per month ($294), and a teacher at a government school makes about Ush 200,000 per month ($117). Neither of these educated members of Uganda's upper-middle class can afford their own internet connection.

While the Internet is not considered a basic endowed right (not yet, at least), I find it highly problematic that it's so incredibly costly in Uganda. It's important for people to have access to the Internet for loads of reasons that have nothing to do with BoingBoing. What about someone who wanted to go online and anonymously get information about HIV/AIDS? An NGO looking for a grant or some other kind of assistance? A student trying to find out what other kids his or her age are learning? Or for someone who wanted to start e-commerce? Or keep in touch with friends and relatives abroad?

There are a million reasons why people in Uganda need the internet. And all of them are worth more than $174 a month or $1.70 per hour, but need to cost less.

For more on internet connectivity in Africa, see White African's post on the topic. There's a You Tube video on the topic, but my internet connection is too slow to watch it. Whose idea was it to disseminate information about African internet connectivity via YouTube, a mode almost completely unavailable to people in Africa?