In Kenya, the arrival of the Seacom undersea cable has been heralded as the start of Kenya's great leap forward: the country finally taking advantage of improved connectivity to the global communications infrastructure to make developments in ICT, and compete on an equal footing with other emerging economies. But could Kenya be facing a digital divide of its own, not just externally but within its borders? For availability does not translate into accessibility or use, and at present the penetration rate for internet use remains very low.

In 2008, Kenya boasted 3 million internet users, representing a penetration rate of just 7.9 percent, ranking it seventh amongst African countries (Stats). While this represented a growth rate of 1,400 percent since 2000, Kenya is still very much a dilettante when it comes to making use of ICT compared to other developing countries such as Vietnam and Hungary. The reasons for this are reducible to two: infrastructure and cost.

Presently, while waiting for two undersea cables to connect East Africa to the global internet "spine," Kenya's telecommunications infrastructure is incapable of providing the kind of bandwidth that would allow widespread use of technologies such as web conferencing or large-scale call centre outsourcing. Instead, ISPs have found themselves reliant on satellite connections, passing the costs on to their customers, who pay among the highest relative connection rates in the world. Growth in the ICT sector has been slowed; it has also meant that those who might consider having an internet connection at home have been deterred and continue predominantly to use commercial connections, either at their places of work or at internet cafés.

In addition to connection costs, hardware also remains an expensive consideration for Kenya's would-be netizens. With an average per capita income of less than USD 800 a year, even the cheapest and most rudimenatry netbooks remain an extravagance for most Kenyans. Coupled with the realisation that there remain large areas of the country without a reliable electricity supply, it is easy to see why computer and internet use is so low, and also why it is concentrated in urban areas.

This is not to say that rural areas have been left to languish in information ignorance, however. There have been private initiatives to provide basic computers, linked to satellite receivers and solar panels to provide access to the internet in a number of areas. These efforts, however, are not part of any coherent telecommunications planning, and the results have been isolated and faltering. Those who have succeeded in making such endeavours work owe none of the progress they have made or their success to the government or to corporate entities. In fact, they were spurred into action because said parties are guilty of having neglected their needs.

Nevertheless, while computer use may be low, the mobile communications sector has shown tremendous growth, connecting disparate areas of the country in ways that could only have been imagined a decade ago. There are close to 10 million mobile phone users in Kenya, enjoying coverage across all but the remotest areas of the country. Already, technologies such as mobile payments and real-time price-checking have transformed the way business is conducted between individuals and businesses alike. The rate of adoption of mobile broadband is anticipated to outstrip that of Europe in the next five years, and as an increasing number of advanced handsets come on to the market, a higher number of people will be able to take advantage of this improved connectivity to harness the power of the world wide web.

For infrastructure will remain a problem. It is already possible to engineer a phone charger that will function via a car battery, or to buy a portable solar charger to keep a mobile phone powered. A computer is a different prospect: until all areas of the country have a reliable and affordable source of electricity, a laptop or desktop computer will remain an expensive and cumbersome proposition for many individuals, more likely to gather dust than to be used productively. These same individuals, however, are likely to already own and operate mobile phones and are currently an untapped market who could easily be persuaded to make use of mobile broadband technology were they provided with the right tools and incentives.

So, will the undersea cables provide the light-year leap in development that has been promised? Perhaps. It is undeniable that an increase in national bandwidth capacity and what should be a corresponding decrease in costs to consumers could drive greater growth in the ICT sector. In turn, this should stimulate an increase in home broadband connection among the middle classes, as professionals take their work home with them and individuals live more of their lives online. At least, this is the scenario that has been touted so far. What has not been promoted to as great an extent is the synergy that could arise, and the new technologies that could develop, as a result of mobile users taking advantage of internet connectivity through their handsets.

Were local telecommunications firms to tap into the latent market, and if local ICT firms did more to provide attractive content, they would provide a significant "pull" factor to encourage more Kenyans onto the internet via their mobile phones. It could be, therefore, that despite increased bandwidth, it will be mobile phones rather than computers that become the driving force for Kenya's ICT development. If so, then rather than playing catch-up with developed economies, Kenya could find itself at the bleeding edge of a new communications paradigm.

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