In West Africa, the scramble for Internet access has spread from Sierra Leone, which is at the bottom of the world ranking of nations in terms of development, to relatively prosperous Ivory Coast, U.S. officials and industry analysts say.
Experts from U.S. aid agency USAID, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Navy, the State Department and the private sector have begun country-by-country configuration and installation of Internet services in some 20 selected states under the so-called Leland initiative.
The Internet, a group of computers interlinked and exchanging information using the latest technology, was first developed by the U.S. Defense Department and now has more than 20 million regular users worldwide.
Its use in Africa is currently limited by the lack of local gateways or nodes located within African countries and the prohibitive cost of dialing to nodes abroad.
The U.S. scheme will help ease the cost of installing local gateways in Africa that will cut communications costs for users.
Basically it will involve equipment, training, personnel and subsidies satellite links for a three-year period to create a national gateway for Cote d'Ivoire," U.S. embassy spokesman Thomas Hart said of the Ivorian scheme, which is typical.
The initial visits to the countries have been made and in the case of Cote d'Ivoire visits by State Department and USAID specialists were taken in May and again in July," Hart said.
South Africa is alone in having several private companies offering Internet access. The Paris-based airline communications company SITA offers a CompuServe node in most cities in Africa for local dialup but at a cost of about $28 an hour.
Africa Online, owned by Boston-based International Wireless, has started a service in Kenya, which is being exploited by the country's well-organized tour industry.
Sierra Leone's state-owned telephone company SIERRATEL said this week it would be in a position to offer a full Internet service later this year in the country devastated by five years of civil war. The scheme falls under the U.S. initiative.
Managing Director Frank Jarret said SIERRATEL was negotiating with two unnamed U.S. telecommunications companies to help launch the service, but he did not specify their role.
Critics have questioned the rush for the Internet by governments with more pressing needs, such as water and health services for their people, for whom the telephone is a luxury.
But policymakers in Washington, backed by Vice-President Al Gore, see the Internet in Africa in the larger realm of open access to information as a means of advancing democracy and enhancing the environment for free enterprise.
Access to the Internet can be a powerful tool for Africa's economic and social development," Gore said in a message to an information conference in Johannesburg in May.
Named after congressman Mickey Leland who died in a plane crash in Ethiopia in 1989, the five-year U.S. program will provide 20 or so African countries with access to the Internet and connections to the Global Information Infrastructure.
U.S. officials said the list of countries was fluid and could change where things did not work out. It now includes Benin, Burundi, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.