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GEOGRAPHICAL ASPECT OF THE AFRICAN

INTEGRATION IN THE GLOBAL INFORMATION

NETWORK

Senegal and Mali comparative research

Jonathan STEBIG, Globalization Essay, UCL

- March 2006 -

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Nowadays, Africa is still relatively poorly equipped in the field of New Information

and Communication Technology (N.I.C.T). Nevertheless, this sector is developing rapidly.

Indeed, connectivity is increasing at a rate never before seen on this continent for any other

economic activity. In order to broadly understand the place of Africa in the communication

network, I will introduce my essay with some data. This continent gathers twelve percent of

population for only two percent of the global telecommunication network (International

Telecommunication Union), which represent two main lines for one thousand inhabitants on

average compare to Europe, where the ratio is 314 for one thousand. However, to give only

one example, the number of fixed telephone line has doubled between 1996 and 2002

(Chéneau-Loquay, 1999 [b]). Thus, the situation is paradoxical; despite a very low integration

to the information society, the establishment of NICT is increasing quickly.

Furthermore, this technology is even presented by the G7 as the new universal key to

development, and the WB emphasizes somewhat dramatically if African countries do not

succeed in taking advantage of the information revolution and in surfing the mighty wave of

technological change, they will sink below (Chéneau-Loquay, 2003).

We are faced with a situation of domination of the international organisation (World Bank,

International Monetary Fund) and multinational firms on the infrastructure and the services,

which limit the room for manoeuvre of States in Africa.

What I would like to show in this essay is the geographical aspect of the African integration in

the global information networks through the comparison of two countries in Africa: Senegal,

and Mali. In the first part, I will essentially focus on the establishment, use, and development

of the NICT in these two countries. Successively, I will territorial imbalance within each

country, where there is a common inequality between the ICT network in cities and major

town compare to the rural areas. Next, it seems to me important to analyse the collective use

of the NICT in the “telecenter”, which risk to upset the traditional hierarchies in each country.

Next, in the second part, I would like to deal with the question in explaining the geographical

reasons of the different involvement of both, Mali and Senegal in the information society.

Four elements might be noticed: first, the localisation of the country within the continent;

second, the size of the territory which is important in relation to the ICT networking; third, the

high correlation between the health a country produces and the basic telecommunication

services in the country; and fourth, the tremendous role of the Diaspora and international

migration in the ICT integration.

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The territorial disparity is a phenomenon present in the whole Africa. Broadly

speaking, there is a general imbalance between the capitals, which gather the quasi totality of

telecenter, main lines and connection and the rural areas, which are generally bad served.

Furthermore, this continent is still represented by a rural society, with seventy to eighty

percent of people who reside in rural places (Cheneau-Loquay, 2004 [a]). However, this

problem is more complex, and the situation is sensibly different between Senegal and Mali.

In Senegal, there is Sixty percent of the telecenter for only one quarter of the population.

Moreover, the costs are two to three times higher in Tombacounda (a rural town), than in

Dakar. However, this situation is improving: the "autonomization" of territories giving power

to the rural communities through the decentralization program launched in 2001 by the

government. In the continuity of this program, concessions have been granted to private

individuals; thus, there is a proliferation of telecentre, and forty percent are outside Dakar.

The aim of the communication ministry is to ensure that no citizen is more than five

kilometres away from a communication tool (Guignard, 2003).

The situation in Mali is much more contrasted, with an obsolete communication network, a

frequency of breakdown high. For instance, the capital, Bamako, gathers seventy five percents

of the ICT network for only ten percent of the whole population. Despite the desire of the

president Konaré to link up the 701 communes through an Internet network (“the

technological jump”) in order to avoid the construction of classical infrastructures, the duality

between the capital and the background is still representative in Mali (Dulau C, 2000).

This geographical disparity represents a considerable limit to the integration of these countries

in the information society, especially in Mali, where the rural areas are still isolated. While

the capital is well linked to the communication network, the major part of the population is

still marginalized from this communication tool.

I would like now to place an emphasis on the role of telecentre, which could be

responsible for many traditional customs disruption within these countries. Before to analyse

these shifts, I would like to notice the collective use of the ICT, which is a general

characteristic in Africa. This tendency results from the high cost of material and

communications. This could be a solution faced with the elitist private use of these tools. To

illustrate that point, only one datum: there is one user for three computers on average in the

telecenter in Africa (Lancry C, 2002).

The traditional hierarchy risk to be disrupted. While the desire to move abroad had occurred

before the establishment of TIC in Africa, the extraversion of the countries is increasing. The

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proliferation of telecentre represents one larger window toward the “West”, a way of evasion

for people who are still living within the homeland.

The fieldworks in the telecenter of Dakar have shown that the destination of the emails is for

41.5 percent France. Moreover, the most part of the website consulted are about the

international news (84.5 percent). The Internet access in telecentre accentuates the

“Westernisation” of young people, which are looking for jobs, school or both overseas. The

example of the town Touba is even more illustrative, this background rural area is better

connected to a global level than to the local network (Gueye C, 2003). Therefore, there is a

strenghen of international traffic in Senegal, whereas it is weaker within Africa (only one

quarter of the total international communications are within Africa).

The situation in Mali is relatively different. While the average consumption of each mailbox

is constantly increasing (in 1996, the ratio of 3%: 600 electronic mail accounts for 20000

main lines, was double the present ratio in France), this land-locked country is less

characterized by an extraversion toward the western culture, the communications overseas are

for 50 percent within the continent (Lancry C, 2002).

This disruption of traditional hierarchy seems to be a central issue for the future of Africa.

The implementation of the ICT, still badly controlled an appropriated by these countries could

represent a further path for African population to identify themselves through the western

culture, and to escape this situation of marginalization.

In this second part, I will try t elucidate the geographical reasons which explains the

different integration to the information and communication society between Mali and

Senegal.

First, there is an element that cannot be ignored: it is the localisation of the country within the

continent, and these two states represent situations extremely different.

The Senegal, located on the West coast of Africa is a great deal better linked to the TIC

networks than the Mali, located in the Sahel, and isolated from any communication networks.

To illustrate the constraint for a country to be an enclave within a continent, I will emphasize

only one element which is decisive in the case these two countries. The under sea fibre optic

cable build by ALCATEL in February 2000 around the North West coast of Africa have

permitted to Senegal to be directly connected with countries in South America and Europe.

Moreover, this fibre optic has allowed the country to get a high output internet connection,

especially in the capital, which increases the reliability of the navigation on the web. Instead,

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Mali is not near enough to this cable to take advantage of this new technology, an alternative

to the satellite which is less reliable for Internet connection (Chéneau-Loquay, 2004 [b]).

Through this instance, we can understand the crucial role of localisation in the new

information network.

Second, I would like to place an emphasis on the superficies of the territory, an

important factor in the development of communications technology. While this element is

especially representative for the extreme cases, it seems to play an important role in the two

case studies. Indeed, Mali, a 1 240 000 km² country, is far much larger than Senegal

(196 000km²). This is decisive in the networking of different places within the country, in the

sense that the maintenance of infrastructures of telecommunications, and the linkage between

remote areas is extremely easier in a less extensive space. That is why the establishment of

telecommunication infrastructures is more problematical in Mali, where the network is

dilapidated, and obsolete, which necessitate a number of maintenance faced with the high

frequency of breakdown. This country represents one of the less teledensity in the whole

world, with only 2.5 lines for one thousand inhabitants (Lancry C, 2004).

The third point I would like to deal with is about the economic situation of the

country. The correlation between the GDP and the level of integration in the

telecommunication networks can also be an element of explanation for the comparison

between Mali and Senegal. I am going to illustrate that with some figures: In Mali, the GDP is

246 $ compare to Senegal where it is more than double (520$); and if we correlate that to the

number of cellular phones for one thousand inhabitant, we notice that it is twenty times less in

Mali (0.4), than in Senegal (8.0). The number of the Internet user is also representative. In

Mali there are three times less users than in Senegal: 9.12/1000 in Mali and 32.46/1000 in

Senegal (table one in Cheneau-Loquay, 2000).

While these differences are not exclusively related to the economic situation in both, Mali and

Senegal, there is an indisputable relation between the GDP and the communication network

integration.

The last geographical element I would like to deal with is the phenomenon of

international migration. Despite the presence of Diasporas abroad is characteristic of these

two countries, the results are more efficient in Senegal.

The role of these communities who have settled abroad is to involve in the economic situation

in the homeland along with to build a network to keep the contact wit the homeland; the ICT

seems to be the usual way to communicate.

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First, I would like here to speak about the international tax on traffic calls from abroad. This

tax is paid by the operator of origin towards the one of destination; due to the much higher

incoming calls from the communities abroad toward the homeland, the Diaspora’s calls

represent one third of the benefits of the SONATEL in Senegal; and, in a less extent, one

quarter of the SOTELMA in Mali (Chéneau-Loquay, 2001). Unfortunately, the USA, aware

about this important loss of money, has decided to reform this tax in diminishing the rate of

this one, which risk to be damageable for the developing countries in general. Through this

example, we notice how far is important the networking with the communities abroad.

Second, the ICT play a role sensibly paradoxical, in the sense that we witness the

geographical extraversion of one community along wit the cultural refocusing, this

contradiction is well illustrated by the case of Touba, a secondary town in Senegal, located in

a 90 % rural area, in which the community “Mouribe” use the ICT to spread its culture and

religion through the web, but also to organize trade from Touba to every community settled in

overseas countries and reversal. Thus we are faced with a network extraversion and a

reinforcement of social and economic cohesion (Guignard T, 2004).

In conclusion, I would like to explore the other elements which are related to the ICT

integration in these two countries. Whereas the geographical analysis is appropriate to assess

the involvement of Senegal and Mali in the “information society”, there is also a sociological

explanation in this issue. Indeed, the relations of power, in different scales (family, village,

state) are extremely important to evaluate the ICT integration in the two case studies. The

sentence of the past president of Mali, Alpha Omar Konaré is very significant of these stakes

of power: “Nowadays, the one who can be present on the information auto route has a

considerable manipulation power” (Misse M, 2003).

To analyse these stake of actors, I will focus on three different scales:

First, at the national scale, the governments are not very involved in the ITC development in

their countries. Indeed, the most part of investment in this sector come from the private sector.

Thus, we may conclude that there is a fear from the states compared with the establishment of

ICT, which represent the introduction of transparency, in contradiction with their power

which often rely on control of information and knowledge. Therefore, in Senegal as in Mali,

the government tries to keep a hand over the ITC networks.

Then, in the scale of urban and rural relation, there is a will from the urban elites and the

ruling class to limit the share of information. These actors establish their power over the rural

marginalized classes through the “conservatism system” based on a general control of the

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information. The development of ICT, which introduce a conception of universal

communication, will call into question this relation of domination.

Finally, the public access to the Internet in telecentre represents an opportunity for young

people and women to free from the traditional hierarchy. Indeed, through the Internet, people

can get round the traditional way to access to knowledge and thus, limit the domination of the

ancestor and parents, in accessing the information through the web.

These three different stakes of power illustrate to which extent the ICT allowed the weakest

actors to free from the domination relationship, characteristic of these societies. Therefore, the

introduction of ICT in these countries is also disrupted by these traditional power

relationships (Misse M, 2003).

There is a last idea I would like to go thoroughly into, it is the loss of control by state. Indeed,

this new digital technology (the Internet) can bypassed the notion of territory, and that put

into question the national regulatory structure on which every nation state was build. This

challenge is especially important in developing countries, where the Structural Adjustment

Program have already undermined the role of states. Hence, the state control over territory is

overwhelmed from both; above, the power of the satellite networks are controlled by the

northern countries and their international institution (WB, WTO); but also from below, due to

the proliferation of bodies isolated in local territories linked up to the outside world (Cheneau-

Loquay, 1999 [b]). As the ICTs ignore the geographical and political constraints of

nationhood, could we not do away with the state altogether in this globalization process where

communication techniques are the driving force?

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Internet references: www.africanti.org

-Chéneau-Loquay A (2004) [a], “Communication technology, globalization and

development”, in “Globalization and communication technology in Africa”, Paris, Karthala-

MSH, *

-Chéneau-Loquay A (2004) [b], “Shape and dynamic of public access in Africa: toward a

paradoxical globalization?”, in “Globalization and communication technology in Africa”

Paris, Karthala-MSH,*

-Chéneau-Loquay A (2002) “Access and use of the Internet in Africa: the broad tendencies”,

in “Africa e Mediterraneo”, n° 41,*

-Chéneau-Loquay A (2001), “Between local an d global, which role for the African states

faced with the telecommunication development: the example of Mali and Senegal”, in

“Contemporain Africa: the State in Africa: between global and local”,*

-Chéneau-Loquay A (2000), “North and South, which Africa in the worldwide

communication networks“, in the seminar “World and centrality”, MSHA Bordeaux,*

-Chéneau-Loquay (1999) [a], “The insertion challenge of communication and information

technologies in the African economies: The example of the Internet in Senegal“, University

Lille,*

-Chéneau-Loquay (1999) [b], “Africa in global communication networks: from networks to

concrete uses”, CNRS IRD-REGARDS,

-Dulau C (2002), “The Internet in Senegal: different uses and communication networks

developed by NGOs in Dakar”, Thesis,*

-Dulau C (2000), “Communication systems, actors and trade networks in Kayes in Mali”,

thesis,*

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thesis,*

-Zongo G (2000), “Telecentre in Senegal”, Chapter 11 in “Stakes of communication

technology in Africa” directed by Chéneau-Loquay A.*

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-N’Diaye Diouf (2000), “Availabilities and uses of communication technology in exchanges

in Senegal”, Chapter 13 in “Stakes of communication technology in Africa” directed by

Chéneau-Loquay A.*

-International seminar from the 23rd to the 28th of February 2003. “The numerical gap

between North and South: Which stakes? Which partnership?”,*

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-Misse M: “Social representation, actors and power in the social appropriation of the

communication networks: research on the Internet in Cameroon” ,*

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emergence”*

-Blin O: “The growth of new technologies in the areas of culture and art in Dakar”*

-Gueye C: “ICTs appropriation by the credit and saving bank for women in Senegal”*

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*: translated in English by my self.