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The numbers are highly speculative but are as accurate as modern science allows. It’s widely accepted that prior to 2002 there had been somewhere between 106 and 140 billion homo sapiens born to the world. The graphic below uses the conservative number (106 bn) as the basis for a concentric circle graph. The red dot in the center is scaled to represent how many people are currently living (red) versus the dead (white). The vertical line represents time. The spectral graph shows the population ‘benchmarks’ that were used to estimate the population over time. Adding up the population numbers gets you to 106 billion. The two spheres are then used to compare against other numbers.

The hypothetical maximum ‘carrying capacity’ of the earth based on current trends, known resources and existing technologies. The world population is expected to reach this size around 2050.

As one might guess, carrying capacity, means scientists have no idea if the world can sustain human life beyond this point, but most would be inclined to say not. Especially since we’re seeing many signs of our affect on the planet with the current 6.8 billion. We know all too well that with the current estimated 3 billion people living in poverty, things will be a lot worse for the vast majority of the unborn, as many of them will be born into conditions of ‘extreme poverty’.

Economist Jeffery Sachs discusses sustainability, not just for the sake of those living now, but for unborn billions in this interview with EarthSky.

© 2008 - 2009 Appfrica International. Looking for more African tech? Try our podcast Appfricast which you can also find on iTunes.

People often only see Africa from one perspective, here’s another. The above infographic details some of the happenings over the past few years in regards to infrastructure improvement and capacity building in Africa, particularly in the area of the internet and cost. The sources are various reports from the International Monetary Fund, InternetWorldStats, the Millennium Development Goals, research papers, various websites, executive market research and more; compiling some fascinating facts about the continent’s ‘infostate’ (trends in information technology and communication).

Although the text is hard to read in it’s reduced size, you can download high-res image from Flickr.

Update Nov 14: Due to a number of email requests, this graphic is available as a high-quality poster in various sizes here. It can be shipped internationally and for African buyers who can’t use paypal, Western Union or Bank Transfer is accepted. Just email us at info@appfrica.org.

There’s a ton of visual information piled into this piece to look at everything in more detail, check out this flickrset. Here’s some of the highlights:

Population of each country, each countries two digit ccTLD (country code top-level domain) and the countries that rank in the top of the continent’s internet usage.

The World Economic Forum’s Network Readiness Index Ranking is used to show which countries are the most attractive to telecom operators and investors.

An overview of the various submarine cable projects.

The capacity of each of those cables as well as the cost and estimated arrival dates.

A spectral graph that proportionately details the penetration of internet in countries across the continent.

This concentric circle graph proportionately indicates the strongest economies of Africa.

The high-res download linked above is 98% finished, you can get the fully finished version in print from our shop.

© 2008 - 2009 Appfrica International. Looking for more African tech? Try our podcast Appfricast which you can also find on iTunes.

The lack of Arabic fonts available for Windows, Apple, and Linux systems has long frustrated arabophone web designers, especially as they see their anglopphone (and Western language) counterparts able to take advantage of tools like the aforementioned TypeKit.

Dubai baised CloudAppers things they have a solution in their new web service, Tiba3a. ArabCrunch reports:

Tiba3a will host host the fonts on its server and website who needs them, only need to copy and past a small Javascript code on their websites and they are good to go. Tiba3a currently supporting Safari 3.2.+ – Firefox 3.2 +and – IE in the future.

The service is planning to partner with the owners and the designers of the fonts, who would offer their fonts and Tiba3a will share the revenues it generate from licensing fees it gets from the websites that use them.

While the service still lacks enough typefaces to launch, CloudAppers has partnered with several Arabic foundries to produce the necessary fonts.

© 2008 - 2009 Appfrica International. Looking for more African tech? Try our podcast Appfricast which you can also find on iTunes.

It goes without saying that mobile is exciting business these days across Africa. Chris Andrews writes….

If you want a picture of explosive growth in mobile communications, look to Africa. A report from The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has found that between 2003 and 2008, mobile subscriptions surged from 54 million to almost 350 million; or a 550% increase in five years.

In 2008, the report found, Gabon, Seychelles, and South Africa had a mobile penetration rate of almost 100 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. In North Africa, the average penetration stood at almost two thirds of the population, and for Africa as a whole, it was over one third.

Things are definitely picking up. Recently In Uganda a price war’s been brewing between local providers…

1. MTN Uganda introduces Mobile Money.
2. Zain Uganda introduces ZAP a few months later.
3. UTL and Infocom are the first buy to Seacom access in the country, prices fall, speeds increase dramatically.
4. Orange enters the market with unlimited 3G access for $50 a month for six months!
5. MTN claims bandwidth prices will be down first of the year.

© 2008 - 2009 Appfrica International. Looking for more African tech? Try our podcast Appfricast which you can also find on iTunes.

Earlier this year Google introduced a suite of SMS services that brought things like search and electronic market places to the mobile devices so common to East Africa. Last week, in addition to their massive Geospatial technology conference, Google announced that they were launching a web platform for one of those products…Google Trader.

Essentially, Google Trader is an online marketplace like we’ve seen a thousand of before; a place people can visit to search for, buy and sell all sorts of goods and services. When the new product was debuted in Uganda last Summer, users could only send SMS messages with certain commands (e.g. REGISTER or BUY) from their mobile phones to trade on the platform. Still available only in English and still completely free, Ugandans can now visit the custom Google Trader marketplace on the web to search for and trade products and services like crops, cars, electronics or jobs straight from their computers.

With the Web version, users get a bit more functionality, such as the ability to search for multiple items at once and to include photos and more detailed information about the products or services they’re selling.

Like the blog post announcing the new browser-based version of Google Trader says, the service is meant to provide African people with greater access to new markets and trade opportunities.

Read the rest at TechCrunch…

© 2008 - 2009 Appfrica International. Looking for more African tech? Try our podcast Appfricast which you can also find on iTunes.

In an interview with Russel Southwood of Balancing Act, Phase3 outlines their plans to launch the fibre network in Q2 of 2010. The network will plug into undersea cables in Accra, Cotonou, and Lagos. Phase3 hopes to create a redundant network, allowing their clients to avoid month long outages like the one caused by the SAT-3 cut in Benin in August.

Phase3’s Nigeria clients include GSM and CDMA operators, ISPs, banks, and the government. They hope to attract the same types of customers throughout West Africa, especially once they’re able to connect to the new international cables. They will eventually connect with Burkina Faso and Niger through Benin, and hope to carry traffic from the new undersea cables inland.

© 2008 - 2009 Appfrica International. Looking for more African tech? Try our podcast Appfricast which you can also find on iTunes.

Twelve young residents of Kibera will first be trained on current mapping techniques during a two-day workshop. Individuals from the growing Nairobi technology scene will help train and network with the larger community. The group will then map all of Kibera over a two-week period in mid-November and share the results through OpenStreetMap, joining a growing global community of tech-savvy grassroots mapmakers. “The project will provide open-source data that will help illustrate the living conditions in Kibera. Without basic knowledge of the geography of Kibera it is impossible to have an informed discussion on how to improve the lives of residents of Kibera,” said Mikel Maron.

More information can be found at http://www.mapkibera.org/.

© 2008 - 2009 Appfrica International. Looking for more African tech? Try our podcast Appfricast which you can also find on iTunes.

The Grid

The Nigerian features will be slightly different than those in South Africa, as The Grid will no longer have access to location based features. Instead, The Grid will put a larger accent on “chat and interaction around social content.”

As social networks expand in Africa, I’m seeing more and more emphasis on mobile use as opposed to web use. It makes sense, as there are more mobiles than light bulbs in Africa (or at least parts of it). Why not leapfrog computers that need to be plugged in, laptops that need to be balanced somewhere, and move directly to social networks that can be accessed anywhere by anyone with a Java capable mobile phone?

Even more interesting is the emergence of social networks that don’t require Java apps and can be accessed via SMS. The Grid and its ilk offer real competition to networks like Facebook, who can only be accessed via the web or downloaded applications.

© 2008 - 2009 Appfrica International. Looking for more African tech? Try our podcast Appfricast which you can also find on iTunes.

The Mobile Money program requires subscribers to register their SIM chip using a photo ID at an MTN service center or a partner bank. Then, he can use his Mobile Money account at any one of 1,200 authorized merchants. The merchants have to have a bank account at any one of Mobile Money’s partners.

The service is still in “beta,” in everything but name. MTN hopes to grow slowly.

We are still growing very cautiously so as to ensure that we can focus on ensuring the customers we do register are fully comfortable with the process and service. Let us remember that this is a financial services product. When it comes to finance, customers are more conservative than when it comes to airtime. So yes, for now we’re being cautious in registering too many customers too early. We want to lead with below the line advertising to make people aware that we will be coming to the community to register customers. By then, they should be more comfortable with the process/service.

The service has a lot of room to grow, especially as MTN has already launched similar services in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire. One of the difficulties facing Mobile Money in Ghana is that banking regulations require that users carry picture identification before making purchases. How many Ghanaians carry their national ID card with them to go to the market?

Banks are excited about the service because it gives them an opportunity to reach the unbanked through their merchant partners. MTN is excited about the service because merchants in Ghana were early adopters of mobile technology, recognizing it as a profit-enhancing tool. Only time will tell if Ghanian consumers will embrace MTN’s Mobile Money as enthusiastically as East Africans have embraced M-Pesa.

© 2008 - 2009 Appfrica International. Looking for more African tech? Try our podcast Appfricast which you can also find on iTunes.

A few months back I wrote an article responding to people who were comparing the economy of SecondLife to that of developing countries like Burundi, Liberia, DRC and Zimbabwe. My argument was that there is simply no scarcity in a virtual world, making any comparison null and void. This article from VentureBeat echoes my point, that virtual economies simply defy the realities of real world economics.

According to the CIA World Factbook, as of 20 October 2008, SecondLife boasts a very loosely approximated GDP of $215 million per annum with a population averaging about 900,000 regular users (per month). Go back 60 days and the population is slightly higher at 1.2 million. This would put their GDP somewhere between $179 and $239 per capita. By other calculations the population of day-to-day users (people who’ve checked in in the last 14 days) is a more accurate measure and that would put the population at around 500,000 and the per capita GDP at a number closer to $430.

In other words, if SecondLife were a country it would be hovering at the bottom of the pyramid with other African nations like Liberia ($500 GDP), Burundi ($300 GDP), Congo DR ($300), and Zimbabwe ($200).

…

There simply is no scarcity in SecondLife. As long as people are playing it and they are spending more than they are earning as a whole, the system scales up. LindenLabs buys new servers and everyone (playing) wins. If SecondLife were ever to truly go into recession, it would mean the costs of operating the SL servers was higher than what the company was making from it’s users and growth would either be halted or you’d start to see in-game islands (which represent different servers in real life) start to disappear to recoup costs. If the real world were like SecondLife the United States would be considering deleting a few of it’s States right about now!

However, because SecondLife (and games like it) are completely controlled environments, if one wanted, they could introduce artificial scarcity, rules, governments etc. Has anyone experimented with a virtual ‘model’ of a developing country? Or perhaps even a whole continent like Africa? At the blog Alice and Kev, Robin Burkinshaw created a family of homeless Sims and proceeded to recount their tale of strife and struggle as a daily narrative…garnering compassion and empathy usually not even reserved for real homeless people!

Could recreating economies in Second Life that suffer some of the traits of developing countries (over population, job scarcity, corrupt leaders, weak economy, optimistic expats etc.) offer a way of studying development? Are there any groups out there experimenting with such a method? I did head over to SecondLife looking for anything remotely like this but only found people modeling tourist destinations and a few NGO virtual offices.

Photo: by damastarrostin used under the creative commons.

© 2008 - 2009 Appfrica International. Looking for more African tech? Try our podcast Appfricast which you can also find on iTunes.