Sub-Saharan Africa is booming, writes TechCrunch’s Jon Evans, who has spent nearly a year traveling in the region. One factor, he says, is the revolution Africa is seeing in the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM), which, in some places, has taken communications “straight from talking talking drums to cell phones, leapfrogging land lines entirely.”
The McKinsey Global Institute says foreign investment in Africa has a higher rate of return than any other developing region. Evans says Chinese companies and entrepreneurs are investing heavily in many African segments, including technology, so that many Internet cafes use client software from China Telecom. Also more people are walking around with Chinese feature phones because they’re cheap. While you can buy an Android phone in Kenya for $100, Evans says it’s only a matter of time before a Chinese Android fork starts competing in the market, mostly because Android isn’t optimized for the region.
Read more at TechCrunch.
