Telephone, very expensive,'' says Beterkawa, a shoe cleaner in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. ADF is born out of the conviction that Africa cannot achieve sustainable development unless the policies, strategies and actions are designed, managed and owned by Africans themselves. But, in the rush to jump into the information band wagon, participants have warned Africa to guard against the temptation of leapfrogging into the information age. First Africa has to put its house in order. This is because much of the rural areas where more than three-quarters of the Africa's estimated 700 million population live has no electricity.
Roads are bad, schools and hospitals are few.
Illiteracy rates in Africa are the lowest in the world. One in four African live in abject poverty and the figure is growing by the day. Technology may have brought the use of solar energy in rural Africa, but the gadgets remain beyond the reach of the majority. Just like with computers, the majority of the people may never be able to afford a computer. In Zimbabwe, for example, the cost of the most affordable computer is the equivalent of a year's income of those earning minimum wage.