Promise takes root 'technological in the desert' [Africa Special Electronics]

Writing for the magazine communications of the ACM20 years ago, Mayuri Odedra-Straub, then a researcher focusing on IT in developing nations, complained that Africa served as the background for a place to display overflow data about Europe in a piece about telephone penetration. Odedra-Straub described sub-Saharan Africa - with the exception of South Africa - as a `technological desert'. Times change, however, and the desert began to show signs of cultivation.