Tapping into Africa

AN ETHIOPIAN touts goats, Somalis in Kenya sell henna and incense, a censored Liberian radio station defies the government and a Namibian invites offers for a taxi licence. All do so on the Internet. Is Africa getting online? Not really: of some 360m Internet users round the world, only 3.1m are thought to be in Africa, and most of them are either in South Africa or north of the Sahara. Nigeria probably has 100,000 users; Kenya, a relatively prosperous country, has even fewer. But access is spreading fast, perhaps even tripling over the course of last year. On August 28th, Somalia became the latest African country to offer local access to the Internet, and for the first time surfers can use the net in Swahili.