The New York Times‘ Sunday Busines Times has published a report by one if its reporters Ron Nixon on an initiative to increase internet connectivity in Rwanda.
In 2003 the Rwandan government signed a contract with a US company Terracom to ‘lace Rwanda with fiber optic cables, connecting schools, government institutions and homes with low-cost, high-speed Internet service.’
Four years later, however, ‘… most of the benefits hailed by him and his company have failed to materialize,’ according to government officials.
The article deals with why this is still the case. According to Nixon the main reason for this state of affairs is because it is ‘emblematic of what can happen when good intentions [presumably on the part of Terracom and its owner] run into the technical, political and business realities of Africa.’
However, if you read the rest of the article, it tells a more complex story, including that the company promised more than it could deliver, was not always forthcoming about its changing motives [that the cellphone industry was more lucrative, for example] and that it also treated the Rwandan government with contempt some of the time [it secretly tried to trade its shares in the national telecommunications company, Rwanda Telecom].
