Africa 2.0——經濟學人

The world‘s poorest continent could reap huge gains from AI.Instead it is being left behind非洲也能從AI中受益，但是非洲政府和發展機構拉跨

in most parts of Africa,businesses and consumers used to have to wait years to get a fixed-line phone.Nigeria,which has Africa's biggest population,had just 450,000 phone lines in 1999,of which perhaps a third were on the blink不過這是20多年前了，現在應該好多了

But when governments allowed private owned mobile-phone cpmpanies to offer their services，they rapidly displaced the lethargic state-owned telcos.Mobile-phone services directly contribute $170bn to Africa's GDP非洲真的是該做好的沒做好

The focus on mobile is one reason behind Africa's underinvestment in fast fibre-optic connections非洲在快速光纖連接方面投資不足

光纖的好處：Fibre can carry more traffic,and fast.this allows seamless video calls，reduces dizzying lags in augmented-reality apps for，say，training surgeons and lets people interact with AI chatbots and other online services光纖可以速度更快

非洲硬件不行：poorly served by subsea Internet cables，lack of high-capacity overland cables，not have enough data centres—the brick-and mortar sites where cloud computing happens海底互聯網電纜服務不佳，缺乏高容量陸上電纜，沒有足夠的數據中心

政府應該怎麼做：To fix this，governments should learn from the mobile boom and cut red tape.減少繁文缛節

Governments could do much to help simply by getting out of the way：

例子1：Starlink,a statellite-internet firm,could be a stopgap,but regulators have blocked it in at least seven countries including South Africa

例子2：Heavy taxes on data access drive up costs for consumers,discouraging them from using it and from investing in providing it

發展機構應該怎麼做：Development institutions,for their part,should be doing more to help finance this vital infrastructure because of its widespread benefits for growth and employment資助基礎設施