THE SHORT PATH FROM HOPELESS TO HUB:

Rwanda aims to become Africa's high-tech hub: The African country aims to turn itself into the 'Singapore of Africa.' (Scott Baldauf, October 17, 2007, The Christian Science Monitor)

Sometime in the next two years, nearly every school in Rwanda – from distant mountain villages to swelling urban areas – will be hooked up to the Internet. And it won't be some crummy dial-up service. It will be high-speed broadband, carried by fiber-optic cables.

The fact that Rwanda is closing in on this goal without having the massive oil wealth of Angola or Sudan, the diamonds of Congo or South Africa, or even the copper of nearby Zambia is a testimony to the power of imagination. And Rwanda imagines that one day, it will be the information technology center of Africa.

Of an Africa that will have replaced China as the world's assembly plant.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 23, 2007 7:55 AM