Trade Point Network - Africa
There are several problems specific to connecting existing Trade Points to the Internet in Africa, but it is worth investing time and resources to connect them to the Global Trade Point Network. For instance, the distance, cost and poor state of local telecoms networks have meant unique problems. To overcome this situation, networks are being developed locally, that is, everything from LANs and FidoNet type of systems.
In Africa, bandwidth rarely exceeds 9.6K, a mixed strategy for the Trade Points in Africa is using new technology like low earth-orbit satellites together with SITA nodes in Africa and existing Internet Servers in Kenya, Zambia, Namibia, Mauritius and South Africa.
Therefore, the upgrading of international services to African nodes is and important objective and priority of the UNTPDC to connect African cities to the Global Trade Point Network.