Policy And Regulation Are Among Biggest Contributors To Zim’s Crazy Internet Costs

That we have expensive internet does not come as a surprise. What may come as a surprise is just how bloody expensive that internet is when compared to other countries. This always leads one to wonder why the internet is expensive this side anyway…

The Alliance For Affordable Internet (A4AI) made the Affordability Drivers Index (ADI) which aims to see how well a country’s policy, regulatory, and overall supply-side environment is positioned to lower industry costs and ultimately create more affordable broadband.

ADI does not look at the pricing of broadband and it doesn’t aim to tell how affordable broadband is in a country. Instead, the scores are actually obtained from two policy groups:

Infrastructure

A4AI checks the extent to which ICT Infrastructure has been deployed, as well as the policy framework in place to encourage future infrastructure expansion and;

Access

This is the current broadband adoption rates, as well as the policy framework in place to enable equitable access.

So what does a high ADI score mean?

If your country ranks high on the Affordability Drivers Index (of which ours doesn’t, we’ll get to that in a second) then broadband also costs less for IAPs –Internet Access Providers- and consumers. There’s actually a correlation between a country’s ADI score and how affordable a 1GB mobile prepaid bundle costs.

Where does Zimbabwe rank?

I’m sure after all those explanations its clear that Zim cannot and does not rank highly on the Affordability Drivers Index. Of the 61 countries that were ranked by A4AI Zimbabwe ranks 52. Amongst the 28 African countries ranked, only 6 countries are worse than Zimbabwe in terms of infrastructure and access.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that the government has prioritised changing policies around the internet as they have been pre-occupied with firefighting and stabilising our crumbling economy. In the short term at least I don’t see much positive change coming about when it comes to internet pricing in Zimbabwe and a recent reminder comes from ZOL who actually increased their pricing earlier this week.

What’s the gist?

Improving policies and regulations to lower industry costs should be a priority in Zimbabwe and as long as that isn’t the case, continue to expect to pay through the nose for your internet access.