Africa's stunning lack of basic services, such as electrical and telephone grids and Internet connectivity, might cause many to despair, but Euvin Naidoo a leading advocate for Western investment in the underdeveloped continent looks at the map and sees something different: hope.
Until a higher-speed access technology like ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) becomes reality, with its promises of that much data over the existing telephone wiring grid, there is simply not enough bandwidth to get video that good out over the Internet.
There are no roads, telephones, electrical grid.
For these reasons, public infrastructure is often a natural monopoly: a city needs only one local telephone network, electricity grid or sewer system, so they are frequently publicly owned or regulated.
The country's infrastructure -- its vast electricity grid, telephone networks, oil and gas pipelines, and roads -- would have aged to a critical point, creating a drag on the economy and even emergency breakdowns.
The plan also foresees linking power, telephone and gas grids in the region between the State of Puebla in Mexico and Panama.
To accommodate the influx of people, new roads and rail lines had to be built, and the city's power grid and telephone lines expanded.
Alloyed with lead (0.04 percent calcium), for example, it is employed as sheaths for telephone cables and as grids for storage batteries of the stationary type.
Manoranjan Kumar, an economic advisor with the Ministry of Power, said in a telephone interview that the grids had failed and that the ministry was working to figure out the source of the problem.
Iraq's population is largely urbanized, its health care system is relatively advanced and it has much more than Afghanistan in terms of highways, electricity grids and telephone networks.
