We are turning to Africa today, in order to consider internet and e-commerce infrastructure of Senegal. That is a country south of the Sénégal River in western Africa, externally bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south; internally it almost completely surrounds The Gambia, namely on the north, east and south, exempting Gambia's short Atlantic Ocean coastline. Interestingly, Senegal's economy is starting to be one of the fastest growing in the world owing to the reform program that has allowed real growth in GDP since 1995. The country represents is a major recipient of international development assistance and its donors include USAID, Japan, France and China. Senegal is also a member of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA).

As for the national ICT infrastructure, Senegal has managed to develop one of Africa’s most extensive and modern telecommunications market. The country has an excellent telecommunications infrastructure, which is digitized. Actually, Real liberalization that started in 1997 led to the partial privatization of the national operator Sonatel.

Initially, Internet came to Senegal in the late 1980s. And the country furnished full Internet connectivity in 1996, creating a so-called mini-boom in information technology-based services in the country. The same year, mobile services were introduced and competition in that sub-sector has started since in 1999.

At present, Internet service is widely available in the capital, Dakar, and other towns either for private subscription or through Senegal’s extensive network of “telecentres” and Internet cafes.

Sonatel represents the principal telecommunications provider of Senegal that is active in fixed line telephony, mobile telephony, internet service, television and corporate telecommunications. Moreover, the company is involved in the construction of fiber optics networks in Africa and manages 2,200 kilometers of fiber cable in Senegal. A subsidiary of Sonatel, Telecom-Plus, appeared as the first Internet Service Provider and soon afterwards the first cyber café of West Africa, Metissacana, was launched.

Sonatel’s monopoly officially ended in 2004. So, a second national operator, Metissacana, and third mobile operator were licensed about two years later.

Thus far, 14 ISPs are now competing for the retail access market, among them most widely used are:

• ARC Informatique – delivering Internet connection services, it also offers materials and software
• AfricaOnline
• Cyber Business Centre


Nevertheless, Sonatel retains its monopoly over international connectivity. Smaller ISPs are still required to use Sonatel's IP backbone to connect to the Internet.

And unfortunately, development of the Internet market has been still hindered by Sonatel’s monopolistic pricing of bandwidth on the only high-capacity international submarine fibre optic cable serving the country. Nevertheless, broadband services in the country are relatively advanced, including broadband TV and converged triple-play services. Meantime, Sonatel has progressively cut its prices following the arrival of a second international fibre optic submarine cable in 2007, with at least two more scheduled for 2010 and 2011.

In spite of the prompt spread of ADSL connection services, the penetration rate still remains very low. However, Internet usage has doubled every year since 2003 when ADSL services were launched. According to the latest data from www.internetworldstats.com, almost 7.5% of Senegalese get Internet access, with slightly over million people connected. Thus far, the growth has made up almost 2,500% for the decade. Internet usage varies from e-mail communication to news reading, chatting, games and multi-media usage, and costumers include almost all social layers.

Internet usage in Senegal has also been booming for the last few years, not only in Dakar, but also beyond the capital, where an impressing telecom infrastructure has been created. Besides, as prices for Internet installation and services are rapidly going down, growing number of Senegalese applies to the Internet at work as wells as at home.

Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Senegal is .sn, administered by NIC Senegal. Registration under the domain is available directly at the second level, or at the third level beneath second-level names, like followings:

• art.sn
• com.sn
• edu.sn
• gouv.sn
• org.sn
• perso.sn
• univ.sn

Turning to e-commerce sector, as Internet connectivity is getting more and more sufficient Senegal is now ready for e-commerce and there are many excellent African IT companies which provide hardware and software. Moreover, Senegal appears to be among the African leaders in terms of e-business, along with South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Kenya.

But, a number of problems with e-commerce in Senegal, like in many other African countries, exist. So, Senegal suffers lack of a common African e-payment system especially adapted to Africa market. Such an African e-payment system can be an alternative to debit and credit card payment systems for e-commerce in Senegal as well as in other countries in Africa.
Besides, it’s necessary to provide customization of e-commerce that will fit the way of Senegalese life.

Anyway, e-commerce sector in Senegal is getting better. One of the steps forward, among many others, appeared to be signing with the Pan-African Alliance on e-Commerce that has been launched in Addis Ababa.

At the beginning of this year, the study of potential for growth of mobile e-commerce in Senegal, Kenya and South Africa entitled ‘M-Banking, an African Financial Revolution’ was conducted by Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). The study thus explored the wireless technologies deployed as well as their advantages and disadvantages, the growth potential for the mobile telephony sector and rollout plans in these countries.

It was found that mobile phones had “revolutionized” e-commerce in Senegaland that the economic impact this has had on the country’s rural populations had been positive. More specifically, the publication unveiled mobile phones were bringing previously marginalized rural communities in to the mainstream of the economies by enabling them to conduct business transactions, such as banking through the phone.

But, the necessity of changing the type of policy requirements is obvious. Thus, sufficient efforts in developing the m-banking sector must be addressed in order to continue promoting economic development in Senegal; these are to include policy, legal and regulatory challenges with respect to m-banking and issues of security, trust and confidence as being of paramount importance in conducting and promoting m-commerce activities.

Importantly, all Senegal's main political parties at present maintain their web-pages. Although it's not clear what clientele they want to serve. Apparently the Senegalese people living abroad is the main target group.

As for the use of Internet platform for conducting business activity, one catalogue of business opportunities in Senegal was presented by Trade Point Senegal, an initiative of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to facilitate international trade. The other portal, Business Facilitation Site, is operated by the embassy of the United States. Separately, there have been some sporadic endeavours of private Senegalese-based entrepreneurs who have been marketing Senegalese-made handicraft and folklore products via the Internet.

Unfortunately, Senegalese economy was not wholly impacted by e-business development mainly due to recent decline in economic and social performance that made it to be one of the members of the Least Developed Countries.

Besides, the proportion of potential on-line shoppers is small. Due to the high cost of Internet access in the country, the majority of on-line shoppers are more likely to come from markets outside Senegal. Any local B2C companies would have to boost its user base outside the Senegalese market to stand a chance of survival.

Well, Senegal, that used to lag in terms of ICT development, has catch up with African leaders, meantime. This fact can be proved by Internet and related technologies deployment as well as some evident success in e-business industry.