The world‘s poorest continent could reap huge gains from AI.Instead it is being left behind非洲也能從AI中受益，但是非洲政府和發(fā)展機構(gòu)拉跨
in most parts of Africa,businesses and consumers used to have to wait years to get a fixed-line phone.Nigeria,which has Africa's biggest population,had just 450,000 phone lines in 1999,of which perhaps a third were on the blink不過這是20多年前了看蚜，現(xiàn)在應該好多了
But when governments allowed private owned mobile-phone cpmpanies to offer their services仑嗅，they rapidly displaced the lethargic state-owned telcos.Mobile-phone services directly contribute $170bn to Africa's GDP非洲真的是該做好的沒做好
The focus on mobile is one reason behind Africa's underinvestment in fast fibre-optic connections非洲在快速光纖連接方面投資不足
光纖的好處：Fibre can carry more traffic,and fast.this allows seamless video calls爸吮，reduces dizzying lags in augmented-reality apps for癣蟋，say，training surgeons and lets people interact with AI chatbots and other online services光纖可以速度更快
非洲硬件不行：poorly served by subsea Internet cables，lack of high-capacity overland cables五垮，not have enough data centres—the brick-and mortar sites where cloud computing happens海底互聯(lián)網(wǎng)電纜服務不佳，缺乏高容量陸上電纜杜秸，沒有足夠的數(shù)據(jù)中心
政府應該怎么做：To fix this放仗，governments should learn from the mobile boom and cut red tape.減少繁文縟節(jié)
Governments could do much to help simply by getting out of the way：
例子1：Starlink,a statellite-internet firm,could be a stopgap,but regulators have blocked it in at least seven countries including South Africa
例子2：Heavy taxes on data access drive up costs for consumers,discouraging them from using it and from investing in providing it
發(fā)展機構(gòu)應該怎么做：Development institutions,for their part,should be doing more to help finance this vital infrastructure because of its widespread benefits for growth and employment資助基礎設施
