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give effect to the constitutional right of access to any information held by the State and any information that is held by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights; and to provide for matters connected therewith.

You can view the whole act on the website of the Department of International Affairs and Cooperation.  With Telkom being partly owned by the South African government, this seemed like a likely course of action.  Duly submitted, the response came back several weeks later in which our request was denied on every count.  Telkom’s Deputy Information Officer replied that:

In terms of Section 68, I decline to grant access to the records since they contain financial, commercial, scientific, and/or technical information, other than trade secrets, the disclosure of which is likely to cause harm to the commercial or financial interests of Telkom, and moreover contain information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to put Telkom at a disadvantage in contractual or other negotiations and/or prejudice Telkom in a commercial competition.

Even though we are invited to apply to court if we are “aggrieved by this decision” the terms of the refusal are so vague that we are unlikely to succeed via this route.  In the job application world, this would be called a PFO letter.

Just to be clear, we asked for a map of Telkom’s existing terrestrial fibre network, not even their plans for the future although that would be even better.  This is the kind of information that companies like Dark Fibre Africa and Liquid Telecom post freely on their websites.  In fact there are lots of African telecom companies that publicly post this information.  Evidently they think it is a good idea to communicate the reach of their networks.

But you know, publishing this information is not just a good idea for Telkom.  This is a good idea for South Africa.  If I have learned one thing from publishing a map of African Undersea Cables over the last 4 years, it is that it is possible to tell a different story about Africa, a connected 21st century Africa.  But right now that map still makes it look like all those cables stop at the beach.  There is an opportunity with this terrestrial fibre map for African countries to show off a little, to demonstrate that they are the best connected country on the continent, that they are THE destination when it comes to companies thinking about setting up African points of presence.

Surely, that is what the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of ICTs in Kenya must have been thinking when he replied to our request for information with a directive to his staff to gather and provide information on ALL terrestrial fibre optic cable projects in Kenya for use in the AfTerFibre map.

So this is where you come in Ms. Moholi.  As the comparatively new CEO of Telkom, this would be an easy way to demonstrate the new, more open face of Telkom by sharing that information and, in doing so, telling the world about Telkom, setting an example for other incumbents, and in general trumpeting South Africa’s extensive information infrastructure to the world.  What do you say?  There is a great South African story to tell here.

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This is a short summary of progress and learning from the first couple of months since launching AfTerFibre, a project to map terrestrial fibre projects in Africa. From the beginning AfTerFibre has been designed as an open project both from the point of view of transparency and from the point of view of participation. So the first goal was to make it easy to share information. This involved setting up a AfTerFibre Google Group so that anyone could contribute information or ask questions.  Next we needed a place to store resources as we found them so a wikipedia page was set up to capture information and links to maps of terrestrial fibre projects.  That part has gone reasonably well.  We now have 83 people in the Google Group and the Wikipedia page now has 67 African  operators known to have fibre projects listed, for which about half have links to maps.  Where possible I have linked directly to the map on the web if it exists.  In other cases, I have uploaded map images that I have found to a Flickr set.  Finally there is also a Diigo list of news links related to AfTerFibre.

Having gotten the repositories for the raw information in place, the next challenge was to find out how to create an information chain that would make it easy not only for people to contribute map information but also to submit updates. I’ve been working with some of Google Africa’s GIS team in Nairobi to solve this.

Step 1 – Convert Image Maps into GIS Maps

This stage of the mapping turns out to be remarkably simple. GoogleEarth (GE) is an amazingly simple yet powerful tool. You can import any jpg or png image of a map as an overlay into GE. GE makes it a piece of cake to stretch the image to neatly match the image map borders with the real GIS borders in GE. This makes it relatively simple to then trace fibre routes with the Path tool. I really can’t overemphasise what an amazing job the Google Earth designers have done to make it easy to trace maps. As an example, when you are actively tracing a path in GE, the mouse is no longer available to move the geography as you trace along a line. Happily the keyboard arrow keys are enabled for this purpose allowing you to trace with the right hand and move the geography with your left hand. More software should be this well designed. Because I am a GIS greenhorn, I have just assumed that KML is the appropriate format for this data.

Step 2 – Create a online updateable repository of map data that can feed the AfTerFibre Map

Our initial assumption was that Google Fusion Tables would make a good data repository. It is capable of directly importing the KML files generated from the tracing of maps in Google Earth. The map you see above is a direct representation of the AfTerFibre maps after a simple import into Fusion Tables.

Here is where things get more complicated. Fusion Tables turns out to have some idiosyncrasies (it’s still in Beta) which make it somewhat problematic for AfTerFibre. For a start, it doesn’t allow for easy multi-row editing so if you wanted to make a change across an entire country or operator, it is a very slow process. Second, while Fusion Tables allows you add fields, which is essential for AfTerFibre to capture all the additional information on fibre projects, Fusion tables stops importing KML files properly after you change the database structure. The geo-coordinates are mapping into text fields etc. Chaos and confusion.

An alternative then is to import the KML files into Fusion Tables and directly export as comma separated files (CSV) files which can then be imported into a spreadsheet program. A spreadsheet solves some of the problem by allowing multi-record editing and also making the data easier to massage in general. Each time a new fibre map is made, it could be imported into Fusion Tables, saved as CSV, imported into a separate spreadsheet and edited to match the field layout of the master spreadsheet and the imported into the master spreadsheet. The master spreadsheet can then be exported to CSV which can then be re-imported into Fusion Tables for display in Google Maps.

If this were a one-time process, the above might be an acceptable solution but not only will new maps regularly be added but existed maps are likely to receive numerous corrections.

So, what to do? It seems to me that what is needed is some kind of versioning repository (like Github) for the KML files for AfTerFibre. I’ve done some googling around this but haven’t come across anyone who is storing their KML in a versioning repository. It seems like a clever idea but it worries me that I can’t find anyone else doing it.

If KML files could simply be updated in a Github or similar repository, then it wouldn’t be that hard to write a script that retrieved the files from the repository and massged into a GIS display with the appropriate mouseover information displays etc.

So, I’m a little bit stuck here and open to suggestions.

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But I don’t think it is just the usefulness of the map that has driven its popularity, nor my infographic design skills which are admittedly basic.  My theory, for which I have no other evidence than the nature of the feedback I have received from users, is that the map paints a different-from-the-usual picture of Africa. It’s not a picture of a dark continent but rather a brightly lit one, lit by terabits of light capacity brought by a dozen cables landing on sub-Saharan African shores either now or in the near future.  Africa, the brilliant continent.  This also happens to be the Africa I believe in.

Another thing I think the map has contributed to in a small way is the sense of latent capacity that has inspired investment in national terrestrial infrastructure in Africa.  To my knowledge, every country on the continent has some sort of terrestrial fibre infrastructure project either completed or underway to connect to an undersea cable or to a country with an undersea cable.  This unprecedented explosion digital infrastructure investment can only be attributed to the sense of the opportunity that the burgeoning African undersea cables represent.

But now I find myself with the same problem again, but inland.  I keep reading announcements of terrestrial fibre projects in Africa but I can’t keep them straight in my head and few of them seem to publish maps.  I feel compelled to once again start pulling this information together into something comprehensible.  But mapping terrestrial fibre is a much bigger challenge, lots more cables, and more accurate mapping too.  I was a little daunted in taking something of this scope on.

That was until Google Africa stepped into the picture.  They have kindly offered to help build this map as one of their policy initiatives and to provide some support from their GIS gurus in Nairobi.  When complete the map will be hosted by the UbuntuNet Alliance who are working hard to build a high-speed university network linking all African countries.  They understand both the importance and the challenge of building cross-border fibre infrastructure.

My hope is that when this project is complete that a mayor of a secondary or tertiary city in Africa will be able to look at this map and say, “Hey, we’re only 90 kilometres from the XYZ fibre cable.  Let’s talk to XYZ and see how we can set about making our city a regional digital hub.  We’ll kickstart local enterprise and make the Internet an integral part of schools in our city.”  Or something like that.  I hope that a map like this will inspire the same sort of local/regional projects in the way that undersea cables have inspired national fibre projects.

Because African Terrestrial Fibre Optic Cable Map is a bit of a mouthful, I’ve shortened it to AfTerFibre.  If you’re interested in terrestrial fibre mapping or are an operator of terrestrial fibre in Africa, please come and join us in the Google Group.  Together we’ll show the rest of the world how brightly lit Africa already is.

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