The world‘s poorest continent could reap huge gains from AI.Instead it is being left behind非洲也能从AI中受益，但是非洲政府和发展机构拉跨
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不过这是20多年前了，现在应该好多了
But when governments allowed private owned mobile-phone cpmpanies to offer their services，they rapidly displaced the lethargic state-owned telcos.Mobile-phone services directly contribute $170bn to Africa's GDP非洲真的是该做好的没做好
The focus on mobile is one reason behind Africa's underinvestment in fast fibre-optic connections非洲在快速光纤连接方面投资不足
光纤的好处：Fibre can carry more traffic,and fast.this allows seamless video calls，reduces dizzying lags in augmented-reality apps for，say，training surgeons and lets people interact with AI chatbots and other online services光纤可以速度更快
非洲硬件不行：poorly served by subsea Internet cables，lack of high-capacity overland cables，not have enough data centres—the brick-and mortar sites where cloud computing happens海底互联网电缆服务不佳，缺乏高容量陆上电缆，没有足够的数据中心
政府应该怎么做：To fix this，governments should learn from the mobile boom and cut red tape.减少繁文缛节
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
发展机构应该怎么做：Development institutions,for their part,should be doing more to help finance this vital infrastructure because of its widespread benefits for growth and employment资助基础设施
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