Although all the capitals of the 54 countries in the world's poorest continent now have Internet access compared to a mere 11 in 1997, its reach is still fractional and the way forward is marred by a slew of problems and setbacks.

A groundbreaking global summit on bridging the digital divide, the World Summit on the Information Society, opens in Geneva Wednesday with the aim of reducing the digital gap between rich and poor.

Tunisian Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi recently said 91 percent of the world's Internet users came from industrialised countries, accounting for 19 percent of the world's population.

Africa accounted for only one percent of the world's surfers despite being home to 13 percent of the global population, he said.

In 1992, the continent launched the Regional African Satellite Communications Organisation (RASCOM) -- an inter-governmental cooperative which started out by pooling and optimising satellite capacity at discounted rates from Intelsat.

But the ultimate objective of a dedicated Africa-owned regional satellite system has yet to be achieved despite regular pronouncements that it will start soon.

"RASCOM still exists on paper," a South African IT expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Every year it's the same thing, they say it will happen next year and then nothing."

"There are too many satellites where you can hire space, it can probably be cheaper than RASCOM," he added.

Experts say many Africans are paying too high prices because of obligatory routing of intra-continental telephone traffic via Europe.

The big advance has been in cellphones where the service providers are often foreign companies.

Many subscribers across Africa, especially in countries where the state-run telephone companies are notorious for their poor services, have switched to mobile phones.

The number of mobiles has shot up from about one million in 1996 to nearly 30 million in 2002, according to experts.

But even in South Africa, the most advanced in the sector, there are only 190 cellphones for every 1,000 people against 727 for 1,000 in Britain.

Cellphones are now being increasingly used for SMS or mobile phone text messages -- a cheap and quick option for staying in touch.

"Many families in Zimbabwe communicate through SMS," a Zimbabwean journalist said. "They don't have computers and they don't want to queue up at a cybercafe."

However, the mobile phone networks are basically confined to large towns and cities and are often clogged due to the burgeoning demand.

Access to computers is another matter.

"The real problem is not only infrastructure, the bigger problem is access to computers and computer literacy," said Hans van de Groenendaal, communications specialist at South Africa's state-run Telkom firm.

To exacerbate the situation, getting enough bandwidth to access the graphics-intensive World Wide Web remains a big problem as steep tariffs make international connections hugely expensive and growing numbers of users put a further strain on existing connections.

Notwithstanding the gloomy scenario, there have been success stories.

In the west African country of Senegal, according to a local website, the French firm Manobi-France started an experimental project to provide WAP services to horticulturists to keep them up to date with prevailing prices in the main markets of Dakar.

Between December 2001 and April 2002, some 60 horticulturists using the services saw their incomes shoot up substantially.

Internet telephone connections have been another blessing, slashing the cost of overseas calls substantially, and such services have mushroomed at cybercafes in many parts of the continent.

South Africa's Telkom in September launched a satellite product called Spacestream, through which subscribers across the country can be hooked on to the Telkom platform Internet or to any other service provider.

"In theory, we could cover the whole of Africa, but many countries do not have an open skies policy," Telkom official Van de Groenendaal said.

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