Trenched city all in the name of cables

It's not only under the international waters that there has been a tussle amongst governments on whose cable should be used to link the wretched countries on the eastern coast of Africa to the rest of the world. Eassy and Teams have become the most recent catch phrases to the tech-frenzy chaps from Cape Town (or is it Durban??) to Fujaira, not forgetting Mogadishu. That said at the national level, particularly in Nairobi, the euphoria that has been created by the talk of these under sea cables has led to businessmen scrabbling for trenches to lay the fibre optic cables.

To my guess along the major highways on the street of Nairobi there are at least 3 or more cables buried in there waiting for 'internet' to be switched on in Fujaira. I'm told when this will happen, 'internet' will flow like water. Good days to look forward to!!

But were the French in town, or was this Paris, things would have been done differently, no, more sensibly as they have done. The french are ingenious sometimes. Like when they discovered that their sewer lines are not just a one-way traffic out of their stinking loos and sinks on to the sanitation centres but can also be used to lay fibre optic cables. But wait a minute! This is not a discovery. This is common sense. It is common sense that in any city proud of bearing that title (that excludes, Nairobi obviously) to each building, housing block, or dwelling, there's a sewer line and it's function does not necessarily has be to taking bog out of the house.

The long and short of it is that the Nairobi City Council, rather than spend time and money licensing Tom, Dick, Kauff and Gamay to dig trenches and in the process endangering our walking nation in the pretex of laying cables should wake up and smell the coffee, no, make more money out of the sewer system. Alternatively, licence it to some one and see what will happen. I'm willing to bid the bog line!