Silicon Insider: Cry, The Bewired Country

Aug. 20 -- Diethelm Metzger sits at one of the two computers on his Namibian ranch and spreadsheets the expenses of raising and selling this year's production of Simbrah bulls. He then e-mails a customer in Johannesburg to negotiate a sale.

Garrett Uhl, a professional hunter with a concession on the Okavango River kneels with his tracker, Mateus, beside the newly lifeless carcass of a huge Cape Buffalo. He pulls out a GPS device and, tracking three satellites, pinpoints the location of the kill to within a few feet.

Later, he'll e-mail this information to the Namibian government … and a digital photo to one of his clients.

Mark Olivier, the general manager of Sussi & Chuma, a treehouse-style resort near Victoria Falls in Livingstone, Zambia, walks down to the boat dock on the Zambezi River and flips out his cellphone.

The hippos in the water nearby don't even perk up their ears. They've seen this before: cellular reception here is best down by the water.

Saif Malik, a young Zambian executive at Barclay's bank dressed in all-over urban black, eats his elegant filet mignon dinner and talks proudly about how his country is racing ahead of the West in the use of wireless technology. "We're a connected country," he says.

Welcome to Africa in the 21st century.

Sipping Lattes, Far From the Horror

There is a vast disconnect between the Africa one hears about in the press and the Africa one encounters here on the ground.

The Africa of the news is a hellhole of AIDs, teenagers with Kalashnikovs and government-induced famines. And, indeed, Africa is that. Just a few hundred miles north of where we sit drinking wine on the Zambezi more than two million people have been murdered in a war in Congo.

Across the river, in Zimbabwe, a thugocracy led by Robert Mugabe is about to set off a devastating famine by driving the white farmers off their lands and turning the farms over to unskilled squatters. Thousands more are likely to starve.

And yet, here in Zambia, and even more in the three nearby countries of Southern Africa — Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa — peace and prosperity reign.