"In Africa people are much more attuned to blogs than you'd think." Ethan Zuckerman just said that. (You might remember Ethan from GeekCorps.) It's one quotable line among a cascade of them. And he hasn't even gotten around to the remarkable Eric Osiakwan yet. Both are talking about The Climate of Innovation Around Information Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa, the topic of today's luncheon at the Berkman Center. It's being streamed live, and it's so different from the usual geek fare — yet both geeky and extremely important for both Kenya and Africa.

Here's the IRC: irc://irc.freenode.net/berkman. Join in. I'll take notes here.

Ethan says functional cell phone coverage — including rural areas — in Africa is "approaching 100%". Eric's point: sharing has been critical, from infrastructure to individual phones. A goal (in the case Eric is detailing): "build a Eurpean quality network and company without paying a single dollar in bribe".

The result is Zain.

"I can use my Zain number in the Middle East, anywhere in Africa..."

"You can go into a rural area and share common infrastructure."

Ethan: "The really interesting entrepreneurial projects are the ones that aim at Africa 2s" (the new middle class). Their aspirational needs — and their travels — drive the growth of mobile networks.

East Africa is the only major world population that doesn't have an undersea cable. They're working on that, through . Right now you might pay $7k per month for a 2Mb connection. Afterwards, far less.

On the IRC, somebody is wondering if Wikia's World University might "work in Ghana, using video-capable programmable, iphone-like devices".

Eric bought an EeePC.

On screen: Inside Nairobi, The Next Palo Alto?

Ethan: "The thing everyone fears in Africa is nationalization". As a caution about public money reducing private risk in building undersea cable and other major investments.

Eric just told about an African guy working on a simulated iPhone, without having one. This reminded Harry Lewis, who teaches computer science here at Harvard, of how Bill Gates simulated the Altair 8080 on a PDP-10 at Harvard so he could write BASIC for the 8080 without ever meeting one.

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Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal