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Internet in Yemen among world’s slowest, most expensive
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Lack of online access hampers entrepreneurs and students
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Repairs and reforms could boost economy, advocates say
By Maya Gebeily
ADEN, March 21 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Yemeni entrepreneur Obeid al-Bakri launched a ridesharing app to provide safe transport in the southern city of Aden, but his plans quickly ran into trouble – the internet was so slow, no one could get online to book a ride.
“Aden was absolutely fertile ground for a ridesharing app,” said the 34-year-old TakeMe founder. “We had all these security problems with normal taxis, where the passengers robbed the drivers or vice versa … But the internet was just too slow.”
Blighted by years of war and economic crisis, Yemen’s slow and costly internet limits access to everyday services from banking to online classes and transport. For young people, it can mean missing out on economic and educational opportunities.
Bakri said TakeMe’s five investors had spent thousands of dollars since 2020 on trying to make the app as lightweight as possible to run on mobile internet service, to no avail.
Yemen has the world’s slowest internet speed, according to web analysis service SpeedTest, with an average download speed of .53 megabytes per second. The next slowest, in Turkmenistan, is six-times faster.
Internet penetration rates are low, too. Just over a quarter of Yemenis have access to the internet, compared to an average of three-quarters across the Middle East, according to a 2022 report on the country by online reference library DataReportal.
They pay the highest rate in the region at $16 per gigabyte, compared to about $1 in nearby countries, according to a forthcoming report on Yemen by the Arabia Brain Trust (ABT), an independent think-tank that promotes sustainable social and economic development.
That is due to an aging, unmaintained internet infrastructure that has been damaged by more than seven years of conflict, and a steep devaluation in the local currency that has severely curbed purchasing power in recent months.
