Seems to be a severe shortage of virtual VoIP DID numbers available for African countries outside of South Africa. Obviously legislation and infrastructure are major constraints restricting this service but surely with recent improvements in both these areas the service should be available soon?

Skype recently announced the availability of DID Skype-In numbers for South Africa, but Skype along with most other VoIP providers don’t offer a virtual number for any other African country. On a recent trawl through google search results only one company, mydivert.com, was found to offer a virtual number for Nairobi Kenya however the service claimed to only work within Kenya and could not be dialled from outside the country… mmh, sounds a little dodgy! Further searching revealed availability of virtual numbers in Botswana but thats where it ends.

So of the 47 countries in Africa only 3-4 countries seems to be able to offer local VoIP DID numbers. This paints a pretty bleak picture of telecoms in Africa and the obvious reluctance for the national telco’s to work with alternative providers.

One would think the easiest way for an international company to look at new markets in Africa would be in a virtual sense but it seems this approach would have limited success until the technology in African countries catches up with the rest of the world.