Alieu Conteh, the chairman of Vodacom Congo, created a mobile digital communications network in a country where none had existed. In 1999, when he launched what was then Congolese Wireless Network (CWN) with just 4,000 subscribers, his nation must have seemed hopelessly ill suited for any investment in technology.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is about the size of Western Europe and has an estimated population of 65 million. But it is one of the least developed nations in the world, with less than 2,000 miles of paved roads. In 1999, fewer than 15,000 houses had land-based telephones, and no more than 10,000 people had analog mobile handsets.