Baidu [3] and France Telecom [4] are collaborating [5] on a low-end smartphone [6] browser for Africa. The browser, which will launch in Egypt [7], will be pre-installed on phones sold by France Telecom, which already has around 80 million African customers, on the continent. The move means that the Chinese search giant [8] will become part of what is an already huge Sino-centric presence [9].

Due to slow data speeds on African networks, it is hard to browse the web. This Franco-Chinese collaboration would use special code which reduces the amount of data packets needed to browse sites such as Facebook [10] and Twitter [11]. Non-France Telecom users will be able to access the browser via both a download and an SMS message [12]. Last year, Google debuted [13] an SMS feature in Ghana [14], Nigeria [15], and Kenya [16], funneling emails through SMS.

[Image by Flickr user kiwanja [17]]