Satellite dishes amid the Iron Age spears: Richard Dowden marvels at high technology, or the lack of it, in Africa

It was a magnificent starlit night in Zaire, warm and balmy, with a waxing moon. My laptop computer was linked to a satellite telex that was plugged into my Land Rover's cigarette lighter. It was tempting to look for the satellite twinkling among the stars. I had only to press the button for these words to arrive in London a few seconds later.

Next to me was a guard carrying a bow and arrows. The bow was strung with sisal twine and the arrows tipped with the remains of old tins. He stared at my screen open mouthed. Every time I moved away from it, he sidled closer to have a better look.

On another occasion I was writing while I waited for the ferry to take me across the Nile in northern Uganda. A man in a pirogue, a dug-out canoe, paddled past using a spear-shaped paddle. He was on his way to check fish traps set in the reeds, made of twigs bound with bark.

Although I still get a thrill from writing with the technology of the 21st century from mud huts in the African bush, instant worldwide communication is nothing new. The British laid a telegraph wire along the Nile almost 100 years ago. Was it the first rough track in the information super-highway? And in a few years' time we will be carrying mobile telephones, probably with video screens on them, with which we will be able to talk to each other anywhere in the world.

Meanwhile, we have the satellite telex, which is like a large, very heavy shoebox. Its dish is a plastic flap that folds out. It comes with a battery, but the battery is short-lived, so I run it off a normal power supply when I can find one, or a car cigarette lighter. You simply plug in, find east (where the Indian Ocean satellite is stationed), point it, link it to the computer and send. You can transmit to anyone who has fax or a telex, anywhere.

It is not always that simple. The instrument often does not work indoors. And one night, another problem: I had found a grass hut with an extension lead in it; I plugged in, switched on, and the next moment the air was full of furiously flapping wings and eerie squeaks. The hut was inhabited by a colony of bats that did not take kindly to this intrusion into their radar system.

To most officials, the whole thing spells 'spy'. Although African junior officials are generally less paranoid and officious than they were a few years ago, this can be dangerous or expensive, depending on whether the official has been paid this month. So far, I have managed to persuade people that it is a solar power system, which is fine in the morning, when facing east, but is problematic after lunch.

What about the bows and arrows, and the dug-out canoes? It is as though Africa were still in the Iron Age - but with satellite communications added. Technology is brought in from the outside but seems to have no impact on the lives of ordinary people. Land is still dug by hand with hoes; huts are made of mud and straw; goods are transported on heads. The nearest thing to an indigenous, locally made piece of technology I saw on this recent trip was a wooden bicycle, built like a scooter, with wooden wheels covered in old tyre. I fear the information super-highway will bypass Africa, or leave it bemused in a cloud of dust.

Visitors to Africa are often appalled at the large numbers of broken and abandoned cars, tractors and other machinery they see lying around. I am more struck by how many are still going. Maintenance is not an African habit, but there is a great talent for endless repairs. I have travelled in a car in which the accelerator was a piece of string tied round the finger of the driver, and in an aeroplane that had wings bound with sticky tape.

What seems to be missing is a talent for invention and development, the ability to add a new idea to an old tool and produce a new piece of technology. Until that happens, Africa is condemned to spend its meagre revenues in buying technology from overseas and repairing things until they die. So, in the meantime, who wouldn't choose the sisal twine and sticky tape?