[jhugo]

I think a significant factor, apart from generally worse infra and a smaller talent pool, would be the lack of a coastline. Basically all the long-distance capacity in Africa is in the form of submarine cables going around the coast. A landlocked country means you have to rely on terrestrial systems through at least one third country, introducing a whole range of new costs and risks, and probably makes it hard to get the desired level of control/ownership for the inter-region connectivity (cloud providers are often investing in submarine cable systems directly now).