It's here.

Craigslist has launched in Kenya, marking another delayed Internet milestone for East Africa. After years of being left in the world's cyber-dust, it's been an eventful 2009.

The first undersea fiber-optic cable finally arrived, bringing higher surfing speeds (but so far no cost savings for consumers). Kiswahili was introduced as an official language on Facebook. Google's Kenya service has steadily beefed up, and there's finally a decent online street-level map of Nairobi. (Although we may never see the end of driving directions like "go about 300 meters, pass the second large tree, turn left and it's just there.")

E-commerce is a major step in the maturation of the Internet in the region -- and it offers potentially huge revenue streams as the number of Internet users increases, bandwidth continues to improve and the still-tiny middle class slowly expands. The Nation Media Group, publishers of major newspapers in Kenya and Uganda, are also jumping into the market with N-Soko.com, a site for advertising jobs, cars, homes and even tenders.

So far both N-Soko and Craigslist Kenya are rather empty. N-Soko is clunky, too -- who thought Flash animation was a good idea? But these are interesting steps. Now if people would only use the sites.