Time to act IT, African leaders told

It is time for less talk and more actions, African
governments were told at the just ended Fourth Africa
Internet Summit and Exhibition (AFRINET 2005) with the
theme “Sustaining the Growth of ICT Access in Africa.”


Participants at the three days summit considered that
the continent has seen too much promises by its
political leaders to initiate programmes at ending the
digital divide. Now, is the time to “match words with
actions,” part of the communiqué stated.

Africa still lags terribly behind other continents in
IT developments and usage with over 65% of its 800
million yet to access the Internet or hear the ring
tone of a phone.

In the last three years the continent has made
tremendous progress to connect many of its population
thanks to mobile uptake recording up to 1000% increase
in some countries. There are still large places to be
connected and the bad news is that Africa is broke.

With little prospect for external financing,
participants say African governments must look inward,
open up the ICT sector, formulate investors’ friendly
policies and develop human capacities for Africans to
take advantage of outsourcing opportunities available
globally.

Not many participants are convinced that African
leaders can deliver. “I do not expect this to go
beyond the usual rhetoric,” said one participant after
Nigerian Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar urged
African leaders to pay closer attention to IT
development at his opening speech.

“The rest of the world is moving at a speed faster
than light and Africa is ‘snailing’ to find its
bearing because political leaders are yet to
appreciate IT,” another participant said at the end of
the event.

Helping Africa to resolve its dilemma at funding IT
development on the continent is one of the key points
Africans are supposed to press at the Second World
Summit on Information Society (WSIS) slated to hold in
Tunisia later in the year [Related Story: Long Road to
WSIS].

Afrinet 2005 was organised by the Nigerian
Communications Commission (NCC) in collaboration with
the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), Federal Ministry of
Communications (MOC) of Nigeria, International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID). Others
are the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation
(CTO), Africa Telecommunications Union (ATU) and the
West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Association
(WATRA).

In attendance were the Nigerian Minister of
Communications Chief Cornelius Adebayo, other African
ministers, regulators, telecommunications
administrations, international development partners,
multilateral agencies, ICT service providers,
academia, civil society groups and Africans in the
Diaspora, among other stakeholders.

The 24 point communiqué also includes:
· Africans should participate actively on global ICT
policy formulation and governance issues.
· African governments should accelerate the
implementation of Universal Access for the provision
of ICT services to quickly bridge the Digital Divide
between the urban centres and rural communities.
· There is a need to upgrade curricula of African
educational institutions from primary to tertiary
levels to reflect developments in ICT and make
computer education mandatory in schools.
· There is need to develop human capacities for
Africans to take advantage of outsourcing
opportunities that are available globally.
· Appropriate laws should be enacted to protect online
transactions and ICT infrastructures from abuse.
· Cross-border initiatives at resolving common
regulatory challenges such as WATRA and SATRA should
be encouraged.
· African governments should urgent reform the power
sector to allow for private investment and achieve
stable electricity supply which is a perquisite to
accelerated growth of ICT sector.
· While external assistance is required to grow the
local ICT market, African governments must adopt a
conscious approach at de-emphasizing dependence on
foreign aids to develop their ICT sectors.
· Healthy competitive terrains remain key to driving
investment; governments must evolve policy frameworks
that discourage monopolies. Policy and regulatory
reforms adopting Deregulation and Liberalization as
cardinal points must be ensured or continued where
such already exist.
· Private/Public Partnership (PPP) should be
encouraged and strengthened in deploying
infrastructures and services.
· Constructive engagements between public and private
sectors is essential to fostering growth in the ICT
sector; private players need to actively adopt common
positions on issues and engage governments on matters
affecting the sector.
· To continuously encourage investments, level playing
fields for all players must be guaranteed by the
regulatory institutions.

· Africa’s ICT environment being a part of the global
ICT landscape requires that national ICT policies and
regulations be made to conform to international
benchmarks.
· Technology neutrality must be taking into
consideration in formulating regulatory policies for
emerging technologies such as VoIP, Wifi, WiMAX etc.
· Satellite technology holds high prospects to open up
rural communities and improve universal access.
Therefore, policies on VSAT deployment should be
liberalised.
· Tax regimes in the ICT sector should be made
friendly and multiple taxations eliminated.
 

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