Eric’s Blog

Second Africa ICT Best Practice conference in Ouaga – Closing the gap between words and
action

This week, the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou hosted the second annual “Africa ICT Best Practice Forum” which serves as a practical way for Governments from across Africa to share their own experiences and demonstrate practical examples of successful technology  solutions in their respective countries. It attracted a large crowd of Ministers and civil servants from all over Africa and was held at the same time as Burkina Faso’s national  Internet week and the local ICT event SITICO. Isabelle Gross was there to find out what was happening.

Attendance at the forum was sponsored by Microsoft, the European Union and the Government of Burkina Faso so it attracted high-level attendees. But if those attending were high-level so was the rhetoric surrounding the event. For sponsors wanted nothing less than to:” accelerate Africa’s social and economic development, help foster more efficient and transparent public services, deliver the benefits of information technology much more broadly across Africa, facilitate e-government initiatives, promote technology access and capacity building, share regional and global best practices, … “. And perhaps in the  afternoon, to bring about world peace.

But the expectations of the attendees themselves were also high in terms of securing international public and private financing and cheap or free provisioning of hardware and software. There is no doubt that the Minister of Education of Burkina Faso appreciated the donation of 50 Intel-powered Classmate PCs running Windows software for the Lycée Philippe Zinda Kabore in Ouagadougou.

However, this is a secondary school which currently has 6,000 students so it will now have one computer for every 120 pupils. Whilst Rome wasn’t built in day, it is clear that there is still a considerable gap between the efforts of private sector initiatives and the actual commitments of the Governments themselves. For without a regular allocation in the education budget, ICT initiatives will  remain like a dripping tap hitting a stone: regular and insistent but making little real impact. Countries may be poor but hard choices need to be made if the gap between intention and action is to be closed.

Despite the harmonious choreography of presentations of best practise case studies of projects implemented across the African continent, the question that lingered was what  drives what? Is it the desire for more ICT assistance from African countries or the need for a more carefully thought through commercial offer from international ICT vendors to fit the context? Is it Government-driven, supply-led initiatives or demand-led initiatives (both public and private) that will generate their own momentum? If countries were making hard decisions with more of their own money then perhaps these issues would fall into starker contrast for them.

Everybody agrees that African public administrations need more information and communication technology to serve their citizen better and to support vital economic growth. According to Kedikilwe O. Kedikilwe, coordinator at the Ministry of Agriculture in Botswana, the implementation of Botswana Livestock Identification and Traceback System (LITS) has ensured that the country’s farmers have been able to continue exporting their beef to the European  Union. In a country that can count more cattle than people (2.5 million beef cattle against 1.3 millions inhabitants) and exports 90% of its beef to the European Union, the introduction of new, more stringent European regulations covering the origin of the meat entering the European market had to be addressed as it was a clear threat to the country’s income.

Today each animal has a tracking device implanted to provide the required information which is fed into a national database. The implementation of Botswana livestock identification system has not only secured local farmers’ income but also enabled it to reduce the level of cattle theft. And while the UK was struggling to contain a major outbreak of foot and mouth a few years ago, Botswana had the disease under control. So African countries can teach Europe a lesson or two.

It is perhaps unfair to highlight the low level of computers in Burkina Faso’s schools as the country has a range of initiatives to address the digital divide. It has an infrastructure project for building a national fibre network reaching every administrative centre in its provinces/departments at an estimated cost of CFA50 billion francs (over US$100 million). Undoubtedly, this will lay the foundation for improving service delivery and making it more faster and more cost-effective. However, it remains difficult to believe that such project could become commercially viable in the short to mid-term in a country  that has a literacy rate of about 30%.
• To be continued.
 

More…..

Back To Top