'Chair: Mrs N Hegazy, Advisor to Egyptian Government.

Mr Ba, the representative of the World Bank, noted compelling reasons for Africa to bridge the digital divide: ICT for economic growth; ICT for improved delivery of social services; ICT for greater transparency and governance. He noted that there had been significant progress in African telecom over the last few years, especially in the rollout of mobile telephony, but there was still a long way to go. He urged the same attention now to Internet connectivity as there has been to mobile telephony. A critical issue was the costs of connectivity. A 3-minute call to the US from African countries averages several US dollars a minute compared with less than a dollar in many other countries. There is a clear correlation between liberalisation of telecom, reduced costs and increasing teledensity. There is also evidence that Foreign Direct Investment increases as telecom reforms are put in place. He recommended the way forward as:

• Prepare and implement a second wave of reforms including:
  
  • further market liberalization,
  
  
  • further disengagement of governments from operations (sale of additional shares held by Governments),
  
  
  • address the K-economy agenda (creation, acquisition, distribution and use of knowledge)
  
  
  • Strengthen existing institutions to formulate policy and implement regulations.
• Promote access to information infrastructure, with special focus to rural communities.
• Promote Regional integration of telecom and ICT national markets.

Mr Makane Faye of the ECA reported on the activities of the African Information Society
Initiative since its founding in 1996. Just a couple of days ago at a meeting in Addis Ababa, the UN ICT Task Force group adopted the African Common Position as regards ICT (see [ilink=UN ICT Task Force : African Stakeholders Network Created at Regional Meeting in Ethiopia[endilink]. A regional secretariat and interim steering committee were set up and a work program for the first year. He described a series of ten priority programmes each of which has programme owners, strategic goals and time bound measurable targets that should be undertaken by the ECA in collaboration with others, including the private sector. They include:

• Expand, rehabilitate and upgrade the existing ICT infrastructure.


• The Government Intranet Project.


• The National and sub-Regional Telemedicine Projects.


• Strengthening and linking existing school networks and launching new initiatives in Africa through SchoolNet Africa.


• The National Multi-Purpose Community Telecentere (MCT) Project.


• Export Processing and Free Zone (EPfZ) Initiatives targeted at both domestic and foreign ICT producers and service providers.


• Initiatives to develop National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) policies and plans.


• Development of Communication Backbones.


• Capacity Building for Policy Makers.


• Facilitating access to rural communities.

Mr Jan Mutai of the African Telecommunications Union described the history of that
organisation and stated its objective to facilitate Africa’s development towards universal
access and full inter-country connectivity. He described highlights from the ATU’s strategic plan for 1998-2002 that include special programmes for the Least Developed Countries, ICT Policy and Regulatory Framework Development Programmes, a Human Resources Development Programme, several ICT priority projects and a programme for the Development of the Information and Knowledge Society. He also described several service delivery units that are currently active including the African Connection Centre for Strategic Planning, an e-participation Support facility for LDCs, the ATU education and training academy and the ATU foundation for the Advancement of Universal Access to ICTs in Africa. There is clearly considerable overlap between the wellworked out programmes and projects presented, and every effort should be made to foster collaboration between them and the other African and international organizations operating in the ICT arena rather than working in parallel.

Discussion

The chairperson described the approach in Egypt based on the three A’s: Affordability,
Accessibility and Awareness. She stressed the need to convey the value and importance of ICT to individuals and businesses to engage them in ICT development and projects.
Significant attention also needs to be given to the content industry. Success stories on the continent needed wide publicity, and wherever possible local expertise and companies should be used rather than imports. There should greater communication between bodies emulating success in ICT efforts in other countries.

The World Economic Forum attendee was concerned that the presentations were impressive but did not take into account the critical role of the private sector and investors, and he encouraged governments to take a realistic view of the value of their telecomm networks.

The African Connection supported the role of the private investor but stressed the
importance of government engagement and investment to make the critical rural
infrastructure investments that would not normally attract the private investor. Another
speaker noted the great interest of donors and international organisations in ICT in Africa, and urged harmonisation of African positions to unlock funding for ICT projects.
A SADC representative noted that SADC had adopted ICT as a priority to transform SADC into a knowledge society. An e-Readiness Task force had been set up. It would report at the WEF in February and an Action Plan was due for publication by June 2002. Within NEPAD an e-Africa Commission under the leadership of President Konari had been proposed as the NEPAD ICT Task Force. It would launch in March 2002.It was also noted that the lack of adequate and current statistics on the sector made it impossible to plan. With regard to HR development, a speaker was concerned about the role of the private sector. The Chair noted the Egyptian experience, where agreements were made with international companies to run technical training courses for some 7000 professional trainees.

Agreements had been reached to provide free Internet access, with just the price of the
telephone call plus an agreement with Microsoft to avail students with their Office product for $20.

A Rwandan participant noted the substantial progress being made in his country towards
implementation of a National ICT plan supported by ECA. He attributed much of their success to the strong and visible direction and participation of that country’s President in ICT policy. Given the large number of practical and significant programmes and projects planned or already underway in Africa, there is a strong opportunity and need for NEPAD to co-ordinate and maximise the benefits.

Priority Areas of Action in the ICT Sector

1. Establishment of the NEPAD ICT Task Force.

   NEPAD identifies ICTS as one of the four priority programmes and establishes Special Task Forces to co-ordinate these. Taking this into account and following the recommendation of the Ministerial Oversight Committee, (MOC), of the African Telecommunication Union, ATU, the OAU institutions in the ICT sector have recommended the establishment of the e-Africa Commission as the NEPAD Task Force on ICT.

   The Composition, Terms of Reference and Programme of the e-Africa Commission need to be considered by the Heads of State Implementation Committee as soon as possible so as to speed up the co-ordination of the NEPAD ICT programme with those of the G8 DOT Force, UN ICT Task Force and other initiatives related to NEPAD.

2. Prioritising ICT Programmes and Projects

   There are a number of projects that have been presented by e.g. the ECA under the framework of the African Information Society Initiative, (AISI), and the ATU and Regional institutions. There are also new projects that will be identified by different institutions and countries. In addition, the ECA has been mandated to compile a list of major projects that exist in the different Regions in order to asses their status to enable NEPAD to build on what exists on the ground. NEPAD needs to prioritise projects and programmes that need to be followed-up under NEPAD.

   These projects and programmes need to be harmonised so as to eliminate duplication and maximise efforts and resources.

3. Contributing to the UN ICT Task Force African Stakeholders Network

   Secretary General Kofi Annan launched the UN ICT Task Force in November 2001. In order to co-ordinate its work in the different regions or continents, the Task Force established Regional Networks. NEPAD needs to contribute to the UN ICT Task Force Regional Network Programme, The African Stakeholders Network which is being co-ordinated by the ECA.

4. Increasing Africa’s capacity to influence the global ICT agenda

   In accordance with its programme to influence the global agenda, NEPAD needs to contribute to the efforts of the African Telecommunication Union (ATU) to increase the capacity of African countries to influence the global agenda in the ICT sector, especially the International Telecommunication Union-related World conferences such as the Radio-communication, Telecommunication Development and Standardisation Conferences.

   It is particularly important that there is a NEPAD input into the following two events:

   • ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference which will take place in March 2002 in Istanbul.
   
   
   • World Summit on Information Society which will take place in Geneva and Tunis in 2003 and 2005 respectively and whose preparatory process is already underway.
5. Building e-Awareness in Africa

   The importance of ICTs and the potential that they present to governments, institutions, and individuals are not obvious to the majority of Africans. There is therefore an urgent need to develop and undertake a massive e-awareness campaign. This is an important pre-requisite for the sustainability of the various ICT and ICT-related projects.

6. Using ICTs to popularise NEPAD

   Recognition has been given to the importance of popularising NEPAD across the continent. There is a need to organise a NEPAD road-show for this purpose which should include making maximum use of exhibitions and conferences. In order to ensure maximum effect, ICTs should be made extensive use of in this regard, including the diversity of languages and communication mediums.

7. Popularising NEPAD through ITCA

   The ECA should be requested to use its permanent and mobile exhibitions of the Information Technology Centre for Africa (ITCA) to have a permanent NEPAD exhibition.

8. Building the NEPAD ICT portal

   The development of a portal of for all information on NEPAD, African country information database should be given a priority.

9. Prioritising in and for education

   The provision of ICT education and enhancing education through ICTs constitute one of the top priority human resource development imperatives for Africa. The provision of ICTs in school programmes should be enforced as a matter of top priority using the experience and know-how from African countries.

10. Publicising Africa’s success stories

    Africa has a number of success stories which need to be recognised in the international arena when initiatives in different parts of the world are looked at. There is a need for NEPAD to give more publicity to success stories in Africa, especially in and using ICTs.

Resources:

This summary of the meeting is excerpted from the official rapporteur’s report.

The NEPAD initiative sprang from the New Africa Initiative (NAI) presented by African leaders at the Genoa summit in June 2001 and forms the basis for a new engagement of industrialised countries with the continent. The initiative encompasses political, security and economic strategies and contains sector-specific programmes over infrastructure, with specific policies for information and communication technologies (ICTs), energy, transport, water and sanitation. Only sub-regional or continental infrastructures are to feature as part of the plan. The NEPAD report published in October 2001 highlights a number of objectives and actions that are to be taken. For ICTs, the objectives are to: double teledensity to 2 lines per 100 by 2005; lower the cost and improve the reliability of service; achieve e-readiness for all African countries; develop and produce a pool of ICT-proficient youth and students from which Africa can draw trainee engineers, programmers and software developers; and to develop local content software based especially on Africa’s cultural legacy. Five proposed actions were proposed, to: work with regional agencies to design model policy and legislation for telecommunications reform, and protocols and templates for e-readiness assessments; work with regional agencies to build regulatory capacity; establish a network of training and research institutions; promote and accelerate existing projects to connect schools and youth centres; work with development finance institutions, multilateral initiatives and bilateral donors to establish financial mechanisms for mitigating and reducing sector risks.'

• NEPAD http://www.nepad.com
• See also Regional Roundup : G8 Meets With African Leaders To Formulate Detailed NEPAD Plan of Action