Nairobi — Kenya's ICT Policy will be in place ahead of a major information technology event scheduled for May 2005 .

Information and Communications permanent secretary, James Rege said: "We'll finalized the ICT Policy by the time WSIS and the Fair comes to Nairobi."

Rege was speaking at the launch of the inaugural Pan-African ICT Fair set to run concurrently with the World Summit on the Information Society Preparatory Conference (WSIS PrepCom) between May 17 and 21 in Nairobi. The two events will he held at the Kenyatta International Conference Center (KICC).

Rege disclosed that the much-awaited National ICT Policy is currently in a draft form and would have been finalized in the next two months..

"We want a generalized policy so that when technology develops we would not need to go back to Parliament to repeal it. It should embrace technological development, technology changes after every six months", said Rege.

He said that government is ready to work with the ICT sector as partners to eradicate poverty.

Rege said Kenya would have enough bandwidth by 2007, since the optic fiber cable would have reached the port of Mombasa and that the Rascom Satellite would have also started operations. "Enough bandwidth will help reduce costs of telecommunication and those of doing business", said Rege.

The Nairobi WSIS PrepCom, the third in the continent will bring together about 10 heads of state, over 30 information and communications ministers and a similar number of telecommunication secretaries in the continent. Similar events have been hosted in Tunisia and Ghana.

The PrepCom executive director Alexander Felsenberg said the Nairobi PrepCom was hurriedly organized to discuss issues that were not addressed during the Accra PrepCom last month.

"There was a notion that we meet again urgently and get a more common stand on certain issues as Africans," said Felsenberg.

Nepad's council president Dr Birahim Seck said both events would create a strong ICT market and bring more investors to the continent.

"I strongly believe that one of the best way to improve the ICT field in the continent is to create a strong and competitive ICT Market in Africa, along with a special emphasis on promoting intra and inter regional trade and investment," Dr Seck said.