Abuja — SECRETARY-General of International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Hamadoun Toure, said at the weekend that $8 billion was invested in the development of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Africa in 2008.

Toure disclosed this at a world press conference to mark the end of the African Telecom Development Summit 2009 held in Abuja.

He commended the giant strides made in the telecommunications industry in the last decade, adding that there are currently about 250 million subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to him, "It has been an extra-ordinary decade for Africa and it gives me great personal pleasure to see how the continent has taken huge steps forward in bringing connectivity to African people.

"Just ten years ago, virtually nobody in Africa had a mobile phone; today across the continent mobile cellular subscription teledensity has reached 32.6 per cent, with some 250 million subscriptions in Sub-Saharan Africa.

He noted that Nigeria is currently the continent's largest market, with over a quarter of all subscriptions.

Toure, who is the first African elected as the Secretary-General of ITU, said Africa has equally made appreciable progress in the internet access when compared with "a tiny handful of wealthy people who used internet about ten years ago."

He added that more than 30 million people in Africa now have access to the web, adding that between 2000 to 2008, Nigeria alone has added 11million new internet users, a figure which represents 40 per cent of the total additions in Africa.

However, Toure stated that the continent still lags behind in broad band access, adding that there are only 635,000 fixed broadband subscribers in Africa.

He called for policy and regulatory framework as well as political will on the part of African Governments to promote the roll-out of ICTs.

The Secretary-General further stated that ITU, which is the umbrella body of more than 700 telecommunications organisations in the world, is to embark on "harmonisation of ICT polices in Sub-Saharan Africa," aimed at developing and promoting harmonised policies and guidelines for the ICT market, as well as building human and institutional capacity in the field of ICT through a range of targeted training and knowledge-sharing measures.