The East African (Nairobi)
Alloys Mutabingwa
19 October 2009
opinion
Nairobi — Much has been said about fibre optic connectivity, both within East Africa and in relation to the international gateway connecting to the global fibre.
Many of these statements have not paid adequate attention to the overall picture of connecting East Africa within, and to the rest of the world, so as to realise the desired economic benefits.
In October 2007, the World ITU Summit, known as the first Connect Africa Summit, was held.
The summit was hosted by Presidents Paul Kagame (Rwandan), Blaise Compaore (Burkina Faso), Ismail Omar Guelleh (Djibouti), Abdoulaye Wade (Senegal), Pierre Nkurunziza (Burundi) and Bingu wa Mutharika (Malawi).
Also present were leaders Constance Simelane, Deputy Prime Minister of Swaziland; Beer Charles, President of the State Council of the Republic of the Canton de Genève; and Sha Zukang, United Nations Under-Secretary General on Economic and Social Affairs, representing the Secretary General of the United Nations.
Yet others were Hamadoun I Toure, Secretary-General of the ITU; Craig Barett, Chairman of Intel and UN-GAID (UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development); Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank; and Alpha Oumar Konare, the then Chairperson of the African Union Commission.
Connect Africa was a global multi-stakeholder partnership to mobilise the human, financial and technical resources required to bridge major gaps in information and communication technology infrastructure across the region and to the rest of the globe.
Emphasis was laid on the need to support affordable connectivity, applications and services to stimulate economic growth, employment and development throughout Africa.
The private sector was called upon to play a more visible role in the pursuit of this vision and, where necessary, there would be a private-public-partnership to spur this development.
In that light, the following goals were put forth for implementation: Summit Resolutions for Africa Goal 1: Interconnect all African capitals and major cities with ICT broadband infrastructure and strengthen connectivity to the rest of the world by 2012.
Goal 2: Connect African villages to broadband ICT services by 2015 and implement shared access initiatives such as community tele-centres and village phones.
Goal 3: Adopt key regulatory measures that promote affordable, widespread access to a full range of broadband ICT services.
These include technology and service, neutral licensing/authorisation practices, allocating spectrum for multiple, competitive broadband wireless service providers, creating national internet exchange points and implementing competition in the provision of international Internet connectivity.
Goal 4: Support the development of a critical mass of ICT skills required by the knowledge economy, notably through the establishment of a network of ICT Centres of Excellence in each sub-region of Africa and ICT capacity-building and training centres in each country.
This is with the aim of achieving a broad network of inter-linked physical and virtual centres, while ensuring coordination between academia and industry
Goal 5: Adopt a national e-strategy, including a cyber-security framework, and deploy at least one flagship e-government service as well as e-education, e-commerce and e-health services.
These would use accessible technologies in each country in Africa by 2012, with the aim of making multiple e-government and other e-services widely available by 2015.
To help achieve the connect Africa Summit Goals, many participants announced major commitments during the summit, totalling about $55 billion.
The commitments included:
• Mobile operators of GSM Association announced the provision of $50 billion between now and 2012 in new investment across the continent to expand and upgrade networks. This builds on more than $35 billion invested in recent years in sub-Saharan Africa.
• The World Bank Group said it expects to double its commitment to ICT in Africa to $2 billion per year by 2012 from its current investment programme of $1 billion a year, over the past five years.
• The European Commission announced that the EU-Africa Partnership for Infrastructure had been established to support trans-African networks that facilitate interconnectivity.
• African Development Bank would scale up its investments in infrastructure, and was expecting to invest 60 per cent of its concessional resources on infrastructure, including ICT, in the next three years.
• New centres of excellence (in support of Goal 4) were announced (Rwanda and Tunisia with African Development Bank).
Spain also announced about $1 million contribution to ITU for the establishment of a centre of excellence for Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries in Africa, as well as ICT scholarships and internships for the youth and support for ICT training centres.
Benefits of greater bandwidth at low costs are enormous.
In our region, the East African Community, with its key partners like the ITU, the African Development Bank, the World Bank and the European Union are putting in place modalities that will lead to interconnecting our capitals and major cities with ICT broadband infrastructure and strengthen connectivity to the rest of the world.
The realisation of this target is set for 2012.
With such a clear vision and strategic direction, commercial entities like Seacom, other consortia like Teams, and the Private-Public-Partnership of EASSy (to land in early 2010), are playing an important role in achieving Goals 1 and 2, directly and indirectly.
The EAC is cognisant of the fact that, in any venture, there will inevitably be some "teething" problems, which will however be sorted out in due time.
For instance, it was expected that the price of connectivity for the end-user would drop drastically, but this does not appear to be forthcoming in the short-run.
As more investors gain interest in this area, and as consumers (end-users) get more organised, the market problem will undoubtedly be mitigated, given the regulatory framework existing in all EAC partner states.
Alloys Mutabingwa is the Deputy Secretary General of the East African Community in charge of Planning and Infrastructure.
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