Addis Ababa — In this breakout group session, Heather Hudson from the Acacia Program, IDRC, Canada, and Peter Benjamin of the University of Witwatersland, made presentations.
Ms. Hudson raised various indicators and benchmarks for setting goals and measuring progress, in a situation where Africa was on the wrong side of the "digital divide", with 1.8 per cent of the world's telephone lines, 1.3 per cent of computers and only 0.6 per cent of internet users. Installation and usage costs were highest in Africa region.
The usual ITU indicator, teledensity, although giving some idea of the order of magnitude of the infrastructure gap, did not give a full picture since distribution of telephone lines was so unequal due to income, ethnic and education differences.
The number of lines had to be backed up as an indicator with where these lines were located, how they were being used and by whom. Affordability, reliability, sustainability, quality of services, urban/rural access and availability through public institutions were more relevant to Africans. Progress measures should move from the internationally proposed benchmarks toward the country's own benchmarks and leadership. Development indicators relevant to Africa included degree of public policy development and degree of liberalization or regulation. Design and evaluation indicators measured success and failure in terms of technical performance, number of users, types of users and socio-economic benefits. Level of privatization, involvement of the private sector and the existence of public/private partnerships for ICT development were also relevant indicators in Africa.
Mr. Benjamin, drawing on South Africa's experience, pointed to the usefulness of census data and Geo-Information Systems (GIS) in planning telecentre projects as part of integrated rural development. Major national mapping and household surveys were tools to planning and selection of locations, to pinpoint areas where the service was in demand and where people could afford to use it. Sustainability was seriously affected if telecentres were located in areas that did not use them or could not afford them. Survey data was needed in South Africa to guide planning and the supply response to specific areas of demand.
Floor interventions stressed the fact that South Africa was a special case, whose ICT performance was way ahead of most other African countries which were just entering the information age and lacked policy, infrastructure and the required technical resources. It was pointed out that universal access in Africa was not as individually-based as in the West but looked to institutional and community access through public institutions, telecentres, community centres, schools, libraries, post offices, clinics and NGOs. It was also noted that many indicators such as teledensity, which stressed individual access to even many in the same family and household and which worked well in Western economies, did not apply as well as in Africa due to Africa's sense of community and sharing. One telephone or one computer in a village or neighbourhood might serve many people, and many people used ICTs in offices, not at home. The high tariffs charged by tax-oriented governments discouraged rather than promoted access and pricing of installation and usage was an indicator that ranked high in the African context, as was the regulatory environment and the degree of liberalization.
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