ICT For African Development
ICT For African Development
ICT For African Development
Communications
Technologies for African
Development
An Assessment of Progress
and the Challenges Ahead
Information and
Communications
Technologies for African
Development
An Assessment of Progress
and the Challenges Ahead
Preface by
José María Figueres
Chairman, UN ICT Task Force
A Publication of the
United Nations ICT Task Force
Copyright © 2003 United Nations ICT Task Force
All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or utilisation of this
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The views expressed in this book are those of their individual authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views or positions of the United Nations ICT Task Force, the
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institutions mentioned or discussed in this book, including the organisations to which
the authors are affiliated.
v
vi ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
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viii ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Index 337
P R E FAC E José María Figueres
Chairman, United Nations
ICT Task Force
The information revolution has not only changed the world as we know
it, but also its future potential. Information and Communication Tech-
nologies, with their major technological leaps, have affected the lives and
lifestyles of people across the globe, as well as the way institutions and
organisations do business. In their wake, jobs have been created, busi-
nesses expanded, and life for many people has improved. However, not
all outcomes of the spread of information technologies have been posi-
tive. A majority of the world’s population, especially those who live in
poverty, have been largely bypassed by this revolution. Least developed
nations, and rural societies, in particular, are in danger of falling further
behind in this information age. The gap between them and the rest of the
world has expanded precisely as a result of the facilitating capacity of
these technologies for those who have access to them.
Nowhere is this digital divide more pronounced than in countries
of the African continent. Africa is the most unconnected, in an increas-
ingly connected world. Yet, given the broad spectrum of development
xi
xii ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Information And
Communication Technologies:
A Priority For Africa’s Development
The past year has been marked by a great surge in the United Nations
effort to build international consensus around the central goals of sus-
tainable development and poverty eradication. The Monterrey Confer-
ence and the Johannesburg Summit have laid out an internationally
agreed agenda for action by all key partners—governments, multilateral
institutions, the private sector and civil society at large.
xv
xvi ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Great hopes have been raised. The challenge now is to translate them
into reality.
Unfortunately, the past year has also witnessed deterioration in the
world economy. Growth has been uncertain and irregular in most
regions. Foreign investment has fallen sharply The telecom and infor-
mation sectors—which have always been pioneers in exploring not only
new technologies, but also new avenues of growth and investment—
have themselves suffered a sharp and persistent decline.
There is a vast potential for investment growth in the developing
countries. Information and communication technologies (ICT) can help
us turn this potential into concrete opportunities that will help the poor
work their way out of poverty while, at the same time, benefiting the
world community as a whole.
I am pleased that the Task Force has decided to place special empha-
sis, at this meeting, on ICT for development in Africa. Nowhere are the
needs more acute than in that part of the world. ICT is a chance for
Africa. It is not, of course, a magic formula that is going to solve all the
problems. But it is a powerful tool for economic growth and poverty
eradication, which can facilitate the integration of African countries into
the global market. By making the development of ICT one of the prior-
ities of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, African leaders
have shown that they are committed to seize the opportunities of the
digital revolution.
But bridging the digital divide, in Africa and elsewhere, is a formi-
dable task that requires not only leadership, but also a major commit-
ment of resources.
With innovations such as wireless fidelity—commonly known as
Wi-Fi—and other low-cost technologies and business models that are
now being explored, we should aim to provide cheap, fast and, even-
tually, free access to the Internet. But investments will still be necessary,
not only to ensure that people have the technical skills and the literacy
level needed to use information technology facilities and service them,
but also to create content that reflects the interests of that part of the
world.
Information and Communication Techologies ✦ Annan ✦ xvii
Information and
Communications Technologies as
Tools for African Self-Development
Towards a Re-Definition of Development
1
2 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
United States of America would never have been able to achieve the great
leaps of development it did in its hey day.
In fact, the very essence of a Renaissance is the legacy of a new spirit
of problem-solving and the search for knowledge, extreme self-confi-
dence, and a shared feeling that nothing is really impossible, no prob-
lem cannot be solved with the right combination of intelligence,
diligence, scientific excellence and relentless effort, all of this with an
abundance of joie de vivre. The intellectual, social and cultural impact
that all of this has on society is what gives Renaissance that quality of
boundless outburst of talent, energy and creativity. It is not accidental
that America and Americans often refer to their nation as “the land of
opportunities”.
But problems can overwhelm nations and societies much in the same
way as they do individuals, families and communities. How then do we
position ourselves with regard to the potential trauma of problems,
which can overwhelm society? Although there is not sufficient space to
exhaustively answer this question here, suffice it to say that the challenge
in such problem situations comes not from the fact of the existence of
the problems, but the shortfall in the response capacity of the society to
meet them. Such response capacity would be the composite of society’s
technological, intellectual, historical, psychological, religious, political,
material, knowledge, and information capacities, and other capacities of
specific relevance to the problems at hand. This would include the level
of faith, self-confidence, drive, ambition and such other intangible assets
and resources that society can draw on, and the extent to which its envi-
ronment is conducive to problem solving.
This last component, the conducive environment, would include
internal synergy, coherence and common purpose, support systems
nationally and within the regional, and continental and global environ-
ments. It would include the potential impact of enabling or debilitating
international treaties, controls or practices, biases and prejudices.
6 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The notions of poverty and wealth take on a very different meaning and
configuration in this new definition of development. This, in turn, has
serious implications for how we prosecute the process of improving the
quality of life for all the world’s peoples, and increasing the opportuni-
ties for the pursuit of self-actualisation.
In listing some of the components of a people’s response capacity for
solving their problems earlier, I included faith and self-confidence
amongst the intangibles. These fall into what we might refer to in gen-
eral as psychological response capacities.
The very use of “rich” and “poor” nations as the dichotomous
delineation of the world’s peoples has an inherent debilitating effect of
incapacitating the so-called “poor”, which is a majority of the world’s
population, through undermining their self-confidence, however inad-
vertent the process might be. The fact is that the labels do tend to stick,
and with that comes the psychological impact on both those so labeled
and those outside the category who observe or respond to them. It
affects the ability to fairly and accurately identify and quantify the
resources and capacities of those on the receiving side of this dichotomy;
it suppresses or depresses their competitive capacity; it detracts from the
authority of their opinion, even on matters that directly concern them
or that any balanced assessment would have shown them to be the most
ICT as Tools for African Self-Development ✦ Okpaku ✦ 7
competent about the nature of their life’s challenges, for example, and
how best to solve them.
Overall, it produces a skewed perception of the world, its challenges
and opportunities, and distorts the efficacious solutions to its problems,
and the competencies and expertise required to address them. At the end
of the day, this flawed paradigm leaves a majority of the world’s people
as outsiders to the prosecution of human progress, including the prose-
cution of their own lives and legacies.
The burden of this dichotomous delineation is not new. Before
“rich” and “poor” nations, the dichotomy was “the haves” and “the have-
nots”. The history of this is extensive. “Developed” versus “Developing”,
“First World” and “ Second World”, and when the evidence stacked up on
the side of “Developing” became too unmanageable, a modification was
made into a tripartite system in which the “Third World” emerged. The
troubling discomfort of the over-crowding of this new category led to a
new device, the “Least Developed Countries”, or LDCs. It is as certain as
night follows day that new dichotomies are in the works. The Informa-
tion and Communications Technologies sector of the development
industry already has a handful, including “the connected” and “the
unconnected”, the “digitally what-have-yous” and the “digitally what-
have-you-nots” .
To the extent that the most critical resource combination required for
self-development is a common shared vision backed up with self-
confidence, self-esteem, commitment, and the determination to make it
no matter how daunting the obstacles, any structure or approach that
undercuts that self-confidence or self-esteem of a people invariably
militates against their ability to develop, no matter how subtle the effect
may be. This would suggest that the very construct we use to define the
development challenge and how we portray the subject society and its
people are integral and important components of how we position
the prospects of success. This issue calls for attention, because a vast
8 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
idea of where we are going, what we are looking to achieve, and how to
recognise both when we find them. In engaging in the development
process, the potential benefits are diverse. Besides the material impact on
the extent, range and quality of the amenities of life, such as improved
infrastructure and utilities, increased income and the greater access which
that brings, there are new or increased capacities resulting from the
process of problem solving itself, which are very critical to creating the
foundation for sustained and sustainable development.
These outcomes resulting from engaging in the development process
are what we essentially call intellectual property, in the broadest sense.
They include new knowledge or new configurations of old knowledge,
new or increased awareness, new ideas, innovation, artistic, literary and
cultural expression and output, new technologies or applications, a
heightened enthusiasm and self-confidence for driving the process far-
ther into new and unknown territories, and more. All of this contributes
to vastly improving the collective quality of life of the people, the collec-
tive competitive capacity, and, above all, a new level of equanimity, which
forms the ingredient for peace and stability. This is the path development
takes, one which is the way to creating domestic economic and political
stability. An important product of this process is renewed and increased
self-esteem and self-confidence.
Africans in all spheres, especially the private sector, must not just be
equal players, but lead the strategic partnerships in all aspects of ICT
development and deployment in Africa, including the following:
This is the only model that can generate the massive levels of
resourceful and innovative self-development energy and collective com-
mitment to communal self-actualisation necessary to eradicate the con-
straints and disabilities that hamstring Africa and Africans, and hold
them back from achieving the quality of life and global competitive
capacity necessary to take their rightful place in modern society.
Only such a model will unleash, with sufficient thrust, the critical mass
of African genius necessary to initiate and propel the Renaissance, which
I have advocated for many years. It is the only level of popular mobilisa-
tion and self-expression capable of transforming Africa the way it must
be, to free the talent and genius of its people to take flight into the far
reaches of human possibilities in all spheres of existence.4
Crafting the engine of such a Renaissance will require a complete
revision of the entire spectrum of social, economic, intellectual and
ICT as Tools for African Self-Development ✦ Okpaku ✦ 13
Knowledge-Based Empowerment
reinforcing quality of life, for all its people, with the freedom to dream
and the right of reasonable expectation that such dreams can indeed
come true.
If we succeed with the model I propose here, as we must, for the
African radar must be pointed one-dimensionally to see only success, as
failure is not an option for Africa, the Millennium Development Goals
should become beacons on the plains of our African achievements, guid-
ing us in our much greater and more equitable accomplishments. Such
a successful African Renaissance will engender and consolidate the
healthy and conducive political, social, economic, intellectual and cre-
ative stability we have all so craved, in a dynamic not static mode,
enabling Africa and Africans from all places and all works of life, to build
their lives and pursue their self-actualisation with relaxation, creativity,
innovation, leisure and cultural wholesomeness, and with the enrich-
ment of our culture and society for the benefit and enjoyment of all.
spoken and written language as we squeezed it into this new and rather
limited language mold.
A second and related downside of our information society is that we
speak so much more and say so much less that we expend a lot more
energy to accomplish equally much less communication and under-
standing. In piling so much information and data on our senses because
of our increased technological capacity to do so, we have so inundated
the human mind with what I would like to call “data and information
junk”, that its reflective capacity has become increasingly overwhelmed,
reducing the ability of the most connected to understand the complexi-
ties of simple human conditions. I have argued in the past that we have
now reached the point at which, subjected to the deluge of undifferenti-
ated data and information, our reflective capacity has become inversely
proportional to the degree of raw data, which attack our intellect.6
and its people to unleash their genius not only for their self-develop-
ment, but for the advancement of the quality of human life and exis-
tence worldwide, including the peace and equanimity that money alone
simply cannot buy.
The creation of the UN ICT Task Force is a worthy testament to the
vision of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan,
that “seizing the opportunities offered by the Digital Revolution is one
of the most pressing challenges we face”.7 The Task Force itself, by virtue
of its composition, which draws together leaders from both the public
and the private sectors, as well as from civil society and academia, as
much from the industrial nations as from their global counterparts,
brings together the key players in the sector and in the arena of targeted
deployment for development. This configuration allows for maximum
collaboration, synergy and consensus in achieving the coherence of pol-
icy, strategy and programme necessary to get the best and the most effec-
tive and durable results from all combined effort and resource.
Information and Communications Technologies for African Develop-
ment: An Assessment of Progress and the Challenges Ahead reflects pre-
cisely that scope and versatility. The group of contributors to this book
represents global leaders (political, industry and intellectual) who hold
between themselves, substantial capacity to provide leadership for the
catalytic impetus to help harness the opportunities and positive benefits
of information and communications technologies to drive Africa’s quan-
tum development and self-development. The high-level African repre-
sentation amongst the contributors to this volume lends special and
substantial relevance and authority to the dialogue captured in this
book.
The contributors to this book include President Abdoulaye Wade of
the Republic of Senegal, who is responsible for the Information and
Communications Technologies aspects of the New Partnership for
Africa’s Development (NEPAD) on the Heads of State Implementation
Committee, NEPAD’s governing body, President Alpha Oumar Konaré,
former President of the Republic of Mali, a leading advocate of ICT for
development and the Chairman of the eAfrica Commission of NEPAD,
18 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
them, but also to possibly pick up their pack and join them in a common
march of progress not only for Africa, but also for all humanity.
In this African-led and masterminded African future, there will be
room for the active participation of global institutions, donor and devel-
opment agencies, the private sector seeking legitimate opportunity and
profit in return for meaningful and sustainable contributions to Africa’s
development and well-being, civil society, and people in general, all
engaging in, and engaging Africa in a dynamic, exciting and beneficial
cooperative and collaborative common human pursuit of ever-increas-
ing excellence.
Key to all of this will be Africa’s wisdom in crafting a fail-safe way to
acquire, not only knowledge and access to information, but also the mas-
tery of information and communications technologies which drive
them, and what they can enable us to accomplish. This will enable us and
afford us the necessary resource tools, space and freedom, to configure
and package our own unique, rich and ever expanding information,
knowledge, culture, experience and expertise, to share with others,
within the context of a fair and equitable, and truly competitive global
environment. That is my personal dream for Africa. That is Africa’s
dream.
N OT E S
1. See Joseph O. Okpaku, Sr., Ownership of Problems, Intellectual Property and the Dig-
ital Divide—The Enabling Challenge of Solutions, WIPO Second International Con-
ference on Electronic Commerce and Intellectual Property, Geneva, September
19–21, 2001.
2. See Chapter Fifteen: Towards a Road Map for Information and Communications
Technology Development in Africa.
3. One recognises that this opinion could slightly rile some of the big players in the
development industry. But if Africa’s condition is as dire as everyone keeps saying it
is, then risking some intellectual discomfort in the hope of finding the right formula
for developing Africa once and for all is a nominal sacrifice which, I am sure, friends
of Africa can afford.
4. Joseph O. Okpaku, Sr., Creating a Desirable 21st Century Africa: The Role of Lead-
ership and Governance, Futures, Volume 26, Number 9, November 1994.
ICT as Tools for African Self-Development ✦ Okpaku ✦ 21
5. Nigeria’s highly acclaimed major development strides in the early 1970s was driven
by a bold indigenous business decree, which saw the emergence of major indige-
nous industrial and trade initiatives at all levels. Much of what sustains Nigeria
today after years of painful indecisiveness, comes from those heady days. Unfortu-
nately, the country was forced under tremendous pressure to abandon that decree
by international financial institutions when its later reckless spending compelled it
to seek concessions to refinance its debt. Nigeria still suffers from the loss of that
major development phase fired by an enormous internal force fueled in part by
Nigerians and other Africans abroad who rushed in from around the world in
response to the opportunities offered under that decree. That experience may be
worth revisiting.
6. See Joseph O. Okpaku, Sr., E-Culture, Human Culture and In-Between: Meeting the
Challenges of the 21st Century Digital World, A Presentation to the Creating New
Leaders for e-Culture Conference, Coventry, United Kingdom, August 20–24, 2001.
7. Comments by Kofi Annan while introducing President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal
at the 101st Plenary meeting of the fifty-sixth Session of the UN General Assembly,
New York, 17 June, 2002.
CHAPTER Joseph O. Okpaku, Sr., Ph.D.
Background on Information
and Communications Technologies
for Development in Africa
Overview
23
24 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
One of the key events at the Special Meeting was the launching of the
CEO Charter for Development programme, an initiative of the Global
Digital Divide Task Force of the World Economic Forum, in partnership
with the UN ICT Task Force. The CEO Charter is based on the pledge of
companies that sign up, to commit a minimum of 20 percent of their
26 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The World Economic Forum (WEF), a key partner to the UN ICT Task
Force, is itself vigorously engaged in promoting ICT development in
Africa in a variety of areas. In cooperation with the Southern Africa
Development Community (SADC), government institutions and the
African individual and institutional private sector, WEF conducted a
comprehensive initiative on e-readiness in the Southern African Region.
It also devoted its most recent African Economic Summit, expanded from
its predecessor Southern African Economic Summit, to promoting sup-
port for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) by the
global private sector. One of the outcomes of the Summit was the “Busi-
ness Endorsement of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development” ini-
tiative, a programme by which companies doing business in Africa
commit themselves to support NEPAD’s objectives by observing a set of
standard corporate citizenship criteria, such as transparency and proper
accounting principles. Although a large number of over 250 companies
have signed up for this programme, its value is difficult to assess at this
juncture, as signing up does not involve any quantifiable commitment of
resources (material or in kind) to Africa or the NEPAD process.
On July 12, 2002, the UN ICT Task Force convened the Digital Bridge
to Africa Workshop with a view to mobilising African ICT expertise
and resources abroad in support of Africa’s ICT development on the
Background on ICT for Development in Africa ✦ Okpaku ✦ 27
In addition to these, the Task Force has mobilised resources and win-
dows of opportunity through its partnerships, in support of ICT devel-
opment. For example, the Gateway Project of the World Bank has
provided a global database gateway and a window for ICT projects to
respond to the needs of the Task Force. It is also providing support
through its network of country gateways. African countries are begin-
ning to take advantage of this opportunity.
With the support of the African Regional Network and the ECA, the Task
Force recently commissioned a Success Story Study in Africa to collect
evidence of progress being made in the acquisition and capacity of ICT,
and their deployment for self-improvement and socio-economic
empowerment. The study, which involved field research in three African
countries (Egypt, Uganda and Kenya), focused on micro enterprises and
concluded that there have been some gains. It identified the key elements
behind these success stories in terms of economic concepts such as
“Demand drives supply”, “Ownership is essential”, “Learning (and
adjusting) by doing”, and “The money motive matters”.1
28 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Other Initiatives
SMEs
Given the size of the informal component of the African economic land-
scape, especially with over 70% of the population living in small and rural
communities, and the unique adaptability of ICT applications to small
and micro enterprises, it is no surprise that these enterprises have become
increasingly active in the African ICT environment. Taking advantage of
the online facilities of the Internet as well as the development of telecen-
tres, individual and small groups of African entrepreneurs are setting up
a slew of businesses, from online marketing of farm products, arts, crafts
and clothing, to Internet cafes and telecentres. Street corner and market-
place pay-as-you-go phone services in cities like Abidjan, Dakar and
Bamako, in which you pay a deposit and the number you desire is dialed
for you (fixedline to fixedline, and mobile to mobile, for lowest tariffs),
pay noble homage to the ingenuity of the African informal sector.
Background on ICT for Development in Africa ✦ Okpaku ✦ 29
Industry-Based Initiatives
The ICT industry in Africa itself has gradually come to the realisation
that its long-term profitability in the African market is intimately tied to
the development of ICT capacity, not only in order to increase market
demand, but also to promote economic and social development. This is
the only way of increasing the buying power of the African population,
which, in turn, will increase that portion of income that can be invested
in broader ICT products and services.
Examples of such industry-based initiatives include the following:
• Be continental in scope;
• Make a concrete positive difference to ICT development in Africa;
• Promote distance education, telemedicine, social, cultural and
health development in Africa;
• Involve all aspects of satellite technology, as well as exploit compat-
ible non-satellite communications technologies and applications;
• Avoid becoming a vehicle for dumping obsolete technologies,
equipment and applications in Africa, a practice that would further
impoverish Africa as a graveyard of technological obsolescence;
• Promote research and development in pursuit of such solutions;
• Promote human resource development, especially of Africans;
30 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Regulatory Matters
Infrastructure
In the effort to mobilise Africa’s global expertise at the cutting edge for
Africa’s ICT Development, the African Advisory Group on ICT has qui-
etly played (and continues to play) a critical and indispensable role. The
AAG-ICT is a group of 12 eminent African ICT experts from around the
world who meet behind closed doors on an average of twice a year to
provide confidential high-level advice to African Ministers of Informa-
tion and Communications on strategic, policy and regulatory issues,
with no holds barred.
Created by the Minister of Communications of South Africa, Dr. Ivy
Matsepe Casaburri, who also hosts it, the AAG usually meets one day
ahead of the meeting of the Ministerial Oversight Committee, whose sub-
sequent meeting is also attended by AAG members. The AAG also works
in close liaison with the African Connection and the African Telecom-
munications Union, the heads of which two institutions also sit on the
AAG. The Advisory Group expects to support the activities of NEPAD
through intellectual support for the e-Africa Commission. This configu-
ration, the result of persistent advocacy amongst African ICT experts that
the continent take control of its sector challenges and build indigenous
institutions, is most likely to prove to be the most strategic innovation in
Africa’s response to the global challenge of ICT development.
In addition to these, there are indigenous African initiatives aimed
at building industrial as well as research and development capacity in
Africa, allowing Africa’s expert capacity to spread around the world.
Myriads of Initiatives
African Ownership
Strategic Matters
• to double teledensity to two lines per 100 people by the year 2005,
with an adequate level of access for households;
• to lower the cost and improve reliability of service;
• to achieve e-readiness for all countries in Africa;
• to develop and produce a pool of ICT-proficient youth and students
38 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Aims to “create a unified and opened economic zone through the inte-
gration of property, infrastructure and financial services markets.”
ICT/6: DATAFRICA
ICT/9: ACT-NET
ICT/10: Telemedicine
ICT/12: Africashop
• Infrastructure
• Content development
• Law, Policy and Regulatory Affairs
• Industrialisation
• E-Governance
• Online distance services, including telemedicine and distance
education
• Internet marketing
This would essentially cover the full spectrum of the ICT industry.
Amongst the challenges before the e-Africa Commission, as it sets
out to establish itself and to prosecute its objectives under the NEPAD
programme, would be building the institution itself, and the institu-
tional capacity to manage these challenges in the continental and global
context. Having done that, it would also have to define the role it has
chosen to play in the different sub-sectors of ICT in Africa, especially
42 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
given the power of the global industry, which also dominates the African
regional market.
In this regard, the e-Africa Commission is likely to seek to:
The commitment of both NEPAD and the UN ICT Task Force to the
goals of the UN Millennium Declaration, and the alignment of the
vision of the African Union with the global vision of the United Nations,
provide a conducive platform for Task Force efforts in support of the
ICT Development in Africa as a whole, and the ICT objectives of NEPAD
as executed through the e-Africa Commission.
NEPAD, through the e-Africa Commission, could benefit substan-
tially from the extensive access, expertise and clout of the UN ICT Task
Force and its donor and private sector partners in many ways. These
include the following:
Conclusion
Through these and other avenues, the United Nations ICT Task Force
could help mobilise significant support, promote and/or partner with
NEPAD and its e-Africa Commission. The Task Force can have durable
positive impact on ICT Development in Africa, within Africa’s own vision
for self-actualisation and of The United Nation’s own terms of reference.
Any positive impact of initiatives undertaken by the Task Force and
its partners, even if not in direct support of specific NEPAD objectives,
constitutes de facto support of NEPAD, granted that the ultimate and
overall objective of NEPAD is the transformation of the African ICT
landscape, through all legitimate and conducive channels and agents.
Background on ICT for Development in Africa ✦ Okpaku ✦ 45
Above all, the United Nations ICT Task Force, by partnering with the
African public and private sector (continental and global) could help
promote African ownership of the ICT development process in Africa.
Furthermore, it could empower the African ICT private sector not only
to meet the basic and emerging demands of ICT in Africa, but also to
compete effectively in the global marketplace.
Such cutting edge global competitive capacity is ultimately the only
way to ensure durable sustainability of the process and the gains from all
efforts of NEPAD and other initiatives involved in the global effort to
effect a quantum development of ICT capacity in Africa. This will also
greatly increase prospects for achieving a broadcast acquisition and inte-
gration of ICT applications in the everyday life of Africans, while pre-
serving and enhancing the cultural attributes and priorities of Africa and
its people, thus enriching the global human culture at large.
N OT E S
1. See Chapter Thirteen, Tip-toeing Across the Digital Divide: African Entrepreneurs
Applying, Adapting and Advancing Appropriate Information Technologies, by Crocker
Snow, Jr.
2. See Joseph O. Okpaku, Sr., Creating an Industry-sponsored Participatory Continen-
tal African Satellite Communications Project: The SatCom Project, SatCom Africa
2002 Conference, Galagher Estate, Johannesburg, February 26–28, 2002.
3. See Chapter Nine, Info-communication for Development in Africa: The African Con-
nection Initiative by Emmanuel OleKambainei.
4. NEPAD Document, Section B1 (ii) Bridging the Digital Divide: Investing in Infor-
mation and Communications Technology, page 25, item 117, Objectives.
5. See ENABLING NEPAD, An Assessment of the Objectives, Capacity and Activities of
the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and Strategies and Niche for
UNDP Support. A Consultancy Report by Joseph O. Okpaku, Sr., Ph.D., New York,
UNDP.
CHAPTER H. E. Alpha Oumar Konaré
2 Former President of
the Republic of Mali
Restoring Africa’s
National Space1
47
48 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Africa on the world scene does not mean that it is not aware of what is
at stake.
I would like to recall that it is not the first time that the African com-
munity has had to face up to problems affecting such a delicate area as
Information and Communications. For more than 30 years, we have
measured the real significance of these topics compared to the other
fields of human activity. In particular, we know that the control of
these parameters is the prerequisite for modernity, progress and free-
dom. This is why, in the same tribune of today, we have spoken several
times throughout the 1970s, to advocate a new world order in infor-
mation. It was already a time of unilateral occupation of the world,
when the space of the Southern countries was occupied by the satellites
of the North, without any possibility of debate, without any possible
compensation.
During these years, Africans have understood that national space at
the end of the 20th century could become foreign to its indigenous peo-
ple, alienated and dominated even on their own land. Today, everybody
knows that the least movement in the most remote African village can be
thoroughly dissected by the always-increasing sophisticated instruments.
We have been suffering this merciless domination for thirty years, to a
point where everybody by now considers this alienation as a natural
event. Everybody knows the dramatic consequences of this. On the
world scene, Africa is unfortunately only present because of its ethnic
conflicts, famine, and disease. Africa appears as an old sick person, pale
and atonic, suffering continuous agony, and constantly kept alive by
international aid.
This is the only image of Africa that exists for Northern countries,
simply because only they can hold images. For those rare people whose
interests and affairs are on the continent, this represents a great injus-
tice. They discover populations in good health, industrious, trusting in
the future. They discover democratic societies, where the modernity of
Restoring Africa’s National Space ✦ Konaré ✦ 49
Early Initiatives
Furthermore, I would like you to know that if, once again, Africa is the
poor relative of the world in terms of connectivity, it is due to the fact
that the costs for new technologies and media are still out of our reach.
Actually, in Africa, the debate on these technologies started several years
ago, almost at the same time as in the Western countries. In 1976, two
hundred personalities, including politicians and businessmen, university
professors and common people—two hundred personalities from the
North and from the South—convened in Geneva, invited by President
Guy Olivier Segond, President of the State Council and of the Canton of
Geneva and by myself, to think together in global terms about Africa and
the challenges of new communications technologies.
The right measure of the world significance of the Internet has been
expressed through the decision to build a virtual world between Geneva
and Bamako, my country’s capital city, chosen as a representation of
West African countries in this initiative. This is how the Anais Network
was born, a consultation network on ICT in Africa. This creation meant
for us basically two things: a new form of cooperation between the
North and the South, and the commencement, through the Internet, of
a revitalised integration among African countries.
agreed that Africa had a great opportunity of finally having its voice
heard on all major issues.
The Global Knowledge Conference held in Toronto in 1997, with its
focus on the question of knowledge and ICT, gave us the opportunity of
expressing our views on this issue. Knowledge, for us, is the essence of
everything that is to be known, including rational knowledge, as codified
by Western culture and, unfortunately, presented ever since to the rest of
the world as the only valuable knowledge.
The debate in Toronto did also raise the question of content that
should be developed by Africa on the Internet and the electronic media.
We said that development was a question of culture, and that countries in
the South were confined to an inactive scheme with the connivance of the
North, for as long as this hypothesis was not recognised by everybody.
The question of world knowledge brings along that of the exhuma-
tion, thanks to the ICT, of the historical legacy of Africa. It poses the
problem of the confinement of the means to a particular civilisation, in
which there is the escape, the salvation of the difference, in a world glob-
alised to death, so to speak.
But it is up to African university students, to business agents, to judges,
to all citizens—it is their task to reveal their knowledge, their know-how-
to-do and know-how-to-be Africans who, throughout the centuries, have
kept the continent alive in spite of all the aggressions that we all know.
It is through our involvement in this debate on the world scene that
will make it possible to develop our prolific differences and to refuse the
assimilation of our values by a media-driven world eruption of sound
and image.
This is the same position that we had the honour of supporting in
our closing speech at the ECA (Economic Commission for Africa)
Forum on Information Technologies, held in Addis Ababa.
“Bamako 2000”
Nobody has any doubt today about the revolutionary character of the
Internet in the development process. But one of the questions just men-
tioned represents today a real problem and has been discussed in
Toronto, Addis Ababa, Bamako and, lately, in New York at the Experts’
Meeting preparing this General Assembly of ECOSOC. I am refering to
the collective access and the appropriations of ICT.
We are aware of the interest that 400 million African consumers repre-
sent for multinational companies, and reforms advocating privatisation
have been initiated everywhere in this important field. There is such a
movement in this direction that a great world competition is taking
place. But among all possible analyses, we can recognise, in the prompt
increasing interest of northern countries in the connection of Africa, a
kind of re-conquest of the African continent. The doctrine of a “new
society of the planetary information” is just an idea serving a fooling
market. It is, in a word, the eternal debate on the objectives aimed at all
innovative technologies.
You all understand that our commitment to Information and
Communications Technology is mainly based upon the vigilance and
maturity of Africans in this respect. Also, the only valid question for us
Restoring Africa’s National Space ✦ Konaré ✦ 53
This is why I strongly commend the Economic and Social Council of the
United Nations for having convened this important meeting. A glaring
inequality among the different regions in the world came out from the
experts’ report. But it also arose that there are countries which, only ten
years ago, had an economical structure similar to that of African coun-
tries today, and they succeeded in a spectacular takeoff with a resolute
policy with respect to connectivity.
Mali’s Initiatives
It is for this reason that today, at the “Bamako 2000”, we announced the
intention of the Government of Mali to link the 701 municipalities com-
ing out from a long program of decentralisation of the country and to
provide each of Mali’s municipalities an Internet access point in order to
give to the State reliable demographic statistics and electoral lists for
transparent elections. We will also install one Internet access point for
the country’s natural resources map, and for the school, the health sys-
tem, and the ecological and cultural chart. There will also be one Inter-
net access point in each municipality for communication and better
acquaintance amongst citizens, and for more efficiently positioning and
increasing the value of their production.
Is the planned link of 701 municipalities of Mali to the Internet
today, a utopia? Is it something impossible?
54 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
I do not see another way of giving Africans a chance to enter the global
information society than invoking international cooperation, which, as
it seems to me, is—in the whole world—the only possible universe for
solidarity and parity: the United Nations have always been the defender
of the poorest.
Everybody knows here that Africa does not need to beg on the world
scene. It is one of the continents with the greatest natural resources in the
world. And as for human resources, more than the fifty percent of the
population of Africa is under 25 years old. The burden that Africa drags
upon its feet and that prevents it from taking off is debt, always debt.
And if the dream of the Government of Mali is still just a dream, it is
only due to the burden of debt. At “Bamako 2000”, I revealed to the par-
ticipants that the Internet link of 701 municipalities would have cost a
maximum of 8 billion French Francs, or less than 7 million US dollars,
which is impossible to find today, since Mali pays almost 60 billion French
Francs, or approximately 10 million US dollars, annually for its debt.
The linking up of Africa to the world is not a luxury. It is not simply
in the interest for Africa; it is in the interest for the entire world. This is
why I take advantage of being in front of such an important tribune to
propose to the international community the formula of “debt for con-
nectivity”. I am sure that, if every year just one percent of the total
amount of debt of each African country is devolved for the creation or
the amelioration of the telecommunication infrastructures (telephone,
instant messages, electricity, Internet), the Northern as well as the South-
ern countries will find it to their mutual benefit.
N OT E S
1. On July 5, 2000, H. E. Alpha Oumar Konaré, as the then President of the Republic
of Mali, addressed the High-Level Segment of the UN Economic and Social Coun-
cil (ECOSOC), as a special guest. That speech is presented here.
CHAPTER Mike Jensen
An Overview
55
56 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The divide between urban and rural areas is even greater. Most of
the services and users are concentrated in the towns, while the majority
of Africans are scattered in small communities spread-out across vast
rural areas. Very limited diffusion of the telecommunications networks
into rural areas (often over 75 percent of the country’s telephone lines
are concentrated in the capital city) and irregular or non-existent elec-
tricity supplies are a common feature and a major barrier to use of ICTs,
especially outside the major towns. Furthermore, most tax regimes still
treat computers and cell phones as luxury items, which make these
almost exclusively imported items all the more expensive and even less
obtainable by the majority. Although there have been notable efforts in
some countries to reduce duties on computers, communications equip-
ment and peripherals are still often charged at higher rates.
Another systematic factor is that the road, rail and air transport net-
works are limited, costly to use and often in poor condition, resulting in
barriers to the increased movement of people and goods, needed both to
implement and support a pervasive ICT infrastructure, but also for the
increased economic and social activity which would be stimulated
through greater use of ICTs. Congested border posts and visa require-
ments add to these difficulties.
Perhaps an even greater problem is that the brain drain and gener-
ally low levels of education and literacy amongst the population have
created a scarcity of skills and expertise (at all levels, from policy making
down to end-user). Rural areas in particular suffer with even more lim-
ited human resources. Along with the very low pay scales in the African
civil service, this is a chronic problem for governments and NGOs who
are continually losing their brightest and most experienced to the private
sector. This situation is not unique to Africa or other developing coun-
tries, but is also being faced by the developed world where infrastructure
demands have outpaced the supply of experienced staff. However, this is
simply exacerbating the situation in Africa, because experienced techni-
cians, even from the local private sector, are able to find much higher-
paying jobs in Europe and North America.
The Current Status of ICT in Africa ✦ Jensen ✦ 59
• One of the early and still most important impacts has been in the
use of e-mail to reduce the cost and to increase the speed and dura-
tion of international communications. This has allowed many peo-
ple and organisations to improve management, obtain resources and
generally achieve much better communications with their family,
friends, colleagues and partners around the world, especially in
neighbouring countries.
• Although the relatively low level of ICT penetration amongst the
public in Africa has so far limited the use of ICTs for governance
purposes, many administrations are beginning to streamline their
operations and improve internal efficiencies by adopting ICTs. For
example, the government of Lesotho recently declared that all
announcements for cabinet and committee meetings would be
made only by e-mail. Administrations, such as those in South Africa,
Algeria and Tunisia, now provide immediate global access to tenders
via the web. Health and education departments in many countries
are beginning to electronically transmit operational MIS statistics
such as disease occurrences and pupil registrations. In South Africa,
the results of blood tests are being transmitted to remote clinics that
are off the telecom grid via mobile telephone text messages. As
60 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
the US. They notify local rapid response teams there if they see
anything amiss.
- Many African craft makers are selling their wares on the World
Wide Web, supported by NGOs, such as PeopleLink.
Broadcasting
Radio is still by far the most dominant mass medium in Africa, with
ownership of radio sets being far higher than for any other electronic
device. In 1997, UNESCO estimated radio ownership in Africa at close
to 170 million, with a 4 percent per annum growth rate. This would put
2002 ownership slightly over 200 million radio sets, compared with only
62 million televisions.
It is estimated that over 60 percent of the population of the sub-con-
tinent are reached by existing radio transmitter networks, while national
television coverage is largely confined to major towns. Some countries
still do not have their own national television broadcaster; even a rela-
tively well-developed country, such as Botswana, has only this year
launched a national TV broadcaster.
An increasing number of commercial stations are being established
following liberalisation of the sector in many countries. However, the
news and information output of these commercial stations is often
either a re-broadcast of the national (state-controlled) broadcaster’s
news, or that of an international broadcaster or news agency. Local news
and current affairs, especially those focusing on events outside of the
capital, is rarely broadcast. Also, community broadcasting has been slow
to take off in the region. Genuine community broadcasters are scarce.
Nevertheless, Ghana, South Africa and Uganda have seen notable num-
bers of new community radio licensees.
62 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Telecommunications
private sector, which has seen a rapid growth of public ‘phone shops’
and ‘telecentres’ in many countries. The best-known success story is in
Senegal, where there are over 10,000 commercially-run public phone
bureaus, employing over 15,000 people and generating over 30 percent
of the entire network’s revenues. While most of these are in urban
areas, a growing number are being established in more remote loca-
tions. Some are now also serving needs for providing Internet access
and other more advanced ICT services to the public.
The Internet
The rates of growth seen in the 1990s have slowed in most coun-
tries, because the bulk of the users who can afford a computer and tele-
phone have already obtained connections. As of mid–2002, the number
of dialup Internet subscribers was close to 1.7 million, 20 percent up
from 2001, mainly bolstered by growth in a few countries such as Nige-
ria. Of these subscribers, North Africa and South Africa are responsible
for about 1.2 million, leaving about 500,000 for the remaining 49 sub-
Saharan African countries. If we assume that each computer with an
Internet or email connection supports a range of three to five users, this
puts current estimates of the number of African Internet users at about
5 to 8 million. About 1.5–2.5 million of the users are outside North and
68 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
South Africa, or about 1 user for every 250 to 400 people. This compares
with a world average of about 1 user for every 15 people, and a North
American and European average of about 1 user for every 2 persons.
Other 47 nations
Kenya
Reunion
Tunisia
Algeria
Morocco
Egypt
Shared or public access and the use of corporate networks are con-
tinuing to grow at greater rates than the number of dialup users. This
can be seen in the deployment of international Internet bandwidth,
which is still expanding substantially—up over 100 percent, from 700
Mbps of available outgoing bandwidth in 2001 to 1500 Mbps in 2002.
However, this is still slower growth than the rest of the world, which
averaged 174 percent in 2001. No studies have been made in Africa of the
number of rural versus urban users, but it is safe to say that users in the
cities and towns vastly outnumber rural users.
Although many African countries now have points of presence
(POPs) in some of the secondary towns (about 280 different locations
across the continent), most rural users have to make a costly long dis-
tance call to connect to the Internet. However, some countries have
now instituted local call charges for all calls to the Internet regardless
The Current Status of ICT in Africa ✦ Jensen ✦ 69
of distance, which greatly reduces costs for those in remote areas and
greatly increases accessibility and the viability of Internet services pro-
vided by rural telecentres in these nations. Thus far, 19 countries have
adopted this strategy. They are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad,
Ethiopia, Gabon, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mauritania, Morocco,
Namibia, Niger, Senegal, South Africa, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, and
Zimbabwe. Interestingly, the Seychelles has gone a step further to
encourage use, and tariffs for calls to the Internet are charged at a 50
percent lower rate than normal local voice calls.
Currently, the average total cost of using a local dialup Internet
account for 20 hours a month in Africa is about USD 60 per month
(usage fees and local call telephone time included, but not telephone line
rental). ISP subscription charges vary greatly (between USD 10 and USD
80 a month) and largely reflect the different levels of maturity of the
markets, the varying tariff policies of the telecom operators, the differ-
ent regulations on private wireless data services and access to interna-
tional telecommunications bandwidth.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), 20 hours of Internet access in the United States
cost USD 22 per month in 2000, including telephone charges.
Although European costs were higher (USD 33 in Germany, USD 39
across the European Union), these countries have per capita incomes
that are at least 10 times greater than the African average. In fact, USD
60 per month is higher than the average African monthly salary. This
limits individual use of the Internet, creating demand for public access
facilities—the cost of a single account shared amongst all of the cus-
tomers who would not otherwise be able to afford access.
Similarly, due to the relatively small number of people who can
afford a phone line, let alone a computer, telecentre services are already
very much in demand in the urban areas. This is most evident in coun-
tries, such as Nigeria and Senegal, where telecom operators have relied
on the private sector to provide public phone services. Also, in most
other major urban areas across Africa, there is a rapidly growing num-
ber of kiosks, cybercafes, and other forms of public Internet access.
70 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Sudan 10
Zimbabwe 11
Tanzania 12
Botswana 14
Nigeria 15
Country
Gabon 16
Kenya 28
Senegal 60
Tunisia 75
Algeria 83
Morocco 136
South Africa 398
Egypt 535
0 200 400 600
In response to the high cost of Internet services and the slow speed
of web access, and also because of the overriding importance of elec-
tronic mail, lower-cost email-only services are continuing to attract sub-
scribers. Due to the relatively high cost of local electronic mailbox
services from African ISPs, a large proportion of African email users use
the free Web-based services such as Hotmail, Yahoo, or Excite, most of
which are in the United States. These services can be more costly and
slower than using standard e-mail software, because extra online time is
needed to maintain the connection to the remote site. Unfortunately for
the ISPs, these services can also use up scarce international bandwidth.
In response to these issues and the growing use of shared accounts, some
African ISPs, such as AfricaOnline and MailAfrica, have set up their own
low-cost web-based email services.
In the area of Internet-based content and applications, the African
web-space continues to expand, albeit at a rather slow rate, and there are
still rather too few relevant applications for the average African user.
Almost all countries now have some form of local or internationally
hosted web server, unofficially or officially representing the country with
varying degrees of comprehensiveness.
The Current Status of ICT in Africa ✦ Jensen ✦ 71
Efforts to promote more universal access to ICTs in Africa have been dis-
cussed among high-level policymakers since the early 1990s. Official
recognition was given to the issue in 1996 when the Conference of
African Ministers of Social and Economic Planning requested the UN
Economic Commission for Africa to set up a “high-level working group”
to chart Africa’s path onto the global information highways. An expert
group developed a framework document entitled the African Informa-
tion Society Initiative (AISI), which was adopted by all of Africa’s Plan-
ning Ministers (see Chapter Eight).
AISI called for the formulation and development of a National
Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) plan that
would be driven by national development priorities in every African
country. AISI also proposed cooperation among African countries to
share experiences. Since then, Communications Ministers from over 40
African countries have provided high-level endorsement for AISI,
along with specific telecommunications development policies encap-
sulated in their common vision document, African Connection, which
was published in 2001 (http://www.africanconnection.org). Most coun-
tries have begun the process for developing NICI plans, and 16 coun-
tries have already finalised their strategies.4 High in the area of
priorities in many of these plans is improvement of access to ICTs in
rural areas through the use of telecentres that exploit the convergence
of technologies to provide cost-effective services in under-serviced and
remote locations.
The impact of much of these efforts will depend largely on the
extent of improvements to the telecommunication infrastructure on
which use of ICTs depends. Liberalisation of the telecommunication
The Current Status of ICT in Africa ✦ Jensen ✦ 73
Figure 3–5: African Internet Bandwidth Per Capita and Marine Fibre Cables
To USA
The Current Status of ICT in Africa ✦ Jensen ✦ 77
Further References
N OT E S
4 President of the
Republic of Senegal1
Information and
Communications Technologies
in the Service of Development
The New Partnership for Africa’s Development
(NEPAD)
Let me first express, once again, my heartfelt gratitude for the great
honour bestowed on Senegal by the President of the General Assem-
bly’s kind decision to invite me as the keynote speaker of the General
Assembly Meeting on Information and Communications Technologies
for Development.
I feel all the more flattered because this invitation comes from a man
of vision and commitment whose outstanding qualities as a seasoned
79
80 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
via satellite the pregnancies of 60 women living in the most remote and
cut-off areas of the country. Again, that took place just 72 hours ago. For
these people, seeing a baby sucking its thumb in its mother’s womb and
understanding that abusing the mother means brutalising the child, rep-
resents a genuine social and cultural revolution. Indeed, we saw people
holding their heads in their hands in astonishment.
We have had similar success in the education sector, where Microsoft
has provided public schools with a free introductory programme in
computing. The day care centres established under the La Case des Tout-
Petits programme—my pet project—train children between the ages of
2 and 6 using modern educational games— which remain a privilege of
children in developed countries. These centres use computer games to
make inroads into the world of computing. This project has been
adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO) as a Universal Project.
Our planned University of the African Future—a university without
borders to which one does not have to travel—will provide complete,
real-time and carefully chosen Western university programmes via satel-
lite. Through this programme, students will no longer have to go abroad,
as their degrees will be absolutely identical—not just “equivalent”—to
those issued by universities affiliated with the programme. Technologi-
cal Senegal therefore wishes to gain access to the information highway
instead of remaining on the periphery of the achievements of the new
Millennium.
There is no doubt that the new technologies suggest a higher form
of democracy in which everyone moves forward at the same speed: the
speed of the electron or, if you will, of the speed of light. But such
democracy, accessible to all with the intelligence that is the gift of nature,
can only become a reality if everyone has an opportunity to be a player
in the interaction of its forces.
Our desire is shared in Africa today through the New Partnership for
Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the projects we shall be submitting
to the Group of Eight2 as part of our partnership with the Western world
which, I would like to recall, is both a public and private partnership.
84 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Among other things, Africa is indeed giving pride of place to new infor-
mation and communications technologies. We have in store numerous
projects that must be supported by the public sector, but which must
also be a matter for the private sector. Our partnership must therefore
have the goal of providing opportunities to every country and to every
man and woman. To that end, our eyes should be on the enormous
international differences in computer ownership. We must strive with
resolve to achieve widespread access to information and communication
networks.
In conclusion, I would like to make a solemn appeal to all partners:
Governments, the private sector, non-governmental organisations,
international institutions, scientific circles and all active participants in
this fascinating adventure. I urge them to join their efforts with ours
and with those of the international community and of the Secretary-
General, who has been able to endow our institutions with a soul.
Nations have become scientific laboratories backed by political deci-
sions. That is the reason why we are gradually seeing a very deep-rooted
change in how these institutions are viewed throughout the world,
including in Africa.
Now, we are addressing the colossal challenges posed by the digital
revolution that Africa aspires to join—a continent that is standing proud
because it is able to continue to assume with dignity its role in the com-
munity of nations.
Bearing that in mind, I would like to join the Assembly in a toast to
an enhanced partnership between the United Nations and Africa
towards the full realisation of the NEPAD programme, and to a fruitful
meeting of the Assembly on Information and Communication Tech-
nologies for Development.
ICT in the Service of Development ✦ Wade ✦ 85
N OT E S
1. President Abdoulaye Wade, in his capacity as the Coordinator for infrastructure for
the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), gave the keynote address
to the 101st Plenary of the 56th Session of the United Nations General Assembly at
a Special Meeting on Information and Communications Technologies for Devel-
opment, on June 17, 2002. This is the text of his address.
2. The Heads of State of the Group of Eight industrial nations (otherwise referred to
as the “the G8”) consisting of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
Russia and the United States.
CHAPTER Dr. Pekka Tarjanne
5 Executive Coordinator
United Nations ICT Task Force
Background
“The Task Force belongs to all of us—governments, civil society, the pri-
vate sector, and the organisations and agencies of the United Nations
system. Let’s nurture it together.” This quote by Mr. Kofi Annan, Secre-
tary-General of the United Nations, reflects the objectives the Task Force
would tackle during its three-year term.
The United Nations Information and Communications Technolo-
gies Task Force (UN ICT TASK FORCE) is a new global policy body
established by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to
bring the benefits of the global digital revolution to the developing
world. Launched on 20 November 2001, the Task Force brings together
87
88 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The Task Force’s ongoing efforts aim to demonstrate that the window
of opportunity offered by ICTs will enable the region to address the struc-
tural roots of inequality and poverty by creating domestic prosperity and
global competitiveness, and that this will contribute to a democratic
process of efficient, equitable and sustainable development.
Digital Illiteracy
Internet use today reaches less than ten percent of the world’s pop-
ulation, a fact that must compel leaders around the world to address the
impact of digital marginalisation on current government policy, inter-
national development programs, the organisation of civil society and the
effectiveness of small enterprises.
Yet the question is not merely one of access to the Internet, but
rather one of converting information into useful knowledge. In fact, the
subject is not just the Internet or the World Wide Web, but the range of
technologies that are reshaping communication, and their implications
for business and the economy, politics and governance of societies and,
ultimately, how societies organise themselves.
The impact of the information revolution touches all of society, and
so the different dimensions cannot be really separated.
Just like all pillars, the structure of our digital bridge begins with its
base. This movement is being led by the young adults of the world, on
both sides of the digital divide. Young adults from developing countries
are increasingly realising the wonders of foreign cultures and customs.
The tools of information technology have provided the next generation
with faces and customs of alien places. People in emerging countries,
striving for knowledge, have led the call for ICT accessibility. Universi-
ties and small cafés are flooded with young adults attempting to find
news not available to them in their city or village. They realise how
important this Knowledge Economy will prove for their future.
A fundamental shift in the economics of information has been
under way in the last few years, a shift that is less about any specific new
technology than about the fact that a new behavior has reached critical
mass. It is our challenge, responsibility and commitment to convert the
access to, and the use of, the new information and communications
technologies into enhanced participation, better education, more effi-
cient public administration, and innovative business strategies. It is our
mission to give societies the capabilities to seize these extraordinary
opportunities and to transform the threat of digital marginalisation into
digital inclusion.
CHAPTER Sarbuland Khan
Information and
Communications Technologies
as an Instrument to Leverage the
Millennium Development Goals
95
96 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Given the scale and complexity of the challenge and the need for a multi-
pronged response that can fill gaps and address market failures, few
developing countries can be expected to succeed on their own in bridg-
ing the digital divide. There is a need for strategic partnerships at the
local, regional and global levels that can bring together all stakeholders
around well coordinated actions to stimulate a new development
dynamic, using ICT as an enabling tool to empower the poor so that they
can participate productively in the new global economy.
At present there are many initiatives and activities at all levels and in
all regions of the world attempting to address the digital divide. Diver-
sity of effort is vital, since one size does not fit all. At the same time, the
cumulative impact of diverse initiatives would be greatly enhanced if we
could strengthen synergies, ensure complementarities, promote mutual
awareness, that is, if one could more effectively support, replicate and
scale up practices at work.
The key element here is the involvement of all sectors and stake-
holders—not only in the design of strategies, but also, and perhaps more
importantly, in their implementation—in such a way that each has spe-
cific roles and responsibilities. Strategic partnerships are required to
aggregate the capabilities and resources to address the pervasive market
failures in developing countries and to create win-win situations for the
various sectors and stakeholders involved. The government and the
private sector are complementary to achieve this objective—each is
dependent on the cooperation of others to accomplish its goals.
A new form of collaboration and coordinated action between
public, private, civil society and international organisations is needed.
There is an urgent need to build upon, and go beyond, existing
ICT as an Instrument to Leverage the Millennium Development Goals ✦ Khan ✦ 99
Recent e-Initiatives
The Dot Force was created under the Okinawa Charter on the Global
Information Society, by the G8 Leaders at the Kyushu-Okinawa Summit
in July 2000. Through a nine-point action plan—the Genoa Plan of
Action—and several implementation teams, the Dot Force has created a
number of processes in each of the priority areas of the Genoa Action
Plan.
A number of projects have been or are in the process of being imple-
mented in areas such as networks of expertise on access and connectiv-
ity, human capacity building, local content, and national and regional
e-strategies.
The UN ICT Task Force is a United Nations endeavour that aims at fully
incorporating representatives from public and private sectors, non-
profit organisations, and civil society as equal members. The Task Force’s
membership includes some of the world’s most prominent business
leaders as full-fledged members whose decision-making powers is equal
to that of the representation of governments and multilateral organisa-
tions. Each member offers a unique perspective and expertise from his
or her respective field. Through this system of collective input, the Task
Force has already achieved a common understanding on priorities and
tasks, as well as on the most effective modalities for achieving the goals
set out in its mandate.
Since its creation in January 1999, GBDe has represented a major step
forward in the establishment of a comprehensive approach to electronic
commerce issues, both by delivering a wealth of information through its
website and databases and by connecting and coordinating major stake-
holders in the field.
The GBDe Steering Committee is divided into three regional hubs
(Americas, Asia/Oceania, Europe/Africa) and focuses on eight key
areas: consumer confidence, cyber security, convergence, digital bridges,
e-government, intellectual property rights, trade and taxation. It has
become a significant tool and a leading private sector voice on e-commerce
policy and e-commerce related areas.
Conclusion
We all know that in order to have tangible results, the private sector has
to commit significantly and invest financially.
The past years have been devoted to analyses and studies on assess-
ments and best practices. There is now a degree of maturity in the
104 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
N OT E S
1. For further information about the UN ICT Task Force, see Chapter Five. More
information is available on the website: www.unicttaskforce.org
CHAPTER Joseph O. Okpaku, Sr., Ph.D.
Introduction
105
106 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Context
Africa’s Problems
I must first distinguish between what our problems truly are, and what
others say our problems are. The first enables us to solve them, the sec-
ond compels us to risk wasting our limited resources responding to
insights that could seriously lack truth or efficacy or, if they have rele-
vance, could seriously serve to mis-direct our focus and efforts to
peripheral problems, which mask our more serious and more funda-
mental challenges.
I should also state that in talking about Africa’s problems, I do not
seek to lend value for a split second to the chorus of relentless castigation
The Role of ICT in the African Development Agenda ✦ Okpaku ✦ 107
In this light, let us address the African Development Agenda and how we
can use the facilitation of ICTs to prosecute it. Do we have an African
Development Agenda? And if so, what is it?
The Role of ICT in the African Development Agenda ✦ Okpaku ✦ 109
The tool for conducting such a mass process, the tool for engaging men
and women, young and old, rich and poor, in crafting a common future
on the wealth of culture and experience, positive and negative, the tool
which enables us to express ourselves articulately in our own context,
and for others to hear us some distance away, and for us to hear them
too, is the fundamental element of information and communications
culture. The enhancement of this process to give it speed and distant
reach, to store it for future use, even far from its origin, the application
of the innovation of science and technology to enable us conduct this
critical dialogue faster, more widely and more frequently, this is the
quintessence of information and communications technology or ICT.
Seen in this light, some might argue that we do not yet have a coher-
ent African Development Agenda. The dialogue about our destiny has
been more often than not conducted between our leaders and their
international counterparts, not between them and us, on issues pre-
sumed to be important, not those we all know to be important because
we know where it hurts. We live with our problems as much as we live
with our dreams, and at the end of the day, we cannot be lulled to sleep
110 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
through time with the lullabies of distant voices while others live our
lives for us, often with less expertise about us than we possess. If we do,
we will wake up one day in the future, shocked by the humiliating fact
that we have simply slept and snored through time and history, while not
only the world but also our life itself passed us by.
Just imagine a different scenario, one in which we used the basic facilita-
tion of ICT—newspapers, radio and television—to discuss the idea of
Africa’s vision for the twenty-first century clear across this continent.
Imagine that we printed millions of copies of the basic ideas, in as many
African languages as we could, distributed them to schools, churches,
civic organisations, companies, newspapers and more. Imagine if our
leaders took to the road to dialogue with the people, challenging them,
112 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
difficult for them to fight each other, or worse still, for others (often
those of us from the cities) to start our quarrels in urban centres, and ask
innocent people in the villages to die for us while we and our children
head for Europe and America when the seeds of our machinations come
to violent fruition.
Our farmers and herdsmen have the unique wisdom of history and
tradition. They also endure hardships of terrain, weather, inadequate
communications and transport resources to improve their productivity
and engage in leisure and self-development, which is their legitimate
expectation after toiling in the sun to feed us. We can use the facilitation
of ICTs to reduce their tedium and physical effort, vastly improve their
productivity, find higher income for their products, and enable their
wives and children to gain formal education, have access not only to
treatment but to preventive medical care, and provide them with the
opportunity to both enjoy the cultural products of others, as well as to
showcase and share their own creative products clear across the world
through Internet and e-Commerce resources and facilities.
ICT tools also can save us time and energy if we pass unto them the
tedium of routine. If we calculate the energy and time we spend in Africa
criss-crossing town or country just to obtain or deliver basic informa-
tion, or the time we spend just trying to access basic information, we
realise that we can pass on such routine to ICT tools. This will free us to
do that which we must do, which ICTs cannot do, and which we are most
designed to do as human beings, namely, to reflect, make judgement, and
manage the complex intangibles of human response to nature that are
triggered everyday by our intervention with the dynamics of time in our
daily lives.
But in this regard, we must understand the limitations of ICTs. As
tools, they do not have a life of their own, and should not be allowed to.
Machines must not think for us, for if they do, lacking the complexity of
our human mind, they will not be able to make the critical differentia-
tion between data and interpretation, which sometimes makes the dif-
ference between life and death. In this regard, the experience of those
who have preceded us at the cutting edge of ICT deployment should
serve to underscore the pre-eminence of the human mind.
In the same line, those of us who have the deficit of inadequate technol-
ogy must not abandon our historical means of self-development, putting
The Role of ICT in the African Development Agenda ✦ Okpaku ✦ 115
In Africa, we have tried to address the issue of the cost of acquiring the
tools and services of ICT. However, we have done so merely on the level
of creating shopping lists and finding the money to buy. This is contrary
to how others have addressed the challenge. To build its communications
116 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
capacity to meet its need, China invested heavily in research and devel-
opment, and with that in manufacturing. As a result, it was able to roll
out more telecommunications lines per year than we have had through-
out the continent, and is today, the world leader in the use of mobile tele-
phones. Now Chinese salesmen have joined the long line of American
and European ICT merchants who travel all over Africa selling us every
tiny bit of ICT tools and equipment.
India is another example. Despite having one of the highest poverty
levels in the world, India has become a leading exporter of ICT technol-
ogy and software.
I have argued that the only way to create affordable ICT access in
Africa, and to expand its rollout massively, is to build our own indus-
trial capacity in R&D and manufacturing in Africa.4 It is quite a simple
proposition. We buy the equipment. If we shift these funds to manu-
facture them, we not only get what we need cheaper, in much greater
quantity, and more attuned to our specific needs, we create industries
in the process, with jobs, benefit and pride. This should be a major part
of our development agenda: To create industrial capacity in ICT (as
indeed in other spheres of strategic development) and to push and
support our Africans who are fighting to have a niche in this area.
We in Africa must resist the dangerous notion that at the end of the day
life is about money. Everyday we see what money cannot buy, and it is
frightening. ICT innovation is more genius than money. A year or so ago,
a young African man, a young South African, got worried about the
traumatic experience of having a mobile phone snatched from people on
the street. He was more concerned about the risk of bodily harm than of
the material loss of a handset. So he set his mind to find a technological
solution. He came up with a way to place photo images and contact
information directly on the LCD screens of handsets, in a manner so
indelible that you will have to damage the screen to remove the image.
Stolen phones have been recovered from this technology.
The Role of ICT in the African Development Agenda ✦ Okpaku ✦ 117
In all of these, some of us have worked hard, and continue to work hard,
to create the strategic environment for building Africa’s globally com-
petitive capacity in ICT as a means of not only jumpstarting our self-
development, but also to have the tools for global competitiveness in a
global economy. At Telecom Africa Corporation, we have tried to address
some of these issues within the context of Africa’s capacity to drive its
own ICT development.
Strategic Networks
Manufacturing
can deploy elsewhere to create wealth for the continent and ourselves.
We are up to the challenge and indeed have no choice, because who else
will develop this continent, except ourselves?
And there are sound reasons for insisting on the right of our view of our
world and the reluctance to seek to secure what we are not. If we learn
122 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
anything from the events of the last year and more, as we beat the
drums of war so soon after the celebration of the end of the twentieth
century and hailed the promise of a new Millennium, it is that no one
has the answers to what is right for the world. This is heartening, in
some way, in that it compels us to re-examine the devastating castiga-
tion of us as ne’er-do-wells. We must dump our pessimism and strike
out to build a better world for all of us, knowing that we too do know
much and have much to contribute. Our guess is as good as anyone
else’s.
That being the case, we should relax, take a deep breath and embark on
building our dream Africa which only we can mastermind. Then, and
only then, after we have determined where we really want to go, can
those who are our friends figure out how to help us. That is the legiti-
mate framework for development assistance, and indeed, of friendship.
We each run our lives, and help each other to make it better for each
other and for all of us together. We do not cede our right and responsi-
bility to shape our future, our destiny and therefore our legacy to others,
friend or foe, in the mistaken idea that they can or will develop us while
we sleep through time and history.
We cannot deprive our people of the right, responsibility and
opportunity to build this African continent by negotiating away the
opportunities inherent in solving our problems on the spurious and
grossly erroneous idea that others possess capacities we do not have,
even financial, when we have not tried to know what expertise and
resources Africans do truly possess, at home and throughout the
Diaspora, and how we can partner with our own people to build our
common future.
The Role of ICT in the African Development Agenda ✦ Okpaku ✦ 123
N OT E S
8 Director, Development
Information Services Division,
Economic Commission for Africa
Regional Information
and Communications
Technologies Developments
The AISI Perspective
Introduction
125
126 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
disasters, have very little coping capacity, and have hardly any assets to
fall back upon in times of crisis”.
“This Report,” he said, “is about how African societies can reverse
these alarming trends. Its main message is that harnessing new and
emerging technologies is critical for development”.1
The above observations on biotechnology also apply to the use of
ICT for development in Africa. In fact, they can be considered as some
of the reasons that led to the launch of the African Information Society
Initiative (AISI): Harnessing Information and Knowledge for Africa’s
Development.2 Since its inception, AISI has been the backbone of major
ICT development of the continent. Adopted by the Conference of Min-
isters in 19963, the initiative has successfully created a framework within
which national stakeholders, as active and central players, set their own
courses of action and implement projects based on their priorities and
development goals.
With the support of various bilateral and multilateral partners, a
number of African countries launched innovative ICT initiatives within
the AISI framework. Recently, Niger joined 29 other countries4 to for-
mulate their National Information and Communications Infrastructure
(NICI) plan. Other countries, like Senegal and Mozambique, have
started implementation of the plans and the development of sectoral
applications.
ICT programmes in Africa have moved to a dynamic phase. The
importance of ICT for development has been widely recognised, and
policy and decision makers are committed to the establishment of a sus-
tainable information society in their own countries, which is evident in
the increasing number of innovative ICT plans and projects.
The role of the Economic Commission for Africa is to co-ordinate
the work of AISI. ECA has been assisting the countries to create an
enabling environment for ICT for development through these NICI
plans, strategies and participation in regional and global fora to make
Africa’s voice better heard.
ECA is also in partnership with national counterparts and donors
to implement sectoral applications. The progress is monitored and
Regional ICT Developments ✦ Soltane ✦ 127
Mali: Mali set up a new NICI Committee in May 2002. Several consulta-
tive workshops with stakeholders were organised. A baseline study cov-
ering the major cities of Mali has been launched.
Niger: After the official launching of the NICI plan by the Prime Minis-
ter of Niger in July 2002, a NICI Committee was set up. A baseline study
covering all provinces, ministries, government agencies, NGOs and the
private sector is underway.
Rwanda: The Rwanda NICI Plan has been finalised and its implementa-
tion launched by the President in February 2002. Ministries have started
developing sectoral plans out of the main plan. A funding conference is
scheduled to take place early in 2003.
Tanzania: Through its ICT Policy Task Force and a national e-think tank,
the government of Tanzania produced an ICT policy document that was
presented and debated by key stakeholders in May 2002.
The role of ICTs for regional integration and co-operation has gained
considerable attention. As a result, Regional Economic Communities
(RECs) are taking a leading role in regional consultations and studies,
such as the harmonization of policies, regulatory frameworks, infra-
structure, and more. Examples include:
ICT for Regional Integration for the Economic Community for Central
Africa States (CEMAC): The Economic Community of Central African
States (CEMAC) organised a workshop on ICT for regional integration
in Yaounde, in September 2002. The workshop adopted the Yaounde
130 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The ADF III ICT Focus Group on Regional Integration:10 During the third
edition of the African Development Forum (ADF) on Regional Integra-
tion, held in March 2002, the ICT Focus Group met to explore the role
of ICTs in Regional Integration. A portal on regional integration was also
launched during this event.11
Since its existence, the ADF has registered significant impact and
rapidly gained recognition as an effective forum for informed dialogue
and consensus building on urgent development issues of relevance to
Africa, and for agreeing on implementation priorities and strategies at
national, sub-regional and regional levels. ADF 199912 focused on ways
to accelerate the information revolution in Africa. A considerable
amount of technical information was prepared during ADF ’99 and is
still being used and referred to by member States and experts doing stud-
ies on Africa.
drawn from government, civil society, the private sector, as well as devel-
opment partners. Various bilateral and multilateral partners as well as
the private sector and the civil society supported it.
Bamako 2002 also provided an opportunity to revisit and evalu-
ate the implementation of the recommendations of the first African
Development Forum (ADF ’99) and Bamako 2000.14 The conference
was a unique opportunity to renew the commitment of member
States and bilateral and multilateral development partners of Africa
for the attainment of the visions enshrined in the African Information
Society Initiative (AISI).
Participants in Bamako 2002 unanimously agreed on a set of princi-
ples and recommendations for developing a common African vision for
an information society, known as the Bamako Declaration.15 A Task
Force, Bamako 2002 Bureau16, with ECA serving as a secretariat, has
been established to carry out the major recommendations and work
with the WSIS secretariat. The Bureau is chaired by Mali, with members
composed of one country from each sub-region, and representatives of
the civil society and the private sector.
The Bamako 2002 Bureau and ECA met several times during the
First Preparatory Conference for the WSIS (PrepCom 1)17, which was
held from 1–5 July 2002, in Geneva, Switzerland, to explore ways and
means to implement the Bamako Declaration and continue the activities
it suggested. The Africa Group requested ECA to serve also as the Secre-
tariat for Africa’s participation in the WSIS activities and ensure that
Africa will develop a common plan of action.
Governance
The jury is still out on the impact of ICTs on the development process in
Africa, as the advent of the information age is relatively recent for assess-
ing, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the exact impact on socio-eco-
nomic transformations. Outside of the telecommunications sector,
information is sparse, diffuse and anecdotal in such areas as sectoral
applications, investment flows, donor/funding activity, the ICT indus-
trial or business sector, ICT labour, and so on.
Nevertheless, the fact still remains that there is an urgent need for
developing indicators that monitor the role of ICTs in each and every
sector applicable, as well as for developing mechanisms that provide pre-
cise assessments. Up to two years ago, the relevance of ICTs to Africa’s
development was evaluated on an ad hoc basis. It is only recently that
studies have been commissioned by agencies, such as the ITU, UNESCO,
and the World Bank, to name a few, on e-readiness and the impact of
ICTs and development
In response to this development, an Africa-specific monitoring and
evaluation programme, Scan-ICT, was launched in November 2000.
Scan-ICT is led by IDRC and ECA and supported by the European Com-
mission and the Norwegian Agency for Development (NORAD). It aims
at developing Africa’s capacity to collect, analyse and organise data on
the penetration and utilisation of ICTs for development. Ghana, Sene-
gal, Morocco, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Mozambique have been selected
and sponsored to undertake baseline studies by employing indicators
reflecting thematic areas; namely, infrastructure, content development,
sectoral applications such as education, health, e-commerce. Interim
results were presented at Bamako 2002.
136 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The GKP aims to promote broad access to (and effective use of)
knowledge and information as tools of equitable sustainable develop-
ment. GKP members also share information, experiences and resources
to realise the potential of information and communications technologies
to improve lives, reduce poverty and empower people.
In April 2002, the GKP Annual Meeting held an African Day at the
United Nations Conference Centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Members
of the network and other invited experts discussed issues related to the
major ICT for development initiatives in Africa, the GKP Strategy
2005, global and regional networks, as well as partnership mechanisms
in Africa. African Day recommendations were presented in Bamako
2002.
iConnect Africa34 is a quarterly web, paper and email service that aims to
raise awareness in the wider African development community regarding
the possibilities offered by ICTs in development. iConnect is produced by
the ECA and the International Institute for Communication and Devel-
opment (IICD). It reports on activities forming part of the AISI and
Building Digital Opportunities programme “BDO”. iConnect is funded
by the United Kingdom Department for International Development
(DFID), the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department for
International Development Cooperation (DGIS) and the Swiss Agency
for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
AISI Radio Series are based on the Harnessing ICTs for Development pro-
gramme of the Economic Commission for Africa. The Radio Series is
aimed at creating greater awareness on the information society, serving
as a tool for media practitioners, especially radio broadcasters, to engage
various groups in debating the role of ICTs in the development process.
The programme was made possible with funding from the Africa Region
of the World Bank. “ICTs in Mali”, one of the four programmes in the
AISI Radio Series, was broadcast by the English Language Service of
Radio Netherlands, and was a special edition in their weekly develop-
ment programme, A Good Life.
142 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The ICT Media Award Programme was launched recently by the ECA. It
aims at encouraging reporting by African journalists on ICT for develop-
ment issues within the context of the African Information Society Initiative
(AISI). The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), the
International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the International
Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) have made contri-
butions to the award, which has assisted in kick-starting the process.
NICI Maps and Graphs are based on data collected from different sources.
Currently, maps on the status of the NICI strategies, Africa’s Internet sit-
uation and tele-density, the number of ISPs (and ownership), mobile
density, and broadcasting (regulation, radio, TV) can be found at:
http://www.uneca.org/disd/ict. A NICI graph has also been prepared and is
available from the same site.
AISI Briefing Papers are being produced on various issues related to pro-
moting ICTs for development. The briefing papers aim at sensitising bet-
ter African policy makers about the issues that need to be addressed for
achieving Africa’s digital inclusion. Currently, briefing papers on the
National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) plans,
ICTs and governance, and civil society participation in ICT programmes
are being produced.
on the development of the sector. The websites are being used to docu-
ment the status of e-readiness and national e-strategies at the country
level. Some of the major websites include:
• AISI (http://www.uneca.org/aisi);
• NICI (http://www.uneca.org/aisi/nici);
• PICTA (http://www.uneca.org/aisi/picta); and
• ASN (http://www.unicttaskforce.org/regional/africa/main.asp).
The recent dramatic growth of the Internet and the mobile sector, and
the proliferation of Internet and computer services businesses(includ-
ing the availability of cyber cafés in African capitals) show that there is
potential for ICTs as a key development sector for Africa. Increasing
use of ICT in other areas of economic development also indicates that,
with concerted efforts, ICTs have the potential to meet development
challenges.
A number of lessons have also been learnt from the work of ECA in
implementing the African Information Society over the last six years.
Activities and initiatives have been mushrooming in the continent in the
ICT for Development areas, targeting all member States but sometimes
limited to a few countries. The different social and economic status of
African countries led to different approaches to information society
development and diverse projects in these countries. Such diversity itself
144 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
is a lesson. Major lessons that can be extracted from these projects, pro-
grammes and initiatives include the following:
Increased Awareness
Almost all African governments are now ready to consider the develop-
ment of ICT policies and programmes of action that assist them better
to address socio-economic development challenges. The resistance to
embrace ICT has changed tremendously. The governments are willing to
invest in information and communications technology programmes
that: (a) meet their development plans and goals; (b) are part of their
efforts to alleviate poverty; and (c) increase the social appropriation of
ICTs by the civil society and the communities. Government seems to
play a key role in driving the ICT agenda in most countries.
• broader and long-term actions in a few key areas that bring sub-
stantial changes to the society; and
• small, effective and sustainable programmes that bring catalytic
impact on communities and that can also be used for demonstration
purposes.
146 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The experience so far also shows that technical and financial assistance
is needed at different levels. These include:
• the need for a common and strong African voice in global decision-
making to influence the global rule of the game on behalf of the
communities on the ground.
To date there is limited financing mechanism for the huge task of har-
nessing ICT for development in Africa. Ad hoc projects and programmes
were largely unsustainable. There is, therefore, a need for better financ-
ing mechanisms that take the need of different actors into account. The
problem has been addressed several times and now we need to move for-
ward more efficiently. The Government of Senegal (responsible for the
infrastructure part of NEPAD), with the support of ECA, organised the
NEPAD financing conference in Dakar (15–17 April 2002). The confer-
ence came out with interesting recommendations in the area of ICTs.
Bamako 2002 studied the proposal and agreed that some of the major
immediate actions that were needed were:
Conclusion
The lessons above and on ground-level work by the ECA in the region
indicate that governments, partners, the private sector and civil society
Regional ICT Developments ✦ Soltane ✦ 149
N OT E S
Info-communication
for Development in Africa
The African Connection Initiative1
Africa needs to
‘cheetah-pole-vault’
not ‘leap-frog’
—OLEKAMBAINEI
The Setting
The development impact of ICT has two distinctive aspects. The first
consists of the benefits of enhancement of the infrastructure and appli-
cations to users of information and communication services, who can
be distinguished according to whether they use these services as an
everyday tool for production, distribution or consumption, and for
151
152 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The Challenge
Africa’s experience with ICT has unfortunately, and for the most part,
taken a different path from most of the world. Poor ICT infrastructure,
combined with weak policy and regulatory frameworks, low technolog-
ical penetration and unimpressive human and institutional capacity,
154 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
and coverage, poor service quality and high investment costs and tariffs.
Most calls and Internet traffic exchanged between African countries are
still routed through Europe and cost Africa some $400 million a year in
transit fees. The direct result of this is the inability of most African ICT
services providers to reduce settlement rates, high Internet costs and
other ICT tariffs. Over fifty percent of ICT services are in urban areas
where less than thirty percent of the population lives. Excluding South
Africa, which constitutes over fifty percent of the African ICT market,
the connectivity gap between Africa and the rest of the world is very
exacerbated, pegging African tele-density still at less than one line per
100 people a decade after extensive reforms. The situation is no better
(and in some cases, worse) in broadcasting, Internet access, computer
and IT usage, multimedia access and production and distribution of
print material.
Traditional radio broadcast, which has a far higher level of penetra-
tion in Africa, is still inadequate and stands at 20 per 100 people. Postal
services, while they have received some attention following separation of
a significant number from telecommunications operations, still remain
fragile and lack requisite funds to modernise and expand.
A key challenge is for Africa to be able to attract the requisite local
and foreign, as well as private and public, investment to develop low-cost
information and communication infrastructure and applications for
efficient delivery of high value-adding products in effective applications
on a reliable and sustainable basis. Alliances and partnerships with and
between the local and foreign private sector would need to be forged and
sustained nationally, regionally, continentally and globally, with trans-
parent criteria on rules of engagement within clear rationalised institu-
tional arrangements and relationships at all levels.
Africa needs to be able to define and consistently monitor its own
performance indicators to reflect effective universal service and access
priorities. Policies on public ICT services access in particular need to
be given priority in the face of all the above barriers and challenges.
But perhaps even more challenging is for African governments to be able
to go beyond national boundaries to synchronise policies, regulatory
156 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
An Overview of Activities
In its short history, the African Connection has undertaken a good num-
ber of important activities. These include:
Policy and Regulation: The African Connection has completed the First
Phase of the Regulatory Study with the financial assistance of the Euro-
pean Union. The study identified key issues involved in the reform of
Telecommunications policies and regulations in Africa. The study’s
report and similar reports are on the African Connection website.
ICT Policy Strategy Papers: The African Connection has developed sev-
eral ICT Policy Strategy Papers and posted them on its website.
Universal and Rural Access: The African Connection has developed, with
partners, a GMPCS licensing template (toolkit) posted on the website,
and held follow-up workshops jointly with Schoolnet Africa and
Worldlink (of the World Bank) that expanded the technology to cover all
Info-communication for Development in Africa ✦ OleKambainei & Sintim-Misa ✦ 159
Pressing Issues
Over the last two years of the existence of the African Connection Secre-
tariat, otherwise known as African Connection Centre for Strategic
Planning (ACCSP), we have developed some perspectives on many
regional, continental and global issues. We would like to share, here, one
such view on ICT for development in Africa.
Sector Strategy
the critical mass, and scale and scope economies to attract local and
foreign investors. What is required is harmonised policy and regulatory
frameworks from interconnection and spectrum planning to licensing
and e-commerce strategies. Tactically, it might be better to start with
the policy and regulatory gaps that exist rather than forcing countries
with different standards and procedures to change and comply. Fur-
thermore, integrating ICT as a tool and crosscutting sector into devel-
opment and development agendas can go a long way in efforts geared
towards sustainable development, poverty alleviation and national
competitiveness.
Consistent and proactive e-Readiness assessments should be carried
out for all countries in order to articulate current gaps, constraints and
opportunities. Approximately fifty percent of African countries have had
some assessment done of their readiness to integrate information tech-
nology and e-commerce. The results of such assessments should form
the basis of more comprehensive ICT strategies to fill these gaps, resolve
constraints and effectively package and market opportunities. These
assessments would also go a long way to facilitate planning, identifica-
tion and allocation of resources.
e-Commerce policy has already been identified both as a gap and a
priority, and could be used as the first phase of a more general harmon-
isation program. An e-Commerce model policy and legislation adopted
by African countries could provide a cohesive tool towards intra-African
and global trade. It may include sub-projects around using ICT tools for
SMME development, e-Government service delivery, and the creation of
jobs and wealth.
Infrastructure Financing
Government-on-line (e-Government)
There is also a need to promote the use of ICT to provide better, cheaper
and faster government services and information electronically, increase
citizens’ participation in decision-making and facilitate good gover-
nance. To accomplish this, an effort should be made to develop compre-
hensive and active websites for governments in phases until all
governments are covered. Such websites would provide facilities to
enable interactive consultation among agencies, and between agencies
and customers, and enable the public to offer structured feedback on
policy issues.
There is a need for computers for schools and youth centre modules for
digital training and general ICT literacy, networking of schools and
youth centres, and access to cheaper and faster Internet and multi-media
Info-communication for Development in Africa ✦ OleKambainei & Sintim-Misa ✦ 171
facilities. We should also develop the capacity for extensive and inten-
sive use of ICT in preventive and curative health in general as well as
in specific programs, such as HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis, and
Malnutrition.
Electronic linking and virtual networking of health clinics/centres,
hospitals and laboratories nationally so as to provide improved and
advanced health access, especially to rural communities, remote areas
and the under-served poor urban areas, is one way to approach this.
e-Agriculture
Conclusion
We start the Year 2003 looking forward to the World Summit on Infor-
mation Society in Geneva in 2003, and Tunisia in 2005. It is, therefore,
proper that we reflect first on what Africa has to do to propel herself
into the Information Society and hence become active and benefiting
players in globalisation. Secondly, we should also reflect on what Africa
expects from the rest of the global community as partners and fellow
members of this Information Society. Info-Communication (ICT), as
172 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
stated earlier, is not an end by itself, but one of the means or tools for
social, economic and cultural development as well as for all human
activity. ICT is one of the critical tools for empowering individuals,
communities, countries, regions and continents in their struggle for
social, economic, cultural and political development as well as for
improving their quality of life. The WSIS, we believe, is a recognition of
this fact as well, in that by transcending the barriers of the digital divide
within and between communities, countries and regions, we shall be
able to empower humanity to participate fully in their own develop-
ment and in positive globalisation.
We expect that WSIS will bring into focus how information and
knowledge exchange and related digital opportunities can be harnessed
to become one of the facilitative tools in addressing the numerous objec-
tives and declarations of the many Global Summits that have taken place
over the last two decades, all aimed at addressing the many problems that
our planet and its inhabitants face. It is hoped that the WSIS will be able
to develop a shared vision and mutual political, corporate and moral will
and commitment to make ICT that crucial tool in reality and for the
Information Society to be inclusive, effective and mutually beneficial.
This, of course, means each and every citizen, community, country,
region and continent takes full responsibility for the exercise while
recognising and facilitating mutual partnership.
The African Connection and similar African initiatives are Africa’s
ambitious and courageous attempts and commitment to address this
challenge. This chapter is a humble attempt at putting these ideas and
vision together. It is intended to trigger debate that may hopefully lead
to development of some coherent strategies and actions by Africa’s pub-
lic, private and civil society, with partnerships from outside Africa. This
is not an attempt to raise all the issues nor answer all the questions.
At the end of the day, development is first internally intended and
pushed, then externally facilitated and assisted through mutually bene-
ficial partnership with equitable sharing of responsibilities. It is a busi-
ness, not a philanthropy.
Info-communication for Development in Africa ✦ OleKambainei & Sintim-Misa ✦ 173
N OT E S
175
176 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Africa can bridge the digital divide given its history of strong elements
of Information Processing tools, such as its calculating board instruments.
These board instruments had supported early African societies with such
calculations as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of up to
10 digit numbers.2. A set of calculating boards readily record information.
Thus, though Information processing is not foreign to the African society,
it has not, in recent times and given the acceleration of new electronic
technologies, developed in pace with the rest of the world.
This chapter first presents a proposal of a preferred measure of
progress of ICT development in Africa using the Internet as a vehicle. An
ICT vision for Africa is thereafter articulated showing the transformation
from a learning society to a learned society, in which knowledge products
with secured intellectual property are primary outputs of industry.
To accomplish this, an eAfrica Agenda is defined that identifies the
key components to be strengthened in order to be able to implement the
vision. The synergy of the components is relevant in creating good
dynamics for development. The core digital rights principles and an
implementation framework is specified to ensure satisfactory footprints
of the ensuing interventions of the eAfrica Commission.
Internet Measures
In the early 90s, the common method of describing the state of Inter-
networking of the African continent was simply whether there existed an
Africa’s Digital Rights ✦ Quaynor ✦ 179
connectivity to the Internet. Thus this has now become a beauty contest
of who is willing to pay more money to the International community.
These international Internet links require that the country seeking a
connection pay for both half circuits, in-country and in the termination
country, at unusually very high rates, several times larger than same
bandwidth purchased in the developed countries. This is thus more a
measure of capital flight than of how ICT is advancing the social devel-
opment of Africa.
The focus turned to the number of users, with calculations of pene-
tration described in colorful charts showing how poorly Africa was per-
forming in accepting the Internet and its promises. During these times,
the continent was ridiculed with acclaimed high growth rates the devel-
oping countries were supposedly enjoying. These claims of the number
of users doubling every few months have all been demonstrated to be
mere marketing spins by corporations in developed countries to
enhance their exploitation of the global economic system to the disad-
vantage of Africa. In any case, the number of users is a volatile measure,
which changes rapidly as users depart the service and new users enter
into service. Likewise, it did not capture the numerous occasional users
who often used universal access services. Therefore, we at the eAfrica
Commission do not consider the number of users to be a good measure
to characterise Internet development in Africa.
Today, the new buzzword in describing the state of the Internet in
Africa is the number of exchange points, which are a local interconnec-
tion among providers to increase their local speed of communication
and reduce somewhat what they pay for International traffic. Though
exchange points are good, we do not see this as a good measure. In fact,
we wonder why the developed countries do not have many exchange
points and yet they seem eager to want to mislead us in this direction.
The United States of America has only a handful of Internet exchanges
to which the entire global community connects. The proliferation of
Internet exchanges needs to be based strictly on local traffic in order for
costs to desired locations to be meaningful.
Africa’s Digital Rights ✦ Quaynor ✦ 181
The Internet info-structure has two main parts: domain names and
addresses. We look to these two structures as a way of defining measures
of Internet for the eAfrica Commission. This is better as it relates to the
fundamental workings of the Internet technology. We recognise that
domain name as a measure is fuzzy and is a mixture of global names,
whose destinations cannot be traced easily to Africa, as well as country-
based domain names, which can be operated from anywhere. This great
flexibility in the domain name system reduces the efficacy of the names
as a measure of Internet development in Africa.
The addresses on the other hand have been specified to be within
regions of continental sizes. The allocation of the addresses is also man-
aged regionally by regional organisations, which are address registries
that ensure uniqueness of the blocks allocated to providers in the region.
Furthermore, the allocations are based on the demonstrable use of pre-
vious allocations and the presented network plan of organisations.
Although the emerging African Address Registry, AfriNIC, is not fully
established, information from existing registries covering the Africa
region provide precise data on progress in Africa. The eAfrica Commis-
sion will use addresses as the primary measure of growth in Internet-
working in Africa. This measure lends itself to similar detailed analyses
of all the other measures including per capita studies and other higher-
level functionality, such as information flows.
With respect to Internet addresses,4 the status of Africa may best be
understood by consideration of Figures 10–2 to 10–6. About 43% of
possible addresses in Ipv4 address space had been pre-allocated prior to
systematic allocations through Regional Internet Registries. The three
Registries located in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific have since
allocated 6%, 4%, and 4% of the addresses respectively, amounting to
approximately 256 million addresses. The allocation within Africa, a
continent yet to have a Registry, is included in the figures of the three
registries. This amounts to 2 million addresses, as shown in Figure 10–4.
182 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
In other words, the three Registries have allocated less than one percent
of the addresses directly to ISPs or organisations in Africa. Note that this
percentage is significantly less than one percent when one includes the
pre-allocated addresses (43% of the addresses), which had previously
been allocated to non-African countries.
ARIN
6%
Other Org .
(pre-RIR)
43%
Unallocated
37%
2.25
40,000,000
RIPE NCC 2.05
35,000,000
APNIC
1.71
30,000,000 ARIN
1.50 1.51
25,000,000
1.29
20,000,000
0.79 0.92 0.92 0.69
15,000,000
0.52 0.57
10,000,000
5,000,000
0
1999 2000 2001 2002
2.61 4.47 5.47 2.37
Africa’s Digital Rights ✦ Quaynor ✦ 183
100
86
79
80
60
51
40
27
15
20
0
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
184 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
2
9 2 21
1
1
1
1 1
1
1 31 10 1
1
1 7
RIP NCC 1
21 /69
2
1
1
ARIN APNIC
4 / 19 1/1
15
The ICT vision for Africa is to establish ICT, in particular the Internet,
as an empowerment tool, and through that, reinforce the people to
become critical players in the social and economic transformation of the
continent.
The eAfrica vision is a three-step vision, which is intended to trans-
form Africa first from a “Learning” society to a “Knowledge” society and,
finally, to a “Wise” society (see Figure 10–7). Such a transformation
needs to generate actions on both the economic and social axes in order
Africa’s Digital Rights ✦ Quaynor ✦ 185
Knowledge
Products
Learning
Society
ICT
Institutions
Social
Human Capital
Institutions Enterprise
Infrastructure
Local Policy Environment
the past because there has not been sufficient coverage of the demog-
raphy to be effective in reaching the majority of the community.
• Info-structure: The logical structures that utilise infrastructures to
make the knowledge services seamless have in the past been per-
formed on behalf of Africa outside of the continent. The end result
is that the info-structure of the developed countries is enhanced at
the expense of Africa’s own info-structure development. Examples
of these include Internet names and numbers registries, certificate
authorities, secure-key escrow, legal framework and others.
• Content and Applications: The content and applications that will
enable the realisation of the desires of the people and institutions,
for quality use of the infrastructure and the related info-structures.
• Local/Global Policy: ICT is developed within a framework of policies,
which may be global, regional and local. The more transparent and
inclusive the policy regimes, the more they attract participation
from the components of the dynamic. An adequate regulatory
framework needs to be created, but this must be flexible to admit
newer technologies knowing full well that policy lags behind tech-
nology advancement.
The digital divide has often been defined in terms of ICT gaps between
one society and another more developed society, or between a commu-
nity and another considered more developed. We find this inadequate
because, for it to be meaningful, it must be normalised and applied to all
other sectors of development. We note that there are gaps in agriculture,
manufacturing, education and health, to name a few sectors, as well
between Africa and the developed societies. In all these cases, not only
are the products and services under-developed, but they are also depend-
ent on acquiring further services from the developed countries. This may
be an unfortunate form of dependency that may be reduced with the
careful utilisation of ICT. The preferred definition of the digital divide is
self-relative, and is a measure of how much of an economy is derived
through ICT. In this regard, every sector strives to apply more and more
ICT while ICT is developed as an identifiable sector.
Africa’s Digital Rights ✦ Quaynor ✦ 191
The goal will be to provide basic ICT access to all institutions includ-
ing the at-risk groups in the society, while making global information
available to all for competitive knowledge creation:
• The scaling of the little local expertise through the utilisation of ICT
in enhancing their impact on the community in all aspects of society.
Despite the need to produce more well-trained human resources, in
the meantime the few qualified resources must be made to serve more
people with use of the Internet and ICT to accelerate development.
• Ensure that ICT, Internet and Software Development are applied to
address the Millennium Development goals in poverty reduction.
• Preservation of the intellectual property in language, culture, music,
art, medicine, among others, to ensure that in the anticipated global
knowledge economy, any value that accrues as a result of African
heritage is protected for the benefit of its impoverished peoples.
Currently, a fair amount of genuine African Intellectual Property is
in free use through a variety of schemes.
• Balance in national policy and global policy is essential because
much of the policy and standards pertaining to the transport of
information services is determined globally. Yet successful imple-
mentation depends on local national environments and supports.
• Synergy within the six components of the environment (which are
the people, institutions, infrastructure, enterprise, info-structure,
and content/applications) would be desirable. Intense interaction
among the five elements and the environment would be key to
achieving the goals of the Africa digital rights vision.
• Utilise all resources and stakeholders—public, private, non-profit
and traditional institutions—to mobilise attention to the deploy-
ment of ICT in African societies. Accepting the interests of these
varied groups will moderate the goals and expectations of the pro-
grammes.
• Establish policy and implementation coordination guidelines for the
African region to make easy interconnections and cooperation in
ICT deployment possible.
192 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Community
Development
Capacity, Awareness,
Training, Skills
Institutional Industrial
Change
Development Development
Internet, Software, Finance, IPR
Standards, National & Demand
Certification Regional Policy Payments
Donor Global
Coordination Regional Policy Policy
Regulatory Content &
Access Harmonization Applications
Equitable Access to Local Content
ICT Services Community
Connectivity Applications
Affordable Connectivity
Where Needed
Plan
Do
Check
Action
Global Policy
A lot of the standards activity and policy for a global network, such as
the Internet, is developed globally by participation in several Interna-
tional forums. In the Internet community, a number of these forums
are relevant and include ICANN (policy & coordination), IETASK
FORCE (IP standards), ITU (link level standards), Unicode (character
representation standards), W3C (web standards) and others. There are
also donor agencies that are supporting Africa’s digital divide initiatives
through mainstreaming ICT for development. The initiatives include:
Africa’s Digital Rights ✦ Quaynor ✦ 195
Local/Regional Policy
Enterprise
The private sector’s role in the diffusion of ICT and the Internet cannot
be underestimated, considering the inter-relationship of economic and
196 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Human Capital
In the vision of creating a wise society, the quality and values of human
capital become a determinant of success. Activities that stimulate,
Africa’s Digital Rights ✦ Quaynor ✦ 197
strengthen and organise human resources for action are desired. Some
initiatives are:
• Technical skills are on the critical path of Africa’s entry into the ICT,
Internet and software arena. The few such professionals are over-
used and practically inaccessible. This bottleneck must be quickly
eliminated by a buildup of critical mass of highly specialised profes-
sionals with international-level quality skills.
• Support for academic programs in computer network architectures
and software development, in particular, and computer science in
general. These computer science programs would be engaged in col-
laborative networks to share teaching methods, faculty and exchange
programs. Sufficient graduate programs in computer science and
networking should be established to meet the needs of the continent
in the stipulated timeframe.
• Coordination of R&D centers in networks & software fields with
interest in the more applied aspects of computing science and
engineering. The new subject areas of next generation Internet,
biotechnology, new materials, genetic programming and artificial
intelligence may be rewarding topics for initial exploration.
• Universal Internet Access services to bring the benefits to more of
the people in Africa should be promoted.
• Rural Internet solutions should be devised that can be readily
deployed in rural communities at affordable prices.
• Change Management should be deployed to assist the communities
being impacted by the changes caused by ICT and the Internet.
Institutions
Many of the necessary institutions that support ICT absorption have not
been constructed in many African societies. Yet institutional memory is
paramount for sustainable systems, especially in the newer technology
fields. Some initiatives include:
Infrastructure
Info-structure
• Developing the country code Top Level Domain name (ccTLD) Reg-
istries in Africa to serve the local Internet community completely
and ensure that capital flight, which occurs as a result of residents
using global (international) generic Top Level Domain Names
(gTLDs), ceases.
• The eAfrica Commission should request the Top Level Domain
“.Africa” be delegated and operate dotAfrica TLD for its purpose.
• Supporting the AfriNIC Address Registry, a private non-profit
organisation being established to allocate Internet numbers to the
African community.
• Promoting the establishment of Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-
Resolution Policy( UDRP) service providers for Internet domain
name disputes in Africa.
• Supporting the operation of a Root Server in Africa as part of
eAfrica’s desire to participate in all aspects of the Internet operation.
• Internet and Software Laws are lagging behind the advancement in
usage of these services, and this needs to be corrected.
The details of ICT Priority Areas are best determined after an observa-
tory is in place. However, the guideline is that projects that involve
Africa in the development of technology and technology solutions
should be of higher priority. Africa wishes to participate in the advance-
ment of the technologies as well as their usage. Africa also wants to pre-
serve its natural intellectual property as it relates to the emerging
Africa’s Digital Rights ✦ Quaynor ✦ 201
Conclusion
There is hope that the application ICT, Internet and software technolo-
gies would reduce poverty and avert the potential of further oppression
of Africa in the new information-intensive global economy. This chap-
ter proposes a vision for information freedom and an agenda that will
enable Africa narrow the digital divide while preserving its place in the
202 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
N OT E S
Introduction
I want to thank the United Nations for the wisdom in convening these
two informal panels in parallel with the Special Meeting of the General
Assembly on Information and Communications Technologies for
203
204 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Problem-Dependence
Our Challenge
The question is: What do we have to show for it? How much have we
accomplished? And of what we have accomplished, how much of it has
or holds the potential to have a meaningful positive impact on the qual-
ity of life and competitive capacity of the people and society of Africa
and the developing world on whose behalf all of this evolved? Further-
more, if our answers to these questions are less than enthusiastic, what
have we failed to do, or done wrong, or need to do differently, in order
to drive a direct and logical path from the problems of the Digital
Divide to their solutions? How do we ensure the recognition of these
gains and their entrenchment into the permanent fabric of the African
society? This, I believe, coming from the back door so to speak, is the
pre-occupation of this Special Meeting of the General Assembly, and
the challenge to this panel and its sister panel of yesterday.
Where We Are
Divide into a worldwide mobilisation of our global genius to use the vast
capacity of ICT to build an eminently better world. That world would be
one in which most of the hopes and dreams of the United Nations Mil-
lennium Programme, a vision which encompasses the dreams of most
other initiatives, are accomplished, through a global rebirth of creativity,
innovation, faith and joie de vivre in a global 21st Century Renaissance.
For, as I have said in the past, there comes a time in the lives of a peo-
ple, when no matter how embattled or handicapped, they must find the
courage and the will to take their destiny in their own hands. And armed
with their resources, no matter how limited, strike out with courage,
hope, faith and enormous passion and genius, to create the future of their
wildest dreams, with the help of friends, if possible, alone if inevitable.
This passion, this courage, this right and responsibility of shaping a
desired future, this opportunity of masterminding our tomorrow, this
unique opportunity to enrich our today and to leave an indelible legacy
to enrich the lives of those who succeed us, this is the singular strategic
human and social resource we need to bridge the Digital Divide.
This clarion call to the trenches, must engender the enthusiasm and
zeal of a Renaissance, not the misery and weary-laden boredom of indif-
ference, hopelessness and disillusionment, which have been major, even if
inadvertent, by-products of the relentless drumbeat of impoverishment,
disadvantage and incapacity which, in turn, only undermines the confi-
dence and capacity of Africans and others in the developing world to
dream. The train of development of ICT capacity in Africa and the rest of
the developing world must be out of the station. Those who wish to make
a difference and preserve the right and opportunity to enjoy the benefits
and accolades of promising accomplishments, must be on board.2
The Challenges
Why do we presume that Africans lack the same ambition, genius and
dream for innovation that their western counterparts have and with
which they have built their own societies? How realistic was Bill Gates’
dream to build Microsoft? How realistic was the dream to create the
Internet? These are some of the major innovations that have created the
core of ICT. If Africa and the rest of the developing world are to enter the
fraternity of the mastery of ICT for social and economic transformation,
they must, first and foremost, break out of the bondage of constrained
dreams, possibilities and expectations, to unleash their genius and pas-
sion for the transformation of their own societies and our common
world at large.
Most importantly in this regard, genius, the enabling capacity for inno-
vation, tends to function best outside the system, outside bureaucracies
and sometimes outside the most logical; hence, the validity of the old
concept of the “mad scientist” to whom we owe most of our current
development capacities. It is my submission that we are, in fact, by the
very manner in which we are prosecuting our intervention in ICT for
development, excluding the very genius that we need in order to make
the critical difference. We should remember that quantum transforma-
tion is not an normal or routine process, but one of the exceptional.
Africa, and for that matter, most developing nations, may not need
more than a mere handful of significant innovations to drive the mas-
sive transformation of their economies and societies to the desired high
quality existence.
ICT as a key element in our strategic toolkit for building Africa’s global
competitiveness in the sector.
if we take the trouble to define our desired tomorrow on the basis of our
most treasured dreams and expectations, we will find that not everyone
wants the same tomorrow, or that their tomorrow be a sullen imitation
or replica of our own checkered yesterday. This is particularly critical in
our electronic age.3
It has always been my belief that when in doubt about what is good for
others, simply interpose what is good for you. On this basis, much of
what is said to be necessary before there can be ICT (or other) develop-
ment in Africa, while good capacities in themselves, hold no precedence
as incentives for investment or development. Never in the history of
human development have so many requirements been placed on a peo-
ple in dire need of self-development. Nobody ever required a particular
type of Government or leader in the U.S. or Europe, or, more pertinently,
in the People’s Republic of China, as a condition for investing or engag-
ing in business in these countries. The concerns that drive investment
and development are not necessarily the same as those of good gover-
nance or excellent civic leadership.
This is not to suggest that Africa does not need to entrench good
governance and accountability for its own human and social benefit
and internal strength. But any casual study of the long grocery list of
pre-requisite conditions for investment in Africa will reveal a striking
semblance to the characteristics of Utopia, which by definition, are
unattainable.
On the other hand, one can argue that economic development, and
that which ICT development can greatly advance, will, in fact, reduce the
stress and anxieties which inevitably create an environment fertile for
conflict and political instability. Sometimes, the brandishing of this long
list of conditionalities becomes little more than a faint excuse for avoid-
ing or postponing a commitment to assist in the development process.
Africa’s recognition of this is important for finding the courage for self-
development and competitive capacity building. Social, political and
economic development goes hand in hand, not in tandem.
Building the Digital Bridge ✦ Okpaku ✦ 213
After having raised all these problems, what do I offer as solutions other
than to plead that I have run out of time and would have loved to oblige?
Actually, in response to my brief for this presentation, what has my own
company, Telecom Africa Corporation, as a lead strategic African private
sector institution, created for the precise objective of helping drive
Africa’s relentless search for global competitive capacity in ICT, done or
is trying to do to effect a coherent and efficacious model of an ideal
strategy for global partnerships to transform Africa in and with ICT
capacity?
A few examples will suffice.
1. Industrialisation
The Telecom Africa Corporation, from its inception, has sought to per-
suade Africa and the global support environment, of the importance of
building industrial capacity in ICT in Africa, as the key to building the
Building the Digital Bridge ✦ Okpaku ✦ 215
Digital Bridge. This not only creates a basic indigenous science and tech-
nology capacity in situ, but offers the only way to effect affordability
through local manufacture.
Specifically, Telecom Africa continues to explore partnerships for
industrial projects in Africa. It is working with on prospects of manu-
facturing optical fibre equipment and cables in Africa, most probably in
Namibia.
Telecom Africa is also in discussions with China’s leading mobile
telecommunications manufacturer, for similar efforts with respect to
mobile communications equipment and handsets. We need to make
handsets cheaper in order for Africans to afford them, creating the large
market we need from the economies of scale.
Partnerships are the critical vehicles for building our Digital Bridge.
In this regard, Africa should not seek partnerships just for partner-
ships’ sake. The precise kind of partnership, its configuration, the ben-
efits it accrues to Africa, not only in the short-term but also in the
Building the Digital Bridge ✦ Okpaku ✦ 217
The recently launched World Economic Forum CEO Charter has the
unique advantage that it is driven by CEOs, once themselves incurable
dreamers, who know what it is to want to make a major impact, and who
believe in taking on big problems with passion. Some of the most impor-
tant help the Telecom Africa Corporation has received from global cor-
porations like Nortel, IBM, Siemens, the Aerospace Corporation amongst
others, even if only in our conceptual phase, has been the recognition of
the enormity of our the Telecom Africa Vision, and the confirmation of
the possibility of its realisation. This is what Africa badly needs.
My prescription for the success of the CEO Charter is to create a
Mentorship Programme whereby each CEO adopts an African entrepre-
neur, and grooms him or her over several years, to re-create a facsimile
of his or her own dream.
Essentially, if one hundred, or even fifty, CEOs adopt an equal num-
ber of African entrepreneurs and chaperon them through the labyrinth
of entrepreneurial and corporate development, serving as mentors,
quick reference points, and, most important, points of last reference
before succumbing to the not infrequent pressure to throw in the towel
just when things might just be about to turn the corner, we would have
twenty five to fifty core ICT industrial institutions in Africa allowing for
fifty percent success. It is these major African corporations, then, which
will trigger other such corporations and stimulate and sustain numerous
small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as a response to creating the
products, services and capacities to service their demand. In a less than
ten-year period, with one to two hundred major corporations in Africa
with global competitive capacity, the notion of assisting African devel-
opment would become history, replaced by a more refreshing dialogue
on how to share the opportunities of the global market more equitably.
That is our dream at the Telecom Africa Corporation.
In the process of such mentoring, the corporations of the CEOs
will have a lot to gain not only through the vicarious invigoration
which comes from new ideas and enthusiasm, but through working
Building the Digital Bridge ✦ Okpaku ✦ 219
If our ultimate goal is for Africa and the rest of the Developing World
to develop their capacity to become globally competitive, which
220 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Conclusion
Finally, from all I have said, one might ask: Have we accomplished any-
thing at all in all our collective efforts at promoting ICT development in
Africa and the rest of the Developing World? Eminently so. We are today,
quite a long way from where we were when we started to talk about the
need to bridge the Digital Divide. We can take heart in the knowledge
that we have done much, even though we have a long way to go. We must
now change tune and shift our gears to the proactive mode of Building
the Digital Bridge together. For those who might have wondered if I
would conclude that we have been wasting our time, how could I say so
when I have been an integral part of this global effort?
I thank you for your intellectual indulgence.
N OT E S
1. On June 17–18, 2002, the United Nations held a Special Meeting on Information
and Communications Technologies for Development as part of the 101st Plenary
of the 56th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which also included
two concurrent Informal Panels. This chapter was an Address to Informal Panel 2:
The Role of the United Nations in Supporting Efforts to Promote Digital Opportunity,
on June 17, 2002.
2. There are lyrics from the Negro Spirituals of the African-American heritage, which
capture this compelling clarion call.
3. See Joseph O. Okpaku, Sr., E-Culture, Human Culture and In-between: Meeting the
Challenges of the 21st Century Digital World, ITU Conference on Creating New
Leaders for e-Culture, Coventry, UK, August 20–24, 2001.
4. See Joseph O. Okpaku, Sr., Ownership of Problems, Intellectual Property and the
Digital Divide—The Enabling Challenge of Solutions, WIPO Second Interna-
tional Conference on Electronic Commerce and Intellectual Property, Geneva,
September 19–21, 2001.
CHAPTER Dr. Akhtar Badshah and
12 Justin Thumler1
223
224 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The Challenge
The Opportunity
Many Africans in the United States and abroad, and many others who
feel committed to the development of Africa have important skills and
wealth in terms of human and material resources that could effectively
address Africa’s challenges. Nevertheless, few avenues exist to apply these
resources to the benefit of sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, many
potential ICT entrepreneurs in Africa could benefit from increased
opportunities to meet and work with counterparts living outside of
Africa.
According to Zachary2, Diaspora networks can be an effective mech-
anism for promoting economic development by:
Zachary further notes that “political and social policies aimed at har-
nessing or managing Diaspora communities are in their infancy. There
226 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
A development model based on the use of ICT and the engaged inter-
ests of individuals is new. The intermediary institutions, the project-
development methodologies, the funding mechanisms and the myriad
of other development basics that evolved during the Industrial Age have
not been updated to reflect the opportunities and challenges of the
Information Age. DDN-A developed three programs designed to
address critical elements necessary to activate the potential of the
African Diaspora in service to Africa.
The workshops bring together five groups that are critical to advanc-
ing ICTs for entrepreneurship and development. These are:
Funding
The Social Venture Fund for Africa was launched by Digital Partners to
provide financial support for entrepreneurial projects developed or
supported by DDN-A following the first Digital Bridge to Africa work-
shop. Participants at the first Digital Bridge Africa workshop set a goal
Digital Bridge to Africa ✦ Badshah and Thumler ✦ 229
of USD 500,000. While started with modest initial aims, the fund is
designed to grow into a collaborative effort supported by individuals,
foundations, development agencies and corporations. The workshops
and meetings will serve to support the development of a large social
Venture Capital fund targeted at African ICTs.
Modeled on Digital Partners’ Social Venture Fund for South Asia,
the Social Venture Fund for Africa is an innovative financing structure
developed to provide “seed capital” for initiatives providing modest
financial returns with high social dividends. Building upon the current
practices in “venture philanthropy,” the Social Venture Fund provides
support for pioneering non-profit organisations and for-profit busi-
nesses capable of fostering commercial markets serving the poor. Indi-
viduals, corporations, foundations or development organisations that
invest in the fund get a tax write-off; Digital Partners pools the dona-
tions to invest or provide long-term loans or grants. Returns from the
investment or loans are re-invested to support other projects, further
leveraging each dollar contributed into the Social Venture Fund.
Digital Partners’ model meets an as yet un-bridged gap between
traditional venture capital funds, other social funds, and traditional
foundation grants and investments. It provides a structure for social
and IT entrepreneurs to learn from each other and to incubate outside-
the-box solutions to the unmet needs of the poor. The fund particularly
supports innovations that have profit potential but need financial sup-
port and incubation to get them to the point where they can seek more
traditional forms of market support.
Project Development
Projects developed through SEL have come from South Asia, Latin
America and Africa.
The refined project and business plans are presented again to the selec-
tion committee from the DDN-A for possible seed funding. Individual
DDN-A members, foundations, and corporate sponsors provide the
funds as a tax-deductible donation through Digital Partners’ Social
Venture Fund.
The financial support provided to the projects is not intended to
fully fund the long-term needs of any one project. The Mentoring phase
provides the social entrepreneur with a well-crafted proposal or busi-
ness plan suitable for raising additional resources. Seed capital supplies
Digital Bridge to Africa ✦ Badshah and Thumler ✦ 233
the initial monies needed to at least pilot the project and provide
resources while additional funds are sought. Digital Partners helps with
introductions to suitable contacts and assistance to the entrepreneurs in
their longer-term fundraising efforts. The due diligence provided by
SEL is expected to lend credibility to the projects and increase “investor”
confidence.
Financial support from Digital Partners’ Social Venture Fund is given
either as outright grants, long-term low-interest loans or even as equity
investments. Currently, the Fund primarily provides grants. It is expected
that as more social entrepreneurs enter the field, a larger percentage of
loans and investments will be made. All returns will be reinvested to sup-
port the development and funding of other projects, further leveraging
each dollar donated to the Social Venture Fund.
The DDN-A is now taking the lead on all projects being developed and
supported in Africa. Examples include the following:
E-Academy, Tanzania
E-Academy will address the high cost and inadequate quality of educa-
tion in Tanzania via the creation of an on-line e-learning initiative that
will make teaching materials developed by the “best brains” in the coun-
try available in the local Kiswahili language. E-Academy aims to provide
quality, affordable education through e-learning to facilitate greater reach
while establishing higher standards and creating Kiswahili content. ‘Best
brains’ in their particular fields will be responsible for the development of
quality courses in the Kiswahili language. E-Academy also aims to take
advantage of the mushrooming of cyber cafes throughout Tanzania to
provide Internet connectivity to subscribers of E-Academy, while CD
Rom-based education will be available to reach those without an Internet
connection. E-Academy requires development of a business/project plan
and assistance with its marketing strategy.
234 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
introduce this technology on a wider scale. PDAs can be used in the most
remote locations, have the computing power required for simple but
essential functions, are easily customisable to meet the particular needs
of individuals and institutions, and can hold large quantities of timely,
relevant, and appropriate content and facilitate rapid data collection and
analysis. SATELLIFE and HealthNet Uganda have a competitive advan-
tage in the introduction of PDAs because of their understanding of the
real data and information needs of health professionals and their ability
to work with the government, universities, NGOs, and private practi-
tioners. In addition to project design, technical support and training,
SATELLIFE provides a powerful combination of content, including
country-specific clinical guidelines for malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/
AIDS, the World Health Organisation Essential Drug List, a country-
specific essential drug list, a multi-functional medical calculator, med-
ical references, customised local content, and customised survey
instruments. The project partners hope that this activity will not only
improve HealthNet Uganda’s potential for sustainability, but also stim-
ulate the PDA market for the private sector. HealthNet Uganda seeks
help making the transition to a sustainable enterprise that weds its
humanitarian mission with sound business practices and may include
development of a business plan.
DDN-A in Action
The true value and impact of DDN-A will eventually be told by the web
of connections and projects that will organically develop through the
personal interests and connections of its members.
Early examples of members acting on their own initiative to
mobilise partnerships for Africa demonstrate the potential of DDN-A as
an individual-centred development force:
For an effort of the scope and range of the Digital Diaspora Network for
Africa to be successful, it requires the support of several key partners and
organisations. DDN-A was launched with a clear vision and leadership
provided by the United Nations ICT Task Force that was convinced that
without the active participation of professionals from Africa itself, no
projects undertaken will take root and become successful. With that in
mind, the United Nations ICT Task Force mobilised an effort to create
and launch DDN-A by establishing a collaborative framework among
other UN agencies, such as the United Nations Development Fund for
Women (UNIFEM) and the United Nations Fund for International Part-
nership. The objective was to expand the efforts of the individual organ-
isations in order to have a much larger impact. Digital Partners mobilised
the effort and modeled DDN-A on its successful South Asia effort in
North America, whereas Gruppo CERFE was instrumental in launching
DDN-E (Europe).
UNIFEM
UNFIP
Digital Partners
Gruppo CERFE
N OT E S
1. David Feige and Deepa Ghosh provided research support for this chapter. David is
a Program Officer at Digital Partners and Deepa is a Master of Public Administra-
tion Candidate at the Columbia University School of International and Public
Affairs.
2. “Diaspora Capitalism and Exile as a Way of Life: Some Observations on the Political
and Economic Mobilisation of Dispersed Peoples,” by G. Pascal Zachary, as part of
the Nautilus Institute’s “Virtual Diasporas and Global Problem Solving” Initiative,
www.nautilus.org.
3. Participating schools in 2002/2003 include Harvard Business School, the University
of Washington, the University of California, San Diego, Theses (France) and
Thunderbird.
CHAPTER Crocker Snow, Jr.
Tip-Toeing across
the Digital Divide
African Entrepreneurs Applying, Adapting, and
Advancing Appropriate Information Technologies
241
242 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
implausibly, develops a valued and possibly valuable website for the deaf
in the process.
Meddia Mayanja, an early computer geek at Uganda’s Makerare Uni-
versity in Kampala, works a kind of “bush connectivity” for the purpose
of administering an online educational system that currently runs a
common curriculum through 15 sites around Uganda that is dedicated
to spreading knowledge and creativity simultaneously for a fee.
Egosangwa, Loutfy, Mayanja and many more with business, com-
munity development or merely survival skills in nations across Africa are
hard at it, utilising and channeling one or another form of information
technology to their own needs and, quite often, for society’s benefit.
Their unique, demand-driven applications are starting to have an effect
on the quality of African life in ways that were truly inconceivable a mere
five years ago.
It is no surprise to discover hard evidence of the information revo-
lution in African national capitals and urban centres. Billboards and
signs promoting computer training, store front advertising for an array
of cyber cafes and roadside private, for-profit telephone booths are today
almost ubiquitous. But well beyond the bright lights of the big cities of
the African continent, information technologies are spreading down-
ward and even backward to the grass roots, inspiring whole villages and
communities, and positively impacting living conditions.
In their widely differing environments and activities, Roselyn
Egosangwa, Yasser Loutfy and Meddie Mayanja are at the vanguard of
this creeping revolution as they strive to utilise telephony, the Internet
and other key outriders of the information revolution to help themselves
and, in the process, others. In examining their experiences—and that of
their known and unknown counterparts throughout Africa—several
common characteristics and conclusions shine through:
Africa’s IT Entrepreneurs
Seven years ago when Internet access was first pioneered in Africa by
three Kenyan exchange students at Boston-area universities to create a
company now known as Africa Online, a reverse exchange student, an
American, was looking, not at online opportunities, but at the hopeless
living conditions of Nairobi’s slum area of Korogocho. Mathew Meyer
was on a junior year-abroad program from Brown University, studying
Swahili and living on the outskirts of one of the city’s most notorious
and violent sections to which he was drawn by a new friend and social
worker, Benson Wikyo. As a later chronicler of the conception of the
company that became known as Akala (“rubber shoe” in Swahili street
Tip-Toeing across the Digital Divide ✦ Snow ✦ 245
slang) Designs put it: “Mathew Meyer was a student who believed some-
thing was wrong with our world for people to live this way. Benson
Wikyo was a young Kenyan who lived that way.”
Dreaming and working together, the two friends landed a $3000
grant from the small Samuel Huntington Foundation in the U.S. to
launch a community-based business making rubber sandals from used
rubber tires. The enterprise was a struggle from the outset. The material
and human resources necessary were available in abundance in the form
of discarded tires and workers eager for any job, but footwear tech-
niques, basic equipment like peddle sewing machines or the most rudi-
mentary sales, accounting and management skills were not, and had to
be learned or acquired by painful trial and error.
Still, Meyer and Wikyo persevered. A few people were engaged as
designated “sandal makers” for jobs fetching 150 Kenyan shillings a day
($2.00 US). A few sandals were sold, initially to friends and acquain-
tances and through international refugee organisations for $2.00 apiece.
In 1998, Matt Meyer was back in the US doing graduate studies when co-
founder Benson Wikyo died suddenly of a series of treatable medical
failings. The project effectively died its first of several deaths. But the
continued commitment of the workers, coupled with a second grant for
a mere $1500, proved a saving grace. The two inputs prompted Meyer to
utilise his college computer skills to try something quite new, designing
a website—Ecosandals.com—to promote the rubber sandals online. It
was a giant step of faith in broadening the tiny project’s market reach,
and the horizons and ambitions of the subsistence economy of the san-
dal-makers involved. It worked, if to a modest degree.
Today the little company is viable by the standards of many in the
area. Monthly online orders from western markets of one of the eight
sandal designs offered range from 80 to 800. Eight people are employed
full-time. Collectively, they can produce about a dozen new sandals a
day. Another ten Korogocho dwellers have qualified through a three-
month training program and work on commission as overseas orders
ebb and flow. Most of all, there is palpable pride among the workers for
their products, their jobs and their demonstrated survival skills.
246 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Yasser Loutfy, 40 years old and entirely educated in Egypt, got his first
job at the US Consulate in Alexandria as a communications technician.
He learned the field from a practical point of view, sensed the value of
the Internet and, four years ago, gave up this secure job to join a partner
to establish the city’s second ISP. Glob@lNet was founded in 1999 and
within two years had 40 per cent market share of the city’s several hun-
dred thousand Internet users. The future looked reasonably rosy, until a
rumored government decision legislating free Internet for all, went into
effect on January 14, 2002, and changed things.
Suddenly, Loutfy and some 60 other small Internet providers
throughout the country, like his friend in Cairo, Jordanian entrepreneur
Khaled Bichara, founder of LinkdotNet, saw the base of their businesses
undermined. The “all you can eat” flat fee system was abandoned. Dial-
ing in per se no longer mattered from a revenue point of view; holding
customers online for minutes or more at a time did. The competing
providers were forced to vie for numbers and for content to keep their
customers coming and staying.
In Cairo, Bichara had the resources to acquire eight different con-
tent-driven enterprises, offering everything from job search to life style
information. The strategy is working. He is in the process of consolidat-
ing under his single LinkdotNet brand name, has managed a major
advertising campaign and, in the process, has become the country’s
fourth largest ISP while joining the ranks of the established in the eyes
of the national press. “It was our only option,” the energised young
entrepreneur remarked in an interview. “We had to move very quickly to
gain content as a way to keep our subscribers on our system rather than
just using it to dial up and go elsewhere. Fortunately, we had some bank
financing by this time to do this.”
However, Yasser Loutfy in Alexandria had no such option: no avail-
able financing nor a sufficiently large market base. He chose a different
route, initiating some web-based hosting and page design. In concert
with the Chamber of Commerce, Glob@lNet announced “e-Alexandria”,
Tip-Toeing across the Digital Divide ✦ Snow ✦ 247
14
Introduction
This chapter will argue that developing country firms can move from
‘technology transfer’ to strategic acquisition of technological capabili-
ties from external sources. The analysis presented here suggests the
processes through which developing country firms can acquire techno-
logical capability inputs from external sources when these firms take
account of the industry-specific nature of technological change, analyse
the endogenous factors that influence their ability to accumulate tech-
nological capabilities through relationships with suppliers, and design
specific requirements relevant to the industries in which they operate.
251
252 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
It argues that the requirements for service sector firms will differ from
those of manufacturing firms. These insights emerge from the applica-
tion of the technological capability building (TCB) system approach,
which was the conceptual framework developed in a study of techno-
logical capability accumulation by twenty-six firms in the telecommu-
nications sector of four African countries—Uganda, Ghana, Tanzania
and South Africa.1
In this approach, TCB is understood as a process of assembling or
accumulating technological capabilities. It is treated as an investment
activity, which is not linear, sequential or orderly and which is not nec-
essarily overly influenced by exogenous or contextual factors. Firms are
the unit of analysis, and the processes by which they built TCB systems,
defined as a set of integrated processes and mechanisms that are used by
firms to build technological capabilities over time, are centre-stage. The
conceptual framework suggests that a firm’s TCB system consists of five
components, namely:
This approach further suggests that in an ideal system for TCB, there
is a systematic and balanced operation of these five elements. A well-
developed TCB system is necessary and sufficient to increase the existing
stock of technological capabilities in a firm, defined here to include both
person-embodied and non-person-embodied capabilities (such as capi-
tal equipment, software, and codified knowledge systems). Firms with
underdeveloped TCB systems are expected to perform poorly in capa-
bility accumulation.
From Transfer to Strategic Acquisition of Capabilities ✦ Marcelle ✦ 253
Bell and Pavitt6 argue that it is possible for firms to develop effective
systems for importing foreign technologies in combination with efforts
to develop local technologies and to build technological capability. In
their ideal-type, imported techniques and practices do not “crowd out”
local technology and domestic capability building. However, these
authors noted that few countries were able to implement policy regimes
that supported complementarity between domestic technological capa-
bility development and acquisition of technology from abroad; instead,
the majority of developing countries approached these modes of capa-
bility development as substitutes. Bell and Pavitt6 present a wide range
of sources of imported technology, including direct foreign investment
(joint ventures), sub-contracting, original equipment manufacturing
(OEM) agreements, licensing, and contracts for know-how, designs,
equipment and services. They observe that capability development may
involve intensive efforts to improve and develop what is initially
acquired, or more passive adaptation or minor modifications of
imported inputs.
From Transfer to Strategic Acquisition of Capabilities ✦ Marcelle ✦ 257
Linearity Assumptions
As will be discussed in greater detail in the next section, the TCB sys-
tem approach, consistent with work by Bell and Pavitt,6 Ernst et al.,18 and
Kim,10 adopts a non-linear process of technology acquisition. In this
approach, the balance of interest between suppliers and buyers of tech-
nological inputs is assumed to be forever changing. This theoretical posi-
tion is supported by evidence in Hoffman and Girvan,11 which shows
that recipient countries have exercised greater degrees of freedom in
managing the terms and conditions of technology transfer.
The TCB system framework draws on insights from existing research and
carefully considers, in particular, theoretical contributions from Bell and
Pavitt,6 Hoffman and Girvan,11 Lall,17 and Stewart;18 reviews of research
on technology transfer from Boseman,19 Kumar and Siddhartan,20 Rado-
sevic,21 and Reddy;4 and empirical work reported in Kumar.8 It is worth
noting that much of this research is located within the manufacturing
From Transfer to Strategic Acquisition of Capabilities ✦ Marcelle ✦ 259
sector and does not extend to intra-firm processes. The study on which
this essay is based specifically focuses on aspects of these lacunae, by
examining intra-firm processes of service sector firms. This conceptual
framework also builds on insights from an emerging body of work that
recognises that intra-firm learning processes and the experiences of non-
technology-producing users may have important lessons for understand-
ing the capability-building processes of developing country firms.22
The TCB system approach accepts the notion that levels or stages of
technology capability may be useful as an organising rubric to describe
distinctions between kinds of capabilities, but regards the stages model
of technology transfer as being less useful.
Several reasons are advanced in support of an alternative model of
technology acquisition, which relaxes assumptions of linearity associated
with the stages model. First, by refuting the assumption that developing
country firms have an inevitability or increasing desire to move to ever
“higher levels of transfer”, it allows consideration of capability develop-
ment objectives, other than generating technology. Second, it provides for
a wider range of policy guidance, augmenting the recommendations that
focus only on how developing country firms can gain access to the pro-
prietary technologies associated with “higher stages” of transfer. In the
non-linear TCB system approach, there is a focus on policy interventions
that can provide incentives for technology acquisition and increase
mutual benefit to the actors in technology transactions. Third, the TCB
approach focuses on what recipient firms must do to progress from
operational to innovative levels of technology transfer and considers
what specific factors limit or facilitate such movement at the intra-firm
level. Fourth, the foreign partners in the TCB system approach are not
considered, by definition, to be detrimental or beneficial to the accumu-
lation of more advanced abilities by developing country firms. Instead,
their role is considered to be an input to a process of capability develop-
ment. The relationship between developing country firms and foreign
260 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
The TCB system approach recognises that, for the majority of develop-
ing country firms, importation of technological inputs is a major source
of capability development. Internationally operating firms or local
branches of such firms are the main source of supply of technological
inputs, and developing country firms use a variety of mechanisms to
acquire technological capabilities from external sources. The types of
mechanisms include: selecting suppliers; procuring equipment and serv-
ices from external suppliers under suitable terms and conditions; and
From Transfer to Strategic Acquisition of Capabilities ✦ Marcelle ✦ 261
Supplier Selection
Ecrisson 4
Alcatel, Cisco, Lucent, NEC, Scientific Atlanta 2
Advent, Airspan UK Ltd (formerly DSC), AT&T, BBC, BT, 1
Digital Equipment Corporation, Divicom, ITELCO, MAS, MCL, Mitsubishi,
MSI, NDS, Nortel, NTL, Plessey, Siemens, Tadiran, Varian, Fujitsu,
Hughes Network Systems, Iredeto, Irridium
N=16 operating companies
transfer during field trials and procurement, rather than via provision of
regular training programmes.
Figure 14–3: Specific routines used for technology transfer from suppliers
Frequency
Technology Transfer Mechanism (# of firms reporting usage)
Firms are not born with the ability to manage supplier relationships. The
development of boundary management competencies required active
investment and the implementation of routines to strengthen:
When there were weak search and scan abilities, the operating com-
panies in the sample were less able to select suppliers that were skilled in
the design of technology dissemination projects. The involuntary lack of
control over choice of suppliers, on the part of the operating company,
had the same effect as weak scan and search capabilities by artificially
restricting suppliers. This lack of control over the design of technology
acquisition projects appears to have limited the effectiveness of the
exchange of codified and tacit information flows and, particularly, ham-
pered the flow of tacit information. Another important design flaw was
caused by the misconception that technology acquisition was limited to
commissioning, testing and installing equipment. Smaller firms in the
From Transfer to Strategic Acquisition of Capabilities ✦ Marcelle ✦ 273
sample reported that they were hampered by their lack of critical mass
of qualified and experienced personnel and their inability to make
appropriate selections to staff technology acquisition projects.
The findings confirm that the sample firms, including those with exten-
sive search routines, frequently used global market leaders as their sup-
pliers (these firms were those that had led the trend to concentrate
innovative activity, as measured by R&D, patents, etc.) in the equipment
industry. The suppliers used by the sample firms mainly included mar-
ket leaders and second-tier equipment suppliers. The evidence does not
provide support for a view that developing country firms were active in
diversifying their suppliers. The qualitative accounts suggested that the
operating companies in the sample did not favour smaller or alternative
From Transfer to Strategic Acquisition of Capabilities ✦ Marcelle ✦ 275
Conclusion
Several key insights emerged from the study with relevance for public
sector bodies as well as for strategic management of African ICT firms.
First, the results suggest that African ICT firms should improve their
capability to manage supplier relationships. Making these improvements
is likely to influence whether developing country firms are able to bene-
fit from access to external sources of technological capabilities. Effective
management of supplier relationships was strongly influenced by
endogenous variables, such as the level of development of the firm’s
technological capability building system. In particular, the extent to
which firms had acquired the specific competencies of technological
From Transfer to Strategic Acquisition of Capabilities ✦ Marcelle ✦ 279
N OT E S
20. Kumar, N., and N.S. Siddhartan. (1997). Technology, Market Structure and Interna-
tionalisation. London and New York: Routledge and UNU Press.
21. Radosevic, S. (1999). International Technology Transfer and Catch-up in Economic
Development. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
22. See for example, Cassiolato, J. E. (1997). Learning to Use Telematics Technologies in
Service Firms: Lessons from the Brazilian Experience, Unpublished monograph pre-
pared for UNU-INTECH. Dutrenit, G. (1998). From Knowledge Accumulation to
Strategic Capabilities: Knowledge Management in a Mexican Glass Firm. Unpub-
lished DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex; Remmelzwaal, B. (1996). Technological
Learning and Capacity Building in the Service Sector in Developing Countries: The
Case of Medical Equipment Management. Unpublished DPhil Thesis, University of
Sussex; and Figuereido, P. (2001). Technological Learning and Competitive Perfor-
mance. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
23. Scholars are recognising the need for a multidisciplinary approach; see for example,
Francis, D. and Bessant, J. (2002) “Transferring Soft Technologies”, Unpublished
seminar paper presented November 4th 2002, at CENTRIM, University of Brighton,
which states: “although there was little intellectual interchange between the pre-
dominately economic tradition that guided technology transfer specialists and
humanistic behavioural science-orientated change agents who had constructed the
methodologies of planned organisational change and developed OD. In the main,
these two intellectual lifeworlds remained separate, with OD paying scant attention
to technical change and technology transfer remaining naïve about the actuality of
facilitating effective organisational development”. (p. 3).
24. I am grateful to Dr. Louanne Barclay, University of the West Indies, Mona, for point-
ing out that the same would be true for developing country manufacturing firms
that were operating at distinct positions in the value chain from their international
suppliers.
25. Davies, A. (1996). Innovation in Large Technical Systems: The Case of Telecommu-
nications. Industrial and Corporate Change, 5(4), 1143–1180; Hobday, M. (1990).
Telecommunications in Developing Countries: The Challenge from Brazil. London
and New York: Routledge; Mansell, R. E. (1995). Innovation in Telecommunication:
Bridging the Supplier-User Interface. In M. Dodgson, and R. Rothwell (Ed.), Hand-
book of Industrial Innovation (pp. 232–242). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing;
and Mytelka, L. (Ed.) (1999). Competition, Innovation and Competitiveness in Devel-
oping Countries. Paris: OECD Development Centre.
26. The term complementary capabilities is used in the same sense as the notion of the
reinforcing effect of primary and secondary conditioning features of capabilities.
See Pettigrew, A., and Whipp, R. (1991). Managing Change for Competitive Success.
Oxford: Blackwell.
27. McKelvey, M., Texier, F. and Hakan, A. (1998). The Dynamics of High Tech Industry:
Swedish Firms Developing Mobile Telecommunication Systems.: Systems of Innova-
tion Research Program, SIRP at Linkoping University, Sweden.
CHAPTER Joseph O. Okpaku, Sr.
When all is said and done, there are basic facts that constitute Africa’s
development challenges, the analysis and resolution of which will form
the basis of a comprehensive strategic response. Such response must aim
at transforming, once and for all, African life and condition to a
respectable quality and level, one which Africans themselves can be sat-
isfied with, if not proud of. Amongst these are:
285
286 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
In all of this, there have been many initiatives on ICT for African devel-
opment, which are noteworthy by virtue of the initiative, determination,
288 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
commitment and courage of those who have led them. Here are a few
examples.
In 1997, when the idea of the Internet was still essentially a remote spec-
ulation for much of Africa, the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United
Nations Development Programme, under the Directorship of Ms. Ellen
Sirleaf Johnson, undertook to promote its introduction to Africa. The
Internet Initiative for Africa, or IIA, was created by the then Chief Econ-
omist of the Bureau, Dr. John Ohiorhenuan, and Richard Kerby, who
was in charge of information systems at the Bureau, with the collabora-
tion of African ICT experts outside the UN system.
IIA consisted of two basic components: the promotion of official
receptivity to the introduction of the Internet on the part of African gov-
ernments, and facilitating the building of Internet nodes in countries
that did not have one or needed to reinforce what existed.
To advance the objectives of the IIA, the Regional Bureau sponsored
a group of African and non-African experts who criss-crossed the
African continent, holding public seminars that brought together gov-
ernment officials (including Ministers and Directors), ICT entrepre-
neurs and a handful of representatives of the global industry to promote
the benefits of the Internet. Of particular importance to the team was the
need to persuade African governments that the benefits of an exponen-
tial jump in the access to knowledge and information by the people far
outweighed any anxiety they may have that such access would under-
mine their authority. This perception of the Internet as a potential tool
for “sabotage” was a very serious obstacle to official receptivity to its
introduction.
This group of what one might call “the Internet Troubadours for
Africa”, consisted of Richard Kerby, of UNDP, who was the project offi-
cer and leader, Dr. Joseph Okpaku, Sr. of Telecom Africa Corporation,
Professor Raymond Akwule of George Mason University, Ms. Amma
Annan, then at AT&T, Diane Tyson, also of AT&T, Charles Coupet, then
Towards a Road Map for ICT Development in Africa ✦ Okpaku ✦ 289
NITPA
A major platform for the promotion of ICT in Africa has been con-
ferences, workshops, seminars and other forums, which bring the
African public and private sectors as well as civil society and their
global counterparts together, to dialogue on policy, strategy, markets
and capacity building. Two of the most prominent of these are
AFCOM (http:///www.afcomnet.com) and the African Telecom Summit
(cordinat@ghana.com). By virtue of the African public-private synergy
in the ICT sector discussed earlier, African Ministers of Communica-
tions and African ICT experts consider these two annual events a
must, unless compelled by extenuating circumstances not to attend.
Together with the ITU Telecom Africa Regional Conference, held on
an average of every two years, these constitute the main regular
forums for public discourse on ICT in Africa.
encourage innovation and invention. This is the model that China chose,
with remarkable success. This approach also enables us to derive multi-
ple benefits from the same investment, by moving the resources through
industry and technology to labour and private individual income.
Technology
The issue of appropriate technology has been a feature of much ICT dia-
logue with respect to Africa and the Developing World in general. The
need to modify existing technologies or create new ones to meet the spe-
cific circumstances of demand is indisputable. The problem has been
that no matter what new technologies have been offered or introduced
to Africa, it has always ended up costing Africa the same amount of
money for access; approximately one thousand dollars per line. This
means that the obvious benefit of new technologies fails to apply when
introduced to Africa.
Education
I have made the argument again and again that there can be no mean-
ingful development without the acquisition of cutting edge capacity in
science and technology. Such capacity is impossible without a parallel
Towards a Road Map for ICT Development in Africa ✦ Okpaku ✦ 293
capacity in Research and Development. This logic holds true more in the
field of Information and Communications Technologies than anywhere
else, except in the Medical Sciences. To seek to build ICT capacity with-
out a solid foundation of Research and Development is nothing but
building skyscrapers in quicksand. Africa and its partners must find the
courage to address this fundamental need as a critical sine qua non for all
we strive to accomplish.
Furthermore, development, especially self-development, is driven
inevitably by passion for transformation, intellectual curiosity and the
sense of mission that comes from a personal dream and a shared com-
mon vision. Unless Africans engage vigorously in the effort to create and
own intellectual property from the process of ICT development in the
continent, we will never derive a meaningful and sustainable momentum.
This will put at risk all efforts made by all of us to bring about an irre-
versible process of possible change. The fact also that intellectual property
is the quintessential asset in our contemporary economy makes the need
for African participation in this venture most compelling. In this regard,
we must invest in building ICT Research and Development institutions,
most desirably under the auspices of the African private sector, in part-
nership with Government, regional institutions and academic establish-
ments, with the sincere support of a global private sector, which itself
stands to gain a lot from this investment. If the global industry has seen
sufficient reason to do so in Asia and elsewhere, certainly Africa, with its
potential as one of the last frontiers of highest demand for information
and communications technologies, makes an even more appealing case.
It is also good strategy, because as the synergy between government and
the African private sector continues to grow in the sector, the vacuum cre-
ated by a less than enthusiastic initiative in this area is not unlikely to
force its compulsion through more strident policies and regulations.
Content Development
Smart and innovative policy and regulation is the key to creating an envi-
ronment conducive to rapid and sustained ICT development in all soci-
eties and economies. African countries have embraced this notion with
remarkable commitment. Their role, however, is much more than to sim-
ply facilitate easy market access for global ICT companies. Rather, its first
role is to drive the development of a strong, versatile and flexible local and
regional ICT industry, and to ensure maximum services and benefits to
the people at very affordable costs. A casual observation would suggest
that African regulators understand this dual obligation and are deter-
mined to evolve the appropriate strategies for managing this dichotomy.
Towards a Road Map for ICT Development in Africa ✦ Okpaku ✦ 295
Regional Cooperation
The Future
Against this background and looking into the future, one cannot but see
the tremendous possibilities that a comprehensive global partnership in
support of an African-owned and defined strategy for the acquisition of
Information and Communications Technologies and their deployment
Towards a Road Map for ICT Development in Africa ✦ Okpaku ✦ 297
The United Nations ICT Task Force is undertaking a number of ICT ini-
tiatives in support of Africa’s development efforts, on its own and in col-
laboration with its partners. Some of these initiatives are listed below.
ital divide in Africa are better coordinated, more inclusive and reflective
of the significant efforts already underway to develop an African Infor-
mation Society.
WEBSITE: http://unicttaskforce.org/regional/africa/
299
300 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Global Database
UN Information and Communication Technologies Task Force
O B J E C T I V E : A global web-based database of government ICT policy
makers, as well as private sector and NGO ICT leaders has been built.
This initiative is a step towards strengthening the Task Force’s outreach
and facilitation of contacts with national decision makers.
WEBSITE: http://www.unicttaskforce.org/globaldatabase/database.asp
initiatives on the ground, such as the World Bank, UNDP, UNECA, ITU,
and others.
WEBSITE: http://www.unicttaskforce.org/groups/principal.asp
agencies and other partners from the private and public sectors to pro-
mote the use of ICT for capacity-building and human resource develop-
ment. A key priority of the Group is to harness ICT for education, with
particular attention to overcoming existing disparities in educational
and training opportunities and achievements between males and
females.
WEBSITE: http://www.unicttaskforce.org/groups/principal.asp
ners to tackle these issues and to make considerable progress in this area.
WEBSITE: http://www.unicttaskforce.org/groups/principal.asp
303
304 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Acacia Initiative
International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
O B J E C T I V E : To provide developing countries, particularly in Africa, the
voice to shape the Global Information Society and establish the poten-
tial of ICTs to empower poor African communities.
WEBSITE: http://www.idrc.ca/acacia
African Connection
African Telecommunications Union (ATU)
OBJECTIVE: To provide a platform for the promotion of regional mar-
kets; harmonise and co-ordinate ICT policies and develop common reg-
ulatory frameworks and drive the African efforts to make the region a
full member of the global information society.
WEBSITE: http://www.atu-uat.org/pdf/AfricanConnection.pdf
ALCATEL
OBJECTIVE: To promote field pilot-projects, Cyber-centres, E-govern-
ment, and organise workshops on Internet awareness.
WEBSITE: www.alcatel.com
AOL Foundation
OBJECTIVE: To promote AOL Foundation’s Digital Grant Initiative.
WEBSITE: http://www.aolfoundation.org
Bridges.org
OBJ ECTIVE: To provide public education about technology use, pro-
mote policy-making that removes barriers, and create a body of knowl-
edge about digital divide issues.
WEBSITE: http://www.bridges.org
nance, help build human capital and productivity and support African
governments in their efforts to achieve best practice standards of eco-
nomic governance by sharing experiences.
WEBSITE: http://www.weforum.org/
National Library Service, Pan African Doc. & Information System, and
African Research Centre for Technology.
Cisco Systems
Cisco’s networking academies
O BJ E C TIVE :To develop human capacities in the developing world,
while helping less developed countries to address the shortage of IT
professionals.
WEBSITE: http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/edu/academy/
Cooperation Francaise
OBJECTIVE: To promote Francophone funds for networks. Programmes
include African Network for distant learning.
WEBSITE: http://www.cooperation.gouv.fr
and students in other parts of the world, and to allow them to share their
research in the Internet-based student data archive.
WEBSITE: http://www.globe.gov
Development Gateway/Foundation
World Bank
O BJ E C TIVE :To provide users access to information, resources and
tools, into which they can contribute their own knowledge and experi-
ence.
WEBSITE: http://www.developmentgateway.org/
ences and resources of the public and private sectors can be harnessed to
effect positive and sustainable change in Africa. To promote development
Appendix II ✦ 309
Digital Factory
OBJ ECTIVE: To create capacity in Africa for the development of soft-
ware and applications at global standards to support the global ICT
industry and market, as well as meet indigenous continental demand, to
greatly enhance the prospects of Africa’s ICT Development, not only in
terms of training and capacity-building, but also in providing market
opportunities for such expertise through out-sourcing, subcontracting
and direct contracting with industry partners, development agencies and
international organisations, and in partnership with Sun Microsystems
and the Office of the Governor, State of California Technology, Trade
and Commerce Agency.
WEBSITE: http://www.TelecomAfrica.org
Ford Foundation
OBJECTIVE: To promote ICT as a crosscutting theme for programming
in South Africa. Programmes include the Project for Information Access
& Connectivity (PIAC), in collaboration with Rockefeller Foundation.
WEBSITE: http://www.fordfound.org
Gauteng Online
O B J E C T I V E : To provide every learner and educator in all public schools
INTEL
Innovation in Education
The Intel initiative “Innovation in Education” has programs that offer
tools, resources and programs that aim at building communities and
inspiring youth through technology.
WEBSITE: http://www.intel.com/education
ments and the private sector coordinate global telecom networks and
services. Programmes include: Valetta Action Plan (VAP): Rural devel-
opment, Technologies & applications, Telecom, Private sector partner-
ship and Human Resources, WSIS.
WEBSITE: http://www.itu.int
314 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Leland Initiative
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
OBJECTIVES: To create an enabling policy environment and a sustain-
able supply of Internet services and enhance Internet use for sustainable
development.
WEBSITE: http://www.usaid.gov/leland
Love Life
OBJECTIVE: To promote use of ICTs for sexual health/HIV/AIDS edu-
cation (Call and Youth Centres, Virtual Studios).
WEBSITE: http://www.lovelife.org.za
MacArthur Foundation
OBJECTIVE: To promote Global Security & System programming.
WEBSITE: http://www.macfdn.org/index.htm
Markle Foundation
Partner of the Digital Opportunity Initiative, Founding partner of the
Global Network Readiness & Resource Initiative, sponsor Digital Oppor-
tunity Summits, and devote the Foundation only to the development of
ICTs.
WEBSITE: http://www.markle.org/index.html
WEBSITE: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/cs/uganda/material/uganda.pdf
MTN Foundation
Focuses on Education, Science and technology, and HIV/AIDS pro-
grams.
WEBSITE: http://www.m-cell.co.za/bus_socialinv.asp
NITPA
OBJECTIVE: To promote networking among members to generate syn-
ergy & promote IT entrepreneurship, advocacy (government policy
influence and infusion of ideas to key IT and Diaspora agenda), project
opportunity, consulting opportunities, IT entrepreneurial and invest-
ment opportunities in Nigeria and the US, education, mentoring, mobi-
lization of accessible IT human resources resident in the US for purposes
of technology transfer to Nigerian institutions (including educational,
commercial and Civic institutions), and excellence in IT application as a
collective means for Nigerian national image-building.
WEBSITE: www.nitpa.org
Appendix II ✦ 317
PRIDE AFRICA
O B J E C T I V E : To promote Virtual Network to link clients of a micro-
finance programme.
WEBSITE: http://www.prideafrica.com
RANET Project
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the
African Centre for Meteorological Applications for Development
(ACMAD)
O B J E C T I V E : To help marginalised communities in remote locations access
SchoolNet SA
Global Teenager Project (2002)
O BJ E C TIVE :To promote collaboration amongst learners across the
globe; train and support educators and learners to use ICT for curricu-
lum, and provide educators with training in the Global teenager learn-
ing circles concept.
WEBSITE: http://www.schoolnet.org.za
Appendix II ✦ 319
Telemedicine in LDCs
International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
O B J E C T I V E : To develop a link which allows doctors in each city to con-
fer with each other and share medical records to ensure that patients in
their respective cities get the best possible care.
WEBSITE: http://www.itu.int/newsarchive/wtdc2002/Internet_Health.html
Uganda Connect
International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
OBJECTIVE: To give students and teachers Internet access and connect
rural communities through high-frequency (HF) radios.
WEBSITE: http://www.uconnect.org
S U B - S A H A R A N A F R I C A W E B S I T E : http://www.developmentgoals.org/
Sub-Saharan_Africa.htm
N O R T H A F R I C A W E B S I T E : http://www.developmentgoals.org/
Middle_East_&_North_Africa.htm
http://www7.itu.int/itudfg7/fg7/CaseLibrary/ShowSummary.asp?contrib=59
World Bank
P R O G R AM M E S InfoDev, Global Development Network
I N C LU D E :
for Knowledge (LINK) and its WHOLIS database, and Heath InterNet-
work (with other partners).
WEBSITE: http://www.who.org
331
332 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Gillian Marcelle—Dr. Gillian Marcelle serves on the UN ICT Task Force, and
has been active in the telecommunications and information and commu-
nications technology (ICT) policy arena for the past fourteen years, work-
ing in universities, telecommunication companies, regulatory authorities,
and as a consultant. Dr. Marcelle recently completed an extensive study
exploring technology capability building processes in developing country
firms, with an empirical focus on the African telecommunications indus-
try, as part of the requirements for the award of a DPhil in Science and
Technology Policy Studies, at Sussex University. She also holds a B.Sc
(Hons.) in Economics from the University of the West Indies, St Augus-
tine and an MBA from George Washington University.
334 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
Africa. He holds a few patents and has written articles for several publi-
cations. Mr. Quaynor earned a Masters Degree and a Ph.D. in Computer
Science from the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
Mavis Ampah Sintim-Misa—Ms. Mavis Ampah Sintim-Misa was until
recently, the Chief Executive Officer of the African Connection Centre
for Strategic Planning of the African Telecommunications Union. Ms.
Sintim-Ampah is a Ghanaian.
Crocker Snow, Jr.—Mr. Crocker Snow, Jr. is President of The Money
Matters Institute. He is the Founding Publisher and President of World
Times, Inc., and the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPaper. As a journal-
ist, he has written numerous series and articles that have appeared in
Boston, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, and has won a few awards,
including, in 1968, the UPI Tom Phillips Award, as an executive pro-
ducer for an 8-part radio documentary on crime. He was a Pulitzer
Prize nominee for reporting from Asia for 1974 and 1976. Mr. Snow, Jr.
holds a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs from Harvard
University.
Pekka Tarjanne—Dr. Pekka Tarjanne is the Executive Coordinator of the
United Nations Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
Task Force. He was the Vice-Chairman of Project Oxygen, Ltd., from
1999–2000 and the Secretary-General of the International Telecommu-
nications Union (ITU) for two terms, from November 1989 through
January 1999. Prior to joining the ITU, Dr. Tarjanne was the Director-
General of Posts and Telecommunications in his native Finland, and
before that, the Minister of Transport and Communications. Dr. Tar-
janne holds a Ph.D. degree from the Helsinki University of Technology.
Justin Thumler—Mr. Justin Thumler is the Managing Director of Digital
Partners. Before co-founding Digital Partners, he consulted for
Microsoft Corporate Affairs and worked in the financial sector as an
investment banker.
H.E. Abdoulaye Wade—His Excellency Abdoulaye Wade is President of
the Republic of Senegal, after being elected to a seven-year term in
336 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
337
338 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
African Telecom Summit, 291 Application, 89, 109, 128, 186, 200–201,
African Telecommunications Union, 226, 230, 234, 244, 252, 273, 294,
The, 32–33, 156–158, 290, 304, 335 316, 327, 329
see ATU applications and software development,
African Training and Research Centre in 12, 30, 294, 309
Administration for Development ASN, 91, 137, 139, 143, 184, 299, 305 see
(CAFRAD), 105, 124 African Stakeholders Network
African Union, 23, 32–33, 36–37, 43, 73, AT&T, 265, 281–282, 288
111, 156–158, 269, 286, 290, 297, ATAC, 136, 150 see also African Technical
304, 333, 335 Advisory Committee
AfricaOnline, 70–71 ATU, 32, 156–159, 304 see The African
Africa’s Digital Rights, 175, 177, 179, Telecommunications Union
181, 183, 185, 187, 189, 191, 193, Australia Broadcasting Corporation, the,
195, 197, 199, 201 142 see also ABC
Africa’s March of Progress, 123
Africa’s Millennium Goal, 14
Africa’s Problems, 106–107, 120, 208
B
Africa’s vision, 44, 110–112, 120, 175 Badshah, Dr. Akhtar, 19, 223, 331
AFRICASHOP, 41 Bamako 2000, 51, 53–54, 132, 333
AfriNIC, 181, 183, 198–199, 202, 334 see Bamako 2002, 31, 131–132, 135, 139, 148
also African Address Registry Bamako Declaration, 132
AFRISHARE, 27, 235 Bande, Tijani Muhammed, 105
AfrISPA, 198 see also African ISP BDD, 178, 186, 193, 201
Associations Bellanet, 34, 77, 143, 145, 150, 312
AfriStar, 62 Bichara, Khaled, 246
Afsat, 73 Bits per Capita indicator, 142
AHTIS, 40 brain-export, 167
AI-AIMS database, 145 Bridge the Digital Divide Program, 178
AIDS, 28, 95, 125, 146, 171, 200, 235, Brown, Ernest, 202
314, 316 Bureau for Telecommunications
AISI Briefing Papers, 142 Development (BDT), 31, 34
AISI Radio Series, 140–141 bush connectivity, 242, 247
AISI, 72, 77, 125–128, 132, 136–138,
140–143, 147, 150, 156, 305, 324 see
also African Information Society
C
Initiative Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 142
AKNF, 150 see also African Knowledge Canton of Geneva, 49
Network Forum Capacity Building, 31–32, 35, 89–90,
Akwule, Raymond, 288 102, 117, 124, 129, 133, 140, 168,
Alcatel, 32, 265, 305 201, 212, 214, 216, 231, 283,
Amoako, K.Y., 125 290–291, 294–295, 301, 326
Anais Network, 49–50 Ceesay, Ebrima, 289
Annan, Amma, 288 cellular base stations, 63
Annan, Secretary-General Kofi, 14, CEO Charter for Development and
17–18, 21, 47, 80, 87, 286, 331 Business Endorsement, The, 44
Application Specific Integrated Circuits CEO Charter for Development, The, 25
(ASIC), 200 Channel Africa, 62, 329
Index ✦ 339
E-HISTORY AFRICA, 41
E e-Initiatives, 101
E-Academy, 233 E-JUSTICE AFRICA, 40
eAfrica Agenda, 178, 187–189, 192 Empowerment, 14, 27–28, 89, 95, 152,
eAfrica Commission, The, 17, 175, 178, 156, 178, 184, 201, 211, 217, 228,
180–181, 187, 192, 199, 333 217 see 230, 237, 317, 323
also e-Africa Commission E-Schools and E-Health, 170
e-Africa Commission, The, 33, 38–39, ESMT, 166
41–44, 159, 206, 217 see also eAfrica e-store, 81
Commission e-Strategies, 25, 89–90, 102, 143, 300
eAfrica Program Commissioner, 175, Ethiopia, 57, 65, 69, 74, 90, 128, 134–135,
334 139–140, 327
eAfrica Vision, 175, 184–185, 189, 196, 202 Evolution of the Digital Divide, The, 177
E-Agriculture, 171
ECA, 19, 27, 51, 77, 125–127, 132–143,
F
145, 148, 150, 324, 332
Economic and Social Council, 53–54, 88, FCC, 289
333 see also ECOSOC FDI, 152, 282 see also foreign direct
Economic Commission for Africa investment
(ECA), 19, 51, 72, 90, 125–126, 137, Fifty-sixth Session of the United Nations
141, 324, 332 General Assembly, 85, 221
Economic Community for Central Figueres, José María, 18, 80, 332
Africa States (CEMAC), 129–130 Ford Foundation, 310
Economic Community for Western foreign direct investment, 152, 254–256,
Africa States, 130 see also ECOWAS 282 see also FDI
economic-haves, 186 Four Foundations Partnership, the, 133
Ecosandals.com, 245, 248 Future, The, 47–48, 72, 82–83, 88,
ECOSOC, 18, 38, 47, 52, 54, 88–89, 95, 109–110, 120, 207, 224, 246, 286,
333 see also Economic and Social 291, 296, 312, 324, 329
Council
ECOWAS, 130, 150, 159 see also
G
Economic Community for Western
Africa States G8 Africa Plan of Action, The, 24
E-Culture, 21, 124, 221 G8 Digital Opportunity Task Force, The,
E-CUSTOMER AFRICA, 40 96, 99
Education, 10, 25, 28–29, 37, 40–41, 50, G8 Dot Force, 25, 77, 91, 148, 206, 309
52, 58–59, 80, 83, 91, 93, 95, G8 industrial countries, 23
103–104, 113, 129, 133, 135, 146, Gambia, 57, 65, 78, 289
148, 156, 159, 164, 166, 168, 186, Gamtel, 289
190, 200, 224, 233, 242, 290, 292, Gateway Project of the World Bank, 27
301, 305, 308, 310, 312, 314–319, GBDe Steering Committee, 103
321–322, 325, 327–328 Genoa Plan of Action, 102
e-enablement, 178 George Mason University, 288
EgDeaf.com, 247–248 Ghana, 57, 61–62, 65, 71, 74, 128, 135,
Egosangwa, Roselyn, 241–242, 249 139–140, 183, 236, 252, 269, 291, 334
e-Government, 103–104, 129, 163, 169, GIIC, 103
305 GKP Strategy 2005, the, 139
Index ✦ 341
GKP, 138–139, 149, 310, 328 Hughes Network Systems, 29, 265, 321
Glob@lNet, 246 Human capital, 187, 196, 306
Global BDD Agenda, 186 Human Resource Development, 24, 29,
global community, 36, 149, 168, 171, 90, 166–168, 301
180, 287
Global Competitiveness, 92, 118, 124,
211, 295, 319
I
Global Dialogue, The, 50 IBM, 218, 318
Global Digital Divide Task Force, 25 ICANN, 18, 139, 194, 198, 334
Global Digital Opportunity Initiative, iConnect Africa, 137, 140–141, 145
The, 25 ICT and Administration, 114
Global Human Resource Survey of ICT and Modernisation, 114
African Male and Female Expertise ICT and Self-Development, 113
in ICT, The, 35, 210, 215, 319 ICT cities Initiatives, 170
Global Information Infrastructure ICT deployment, 11, 27, 114, 191
Commission, 103 ICT Focus Group, 131, 134
global Internet, 18, 179, 195 ICT Media Award Programme, The, 142
global Intranet, 36, 320 ICT Priority Areas, 200
Global Knowledge Conference, The , 51, ICT toolkit for Africa, 159
138 ICT Vision for Africa, The, 184
Global Knowledge Partnership, The, 145 ICTs in Mali, 141
Global Partnership, 25, 31, 39, 42, 145, IDRC, 34, 77, 133, 135, 140, 142, 150,
217, 286, 296–297, 310, 328 282, 304, 312, 316
Global Policy, 25, 87, 187, 189, 191–192, IETASK FORCE, 194
194–195, 300 IIA, 288–289, 323–324 see also Internet
Global VSAT Forum, The, 29, 321 Initiative for Africa
Globalisation, 19, 35, 43, 96, 133, IICD, 140–142, 150, 310, 313
171–172, 220, 281 India, 30, 113, 116, 167, 177, 216, 226,
Globalisation, The Essential Principles 238, 282
of, 220 Indian-ethnic organisation, 226
GMPCS, 158, 164 Info-communication, 45, 151–153, 155,
governance, 10, 13, 20, 25, 59, 80, 89–90, 157, 159, 161, 163, 165, 167, 169,
93, 97, 112, 118, 133–135, 142, 146, 171, 173
153, 166, 169, 186, 212, 224, 300, Information and Communications
306, 323 Divide, the, 45, 219
Government-on-line, 169 information flows, 96, 181, 272, 276
Gruppo CERFE, 27, 224, 237–238, 308 Information Technology Centre for
GSM Association, The, 269 Africa, the, 133, 140
Guy Olivier Segond, President, 49 Info-structure, 177, 181, 187, 189, 191,
196, 198
Infrastructure, 9, 12, 24, 31, 37–39,
H 41–42, 58, 61–63, 66, 72–73, 80, 82,
Heads of State Implementation 85, 89, 97, 99, 103, 119, 126–130,
Committee, 17, 37, 39, 42 132, 135, 138, 142, 147–148,
HealthNet Uganda, 234–235 151–155, 157–158, 161–166, 177,
Hewlett-Packard, 81 187–189, 191, 196, 198, 255, 291,
Horizon Map, The, 8 304–305, 307, 323, 329
342 ✦ Information and Communications Technologies for African Development
W
Wade, President Abdoulaye, 17, 21, 39,
42, 79, 85, 217, 335
WATRA, 31, 130