From Africa Recovery, Vol.11#4 (March 1998), page 22 (part of Special Feature on the 2-year review of UNSIA)

Africa connects to the Internet

Special Initiative spurs projects to link up the continent's computers

By Peter Mwaura

Over the past five years, the number of African countries with access to the Internet has risen dramatically and today there are more than 30 international development assistance programmes promoting wider access to information and communication networks in Africa, a trend that the UN System-wide Special Initiative on Africa seeks to accelerate even more.

In 1993 only four African countries were connected to the Internet. Today, most have developed some form of Internet access: among them, 44 have full access in their capital cities; nine also have local Internet service providers (ISPs) in some secondary towns; and eight have local dial-up access nationwide. There are only five countries -- Comoros, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Eritrea, Libya and Somalia -- that currently do not have plans for full Internet access.

One of the most important events to help speed up Internet connectivity in Africa was the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Conference of African ministers responsible for social and economic development and planning which, in May 1996, approved the framework for an African Information Society Initiative (AISI). Supported by ECA in collaboration with UNESCO, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the AISI charts Africa's path into cyberspace.

The AISI was followed by the African Network Initiative (ANI), a study on future information-structure building activities in Africa, which identified planned or ongoing projects on the continent. Many of these -- there were more than 50 as of February 1998 -- fall under the AISI framework. Among the major ones are:

-- UNESCO's Regional Informatics Network for Africa extension, which supports the provision of training and computer equipment in 22 African countries.

-- The ITU programme for Africa comprising various rural, community telecommunications centres, health and satellite projects conducted in cooperation with UNESCO, IDRC, the World Health Organization (WHO) and others. The programme includes pilot "telemedicine" projects in Cameroon, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda, in cooperation with the European Telemedicine Group.

-- IDRC's Acacia programme to develop the use of information and communication technologies in African communities.

-- The UN Conference on Trade and Development's TradePoints initiative for developing trade efficiency networks in Africa. The European Union has pledged $33 mn for the project.

-- A multi-donor InfoDev fund being established by the World Bank. The Bank is also providing support for linking 1,200 public schools in developing countries to the Internet. Cìte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda have been earmarked to receive support.

-- The UNDP Africa bureau's $6 mn Internet Initiative for Africa, a project to improve connectivity in 12 countries.

-- The US Agency for International Development's AfricaLink project which will fund equipment, training and some communication costs to connect about 100 African institutions to local e-mail service providers.

-- The UN Environment Programme's Mercure project, to establish an environmental information exchange network in Africa.

Despite these ongoing projects, Internet use in Africa is limited by hardware and transmission costs. Hardware is much more expensive in Africa than in many other parts of the world due to high import tariffs and little price competition. However, Internet charges are expected to drop owing, among other things, to increasing competition in transmission technologies among ISPs, the privatization of state-owned telecommunications corporations and the liberalization of domestic telephone markets.

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