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.
Photo: UNDP / Ruth Massey
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:
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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It was no mean challenge that a group of experts took up when they met on 20-21 October 1997 at the Addis Ababa headquarters of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). Their job was to help push forward the effort to use information and communication technology to spur African development.
The meeting was the first encounter of the African Technical Advisory Committee, set up by ECA Executive Secretary K.Y. Amoako to guide the implementation of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI). Based on a partnership between multilateral, bilateral, governmental, non-governmental and private sector bodies, the AISI was launched at a conference held on 13-15 May 1996, in Midrand, South Africa.
But its story really began in Addis Ababa when the ECA, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), UNESCO and Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) organized the first African Regional Symposium on Telematics for Development in April 1995. Discussions were taken a step further in May 1995 by the 21st ECA Conference of Ministers, and by May 1996 an action framework drawn up by an ECA-appointed working group of 11 information technology experts had been approved by the 22nd Conference of Ministers.
The AISI framework urges African countries to draw up five-year programmes for information and communication infrastructure as part of their national development plans. It also places a high priority on achieving full Internet connectivity throughout the continent, bringing access to information to distant and disadvantaged communities, with content developed by Africans and relevant to Africa. The AISI seeks to ensure that by the year 2010, "every man and woman, school child, village, government office and business [in Africa] can access information and knowledge resources through computers and telecommunications," according to ECA.
Is all this possible on a continent where many people have no access to telephones, and where communications on the whole are often difficult? AISI advocates do not deny the limitations, but refuse to see the situation as static. "It's very ambitious because there are many things that restrict the development of communication infrastructure," admits Ms. Karima Bounemra Ben-Soltane, Director of the ECA's Development Information Services Division, which is responsible for the AISI. "Our aim is the intelligent use of systems, mastering techniques, the transfer of knowledge and know-how," she told Africa Recovery.
The progress of the AISI will depend to some extent on financing. The African Technical Advisory Committee recommends that the pool of potential funders should be broadened, and also calls for stronger relations with institutions already supporting the initiative, such as the UN Development Programme (UNDP), ITU and the World Bank.
Much of the work done within the AISI framework thus far has taken the form of building awareness and helping states prepare their information and communication policies, strategies and plans. This has been the focus of workshops supported by AISI partners such as the ECA, UNDP and IDRC. Improving access to information and communication technology in Africa remains a major challenge.
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All national stakeholders should be involved in the liberalization of Africa's telecommunications sector, according to participants at a seminar on the Internet for East African countries held at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa. They also recommended the establishment of a rural development fund for the provision of incentives to encourage Internet service providers to develop information infrastructure in rural and remote areas.
"The role of information in the development process cannot be overemphasized," ECA Executive Secretary K.Y. Amoako told the 13-15 October 1997 meeting. "And it becomes more crucial when it comes to economic integration and networking, where decision-makers need to have access to accurate and timely information to enable them to make wise and appropriate decisions."
Past experience has shown that unavailable, unreliable and/or outdated information is a major impediment to development, noted Mr. Christian Lehembre, acting UN Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative in Ethiopia. "Countries that choose to invest in improving their telecommunications infrastructure are likely to outpace those that do not," he told the seminar.
But improving such infrastructure "goes beyond simply adding more telephone lines or enhancing the capability of the local and international networks," stated Mr. Lehembre. "More importantly," he said, "it means that most countries have to reform their regulations concerning telecommunications, reconfigure the tariff structure, allow competition from the private sector, and generally provide an enabling environment to take advantage of the inevitable telecommunications boom."
The participants recommended that the Africa Information Society Initiative should be implemented at the country level, "mainly through the organization of high-level policy awareness campaigns and the development of national information and communication policies and plans."
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