"The challenge to Africa of globalization and the information age" was the theme of the first African Development Forum in Addis Ababa on 24-28 October by the UN Economic Commission for Africa. It tied neatly together some core issues of the UN Special Initiative on Africa. This report covers aspects of the main debates and discussions, the state of Africa's communication networks and how countries can plan their expansion (see Section 2), and interviews with a range of participants (see Section 3).
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Recent trends that present information and communications technology as "cure all" tools and pressure from various vendors have led to overemphasis on acquiring the technology with little or no attention to information content and management in Africa. Africa has seen hundreds of information technology projects that are synonymous to pipes without water. The focus on technology, not information, and emphasis on tools, not people, will continue to have drastic consequences for organizational development. The future success factor of organizations, nations and individuals is not high-level technology, but rather innovative and well-managed content. Thus it is important to continue to focus on information management, its collection in digital format and qualitative processing and dissemination. -- UN Economic Commission for Africa |
With eloquent brush strokes, Mali's President Alpha Oumar Konaré
captured essential themes of the conference: "As an African,
I am keeping a cool head -- a computer can cost eight years' salary
or send 20 children to school.... If we don't have our own clear
vision on information and communication technology, we will be
disappointed.... Liberalization of communications is an irreversible
process and local radio is working wonders since being freed from
state control.... Young people are the soldiers who will drive
us forward with new technology.... We must not fall into the trap
of separating our cultural renaissance from economic development.
Globalization is inevitable but we have to enter it while being
true to ourselves."
Photo: Barry
Williams
He was speaking at the end of the African Development Forum, conceived by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) as the first of an annual series in which Africa will set a definitive agenda for the next millennium. The theme for 2000 is HIV/AIDS. In 1999, it was the challenge of globalization and the information age, themes that fit in the framework of the UN Special Initiative on Africa. Launched in 1996 by the UN system to help accelerate the pace of African development, the initiative has a specific component on harnessing information technology for development and considers improved telecommunications a positive factor in development, not a result.
Participants ranged from community activists and technical experts to national and international policy makers and private entrepreneurs. There were flights of optimism: information and communication technologies (ICTs) offer African countries the "opportunity to leapfrog the industrialized stage and transform their economies into high value-added information economies that can compete with the advanced economies on the global market," one speaker said.
People also came down to earth. How can we talk about joining
the information age when agriculture, Africa's economic foundation,
is in trouble? "The credit system has collapsed, extension
services are collapsing and the credit-transportation-marketing
nexus has been broken," a participant said. Over 60 per cent
of ICT projects "result in some degree of failure,"
a conference theme paper added, noting that current "supply-driven
pressures" will increase as new technology makes equipment
obsolete.* Africa must become neither an experimental laboratory
nor a dumping ground, the paper declared.
Photo: Lydia
Muluguetta
ECA Executive Secretary K.Y. Amoako outlined the challenges ahead. There will be over a billion Africans in 2010, he noted, almost double the population when the African Information Society Initiative was launched in 1996 (see Section 2). In endorsing this policy framework for the deployment of ICTs in Africa's development, African countries stated that by 2010, every woman, man, child, village and public and private sector office should have secure access to information and knowledge through computers and communication media. Achieving the goal of "equity of access to ICTs" for women, young people and the disabled as well as for rural and marginal urban communities will require partnerships within African countries and between them. It will also require partnerships with the local and foreign private sector, Mr. Amoako stated.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi inserted a key nuance.
Africa has no choice "but to do whatever it takes to ensure"
a vibrant domestic private sector. Without local enthusiasm and
confidence, foreign investment is unlikely. However, weak and
"failing states" cannot be considered growth-friendly.
"Robust states" can -- and need to -- be both legitimate
and democratic. Liberalization and macroeconomic stability "are
normally taken as an end in themselves" but produce "neither
meaningful growth and transformation nor sustained liberalization
and macroeconomic stability." Enhancing the capacity of the
state "must be considered one of [Africa's] critical challenges,"
he concluded.
"What will the private sector do to improve rural access
to telecommunications?" one person asked representatives
of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC). This
international coalition of big firms involved in all aspects of
telecommunications from hardware to broadcasting recently set
up a GIIC-Africa chapter. "Rural access is not our primary
concern," replied a spokesman, adding that access is very
important and will come with greater competition.
Many participants called for faster privatization and liberalization.
Describing government monopolies on telecommunications services
as a "stranglehold on development," one speaker observed
that people are waiting months or years to get e-mail connections.
The International Telecommunication Union estimates that providing
five telephone lines per 100 Africans will cost $50 bn. "This
by far exceeds public sector financing capacity, making large-scale
private investment a necessity" and governments will find
it increasingly hard to maintain their monopoly on ICTs, another
conference theme paper argued.**
Photo: Antonio
Fiorente
Still, equity issues retained their prominence. UN Deputy Secretary-General
Louise Frechette stated a simple truth. Even if ICTs are installed
and accessible, "without literacy and basic skills they will
remain as remote as they are now." There is a "clear
link between the development of basic skills and tremendous gains
on the part of the previously dispossessed," she told a plenary
session.
In smaller sessions, participants explored all these issues. Youth delegates from several countries insisted that they should be educated, empowered and involved in all aspects of ICT development. Their importance is underlined by Africa's age structure: while AIDS is cutting down adults, some 45 per cent of Africans are under 15 years old; the rest of the world's average is 30 per cent. The infrastructure group called for strategic choices on how and when -- and not whether -- to privatize and liberalize telecommunications. It said governments should establish independent regulatory bodies before liberalization so that negotiations with investors are effective and result in appropriate choices of technology. Speakers called for harmonization of national rules to attract more capital and facilitate initiatives such as the Regional African Satellite Communications Organization (RASCOM).
Set up in 1992, RASCOM links 42 countries in a satellite-based project to reach rural areas. The project aims, among other things, to install 456,000 solar-powered relay stations, increase rural phone lines to 1 per 100 people, reduce average distances to a phone from 50 to 5 kilometres and provide direct connections between African countries. In August 1999, RASCOM's board of directors awarded France's Alcatel the contract to finance, design, build, launch and operate the dedicated satellite system for an agreed period before transfer. RASCOM has some 20 per cent equity in the enterprise but no voting rights.
ICTs exist within a context of social inequality, noted the focus group on gender. Already disadvantaged in access to education, credit and land, women are also marginalized in all areas of ICTs. They should take part in all ICT decision-making processes, participants said, calling for more education for girls, particularly in the scientific and technical fields. They added that women entrepreneurs, especially in the informal sector, need products, services and training so they can conduct electronic commerce and gain access to business opportunities without numerous intermediaries.
Participants shared experiences
of telecentres, which are a pioneering method of expanding rural
access to telephones, computers and the Internet. Recurrent themes
included the shortage of managerial and accounting skills among
telecentre operators and sustainability -- many telecentres are
externally financed.
Networking in the conference centre.
Photo: Lydia Muluguetta
Given these and related problems such as language, content and network reach, telecentres are not the singular solution to rural access, says Ms. Kate Wild of the Canadian International Development Research Centre, who coordinated the conference. Clinics, post offices and schools can also host such services for communities and electronic links between schools have been growing faster than telecentres in some countries. This is partly because the education system provides a ready basis for electronic networking and also because concrete education initiatives are attractive to private sector and donor partners, she observes.
One example is the African Virtual University (AVU). This World Bank-funded initiative is helping to "alleviate the decay" of Africa's universities, many of which face dwindling budgets and declining academic standards, said University of Zimbabwe lecturer Stanley Moyo. Since 1997, the AVU has hooked up with 22 institutions in 16 countries and eight more in francophone and lusophone countries are joining. It offers credits in courses such as calculus and engineering as well as non-credit lectures. Some 2,000 hours of classes have been broadcast live by satellite and this year, over 600 students have taken computer science lectures. More of the course materials will eventually come from within Africa.
African universities need information technology to survive, said Professor Olalere Ajayi of Nigeria's Obafemi Awolowo University, noting that hardware costs are halved when students learn to assemble computers. Such institutions can also become Internet service providers, added Prof. J. Mwenechanya. With funding from the World Bank and the Netherlands, the University of Zambia linked all campus buildings in a fibre optic network, obtained unlimited Internet access and set up Zamnet as a commercial Internet service provider.
The conference purposefully placed such areas of progress in
the broader context of governance and access issues. How do you
bring government to the people in Nigeria, which has 36 states
and 770 local governments? When allocating scarce resources, all
governments must be smart, a conference theme paper observed.
Installing computers, software and support in government offices
can cost $10,000 per employee per year and the costs of training,
support and operation of technology investments may be five times
the purchase price of equipment, participants learned. Yet, governments
and other organizations often spend much more on procurement than
on skills development, he said.
Participants did not doubt the benefits that ICTs can bring when
properly employed. In Morocco, better coordination between the
finance and planning ministries -- and computerization -- is said
to have halved, since 1989, the time it takes to prepare the national
budget. ECA offered some specific guidelines for ICT use in governance
that seem more broadly applicable. It said the first step is to
ignore ICTs altogether. Then, select priority areas for improvement,
establish strategic goals and set up sign posts to guide planned
activities towards goals. The second step is to review alternative
ICT solutions that support planned activities, taking account
of financing, infrastructure, literacy and skills constraints;
then analyze the (capital and recurrent) costs and benefits of
each solution. After agreeing on an ICT solution, develop a work
plan for acquiring and allocating resources and providing training
while staying focused on strategic goals and user constraints.
Last, begin monitoring and evaluation during the design phase
and do not stop.
**Globalization and the Information Economy: Challenges and Opportunities for Africa, ECA, 1999. Both publications are on the ECA website: <www.un.org/Depts/eca/adf>
Forward steps at the African Development ForumThe following initiatives were among those launched during the conference: Schoolnet Africa: A working group is planning to connect schools across the continent to the Internet and focus on HIV/AIDS, youth livelihoods, peace building and cultural preservation. African Distance Learning Programme: Delegates from Egypt, South Africa, Mozambique and Namibia are planning joint work on digital systems design, content design, networking, training and support. Beijing+5 Women's Networking Activities: This forum will discuss the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) on African women. NGONet Africa: Over 40 organizations will set up a network, build capacity for policy analysis, using ICTs for development. Telecentre Network: People from six African countries will start building a network of telecentre operators. They and others will develop an operations manual and computer recycling strategies, identify electronic commerce opportunities at community level, improve services for disabled people and share evaluation methods and outcomes. Diaspora Database: Listing groups already working for Africa's development. |
Connecting with the African diasporaBy Lorna Davidson*All Africans should come together and "turn the resource drain into resource gain," participants agreed during a panel discussion on the African diaspora. African expatriates and people of African descent are a vast and neglected resource that Africa should mobilize for its development. New technology has made it easier for Africa to benefit from the knowledge, skills and investment capital of Africans abroad, participants concluded. Africans in the diaspora still depend on the home continent for identity. They share the hurt caused by political conflict and war and by the continent's weak bargaining position in institutions such as the World Trade Organization, speakers emphasized. Others suggested that think-tanks in the diaspora could support Africa's efforts to improve its trade situation by lobbying, preparing position papers and monitoring specific trade provisions that work against Africa's interests. Given the continent's need to diversify its trade partners, participants noted that African exporters should target companies and communities in the diaspora in order to penetrate new markets overseas. As was pointed out in another panel discussion on electronic commerce, not only are there many potential investors among Africans abroad but the whole diaspora is also a big market with great purchasing power and high demand for African products. There are skilled people who can contribute physically and electronically to teacher training, distance learning and other educational and health programmes in Africa. They can help develop the electronic networks of non-governmental organizations. Distance is now no obstacle to mobilizing the resources of the diaspora and participants agreed to compile a database of active diaspora groups. * English Editor, Information and Communication Team, ECA. |
