CAIRO: From Kigali to Tomorrow , a special session held yesterday on the Connect Africa Summit reviewed progress made since key partners from government and industry met in Kigali, Rwanda last October and looked to the roll out of investments to meet connectivity targets in Africa.
In October 2007, ITU organized the Connect Africa Summit, a key initiative to bridge the digital divide. Over a thousand participants from 54 countries, representing governments, industry, development banks and international organizations met in Kigali, Rwanda to mobilize the human, financial and technical resources needed to expand access to ICT infrastructure across the continent. Planned investments totaling $55 billion were announced to expand ICT connectivity and services to the entire continent by 2015, including a goal of interconnecting cities to broadband by 2012.
Seven years before the 2015 target for achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, we need to be bold. We need to devise the strategies that will enable us to achieve these goals, said ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré “Information and communication technologies have a crucial role to play in achieving these goals, for example, through e-education e-agriculture and e-health.
Touré added that African countries need modern, reliable broadband infrastructure in order to create jobs for economic growth. Investment, not charity, is the solution for Africa s development, Dr Touré said.
As charity begins at home, Rwanda itself is pressing on with projects to help its citizens get high-quality, affordable access to voice, data and video, said Dr Romain Murenzi, Minister for Science, Technology, Scientific Research and ICT of Rwanda. However, we can t do business in Africa today in terms of data, because it is too expensive. And video is an even bigger challenge.
Announcing that President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, patron of the Connect Africa Summit, would champion the development of ICT in Africa, Dr Murenzi said, By 2012, we should reach 5 million mobile subscribers from a current 600,000.
Mr Sami Al Basheer Al Morshid, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, highlighted some of ITU s key actions. Among the projects underway, he noted progress towards the establishment of Centres of Excellence, youth scholarships and Internet training centres for Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries in Africa with the support of the Government of Spain.
He also highlighted a policy and regulatory harmonization initiative underway in Africa with the support of the European Commission.
ITU is active on many fronts, Mr Al Basheer said. We are working with various partners to spread access to ICTs across the African continent. In Kigali, the GSM Association announced that its industry members planned to invest USD 50 billion between 2008 and 2012 in networks in Africa, covering 90 per cent of the population. The Association announced today that the number of mobile connections in Africa has risen 70 million in the past 12 months to 282 million. Mobile operators have ramped up investment in the region, extending GSM coverage to reach an additional 550,000 square kilometers occupied by 46 million people. This broadening coverage along with the falling cost of mobile communications has enabled millions of Africans to get connected.
As part of our ongoing drive to help bridge the digital divide in Africa, Intel has been working with governments, local IT players, schools and NGOs to roll out digital inclusion programs in countries including Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Algiers, South Africa all the way to Nigeria, said Mr John E. Davies, Intel Vice President, Sales and Marketing Group & General Manager, Intel World Ahead Programme. The company s goal is to provide enhanced opportunities in connecting the next billion people. Intel Chairman Mr Craig Barrett has been a driving force behind the Connect Africa Summit in Kigali.
