By
G.Olalere Ajayi*
DIRECTOR GENERAL/CEO
NATIONAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AGENCY
FEDERAL MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
NIGERIA
AT
INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR THEORETICAL PHYSICS
(ICTP)
TRIESTE, ITALY
11TH-16TH FEB, 2002
The world is going through an information technology revolution that has drastically changed many facets of the human life, from education, industry, economy, politics to entertainment. In addition, unprecedented capabilities of information technology to process, store, refine and disseminate data, information and knowledge in a variety of ways across geographical boundaries has dramatically changed the ways in which governments, the public and private sectors operated all over the world. The emergence and convergence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has therefore remained at the centre of global socio-economic transformations.
It is worth noting that Information has become a strategic resource, a commodity and foundation of every activity. In fact ICT is now regarded as a utility such as water and electricity and hence it has become a major factor in socio-economic development of every nation. ICT now plays a major role in education, learning and research in general, agriculture, health, commerce and even in poverty alleviation by generating or creating new jobs and investment opportunities.
The potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to transform development is now receiving greater attention worldwide. Using the catch phrase “Bridging the Digital Divide”, national governments, NGOs, corporations, and global compacts such as the UN and the G8 are all marshalling resources to use ICTs for improving development in the underdeveloped worlds.
As a result of the convergence of information, telecommunications, broadcasting and computers, the ICT sector now embraces a large range of industries and services hence National Information and Communication Infrastructures must be developed for integration into the Global Information Infrastructure (GII).
Although a large number of international funding agencies have ICT initiatives in Africa, the continent has not fully responded to the clarion call for giving ICT necessary priority in the national development. However, the situation is changing rapidly in recent times, especially after the African Development Forum (ADF’99), held in Addis Ababa in 1999, with the theme ‘Challenge to African Globalisation and the Information Age’. It is therefore necessary to note that though many African countries lack basic facilities like fresh water and primary education, the continent remains a “perfect case” for the application ICTs.
Africa has the lowest telephone densities (main lines per 100 inhabitants) in the world. The continent has only 2% of world telephone lines, which is less than those in Tokyo. Africa has 35 of the world’s 49 telecommunication least developed countries of the world, and until quite recently, the continent has the lowest annual growth in teledensity. In 1997, the teledensity for Africa was 1.85, while those for Europe, America and Asia were respectively 34, 30 and 6. There are more cellular telephones in Thailand than the whole of Africa (Ref. 1). In 1999, the ITU estimates that Africa had about 18 million telephone lines – amounting to a teledensity of 2.0, an improvement over the estimates of 1997. With the North Africa and South Africa excluded, the teledensity is about 0.5.
There are only about 1.3 million dialup Internet subscribers in Africa. Of these, North Africa is responsible for about 250,000 and South Africa for 750,000, leaving about 300,000 for the remaining 50 Africa countries. In 1999, there were about 3 million Internet users in Africa, with about 1 million outside of South Africa. This amounted to about 1 Internet user for every 250 people, compared to the world average of 1 Internet user to every 35 people, and a North American and European average of about 1 user for every 3 people.
The total number of computer hosts permanently connected to the Internet in Africa (excluding South Africa) in 1999 was estimated to be between 25,000 to 30,000, which is about the same number as that in a small Eastern European country such as Latvia, with a population of 2.5million (compared to the 780 million people in Africa, about 13% of the world population) (Ref. 3).
There is also the problem of limited extent of penetration, and high cost of telecommunication, especially when compared to per-capita incomes, and these also contribute to higher Internet costs. The average subscription fee of around US$50 per month is more than the average monthly salary of a person in Africa (Ref. 2).
There are only 17 countries on the continent that have local dialup Internet access in the secondary towns or urban areas outside the capital city. This means that majority of the people will have to be making long distance trunk calls to assess the net even if they can afford a subscription, a computer and a phone line. This is exorbitantly costly considering the cost of the average local call tariff, which is around US$ 2.50 an hour, in ten countries it is more than US$ 4, and in a few it is over US$ 8 an hour (Ref. 2).
Africa is a continent still struggling with the challenges of socio-political and economic development. Based on this, the option left for the continent to leapfrog into the Global Information Society is to fully embrace all the fruits of ICTs. Africa needs to take advantage of the phenomena and unexplored resources offered by ICT in order to sustain its developmental efforts.
Some of the factors resulting in poor IT penetration in Africa include (Ref. 2):
q Communication Regulatory environment. The national regulatory environment in Africa varies greatly, from relatively open competition in Internet service provision or even mobile services and local loops to long-term monopolies in all these areas.
q The extent of the existing ICT infrastructure and the cost of access to it. This affects both the potential new entrants in the provision of basic services and those to provide value-added services.
q The existing usage of the radio spectrum. Many of the countries in Africa do not have adequate facilities to manage their radio spectrum allocation for use by telecommunications and Internet operators, either nationally or regionally. This has resulted in congestion in some wavebands and lack of a transparent process and difficulties in obtaining spectrum from the regulators.
q The market orientation and openness of the national government to private sector investment. Many countries in the continent are still coming up from “nationalisation era” and many sectors of the economy are still dominated by inefficient parastatals with close links to government executives.
q The general investment climate in the country, such as the level inflation, import duties, access to local capital and foreign currency
q The resources the national government and their international cooperating partners are allocating to national information and communication projects.
q The reliability and extent of penetration of the national electricity grid.
q The level of development of the transport networks since these directly affect the cost of communications network implementation and support, as well level of demand for the communication services.
There are several ICT initiatives in Africa cutting across almost all aspects of the national development efforts. These initiatives have contributed much to the development of ICTs in many African countries. There can be overlaps sometimes in some of the initiatives, leading to non-optimal utilization of human capital and economic resources. Based on other sources and Jensen’s summary of these ICT initiatives, sections below will give brief discussions on some of the major initiatives.
http://www3.wn.apc.org/afstat.htm
http://www.bellanet.org/partners/aisi/abtaisi.htm
In May 1995, the twenty-first meeting of ECA Conferences of Ministers, comprising the fifty-three African Ministers for Social and Economic Development and Planning adopted Resolution 795(xxx) entitled “Building Africa’s Information Highway”. As a result of this resolution, ECA appointed a High-level working group on Information and Communication Technologies in Africa, made up of African Technical experts, to draft an action framework to utilise Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to accelerate the socio-economic development of Africa and its people. The outcome of the group’s work is the document entitled “Africa’s Information Society Initiative” (AISI) which was adopted by all of Africa’s Planning Ministers at the subsequent meeting in May 1996. The AISI action framework calls for:
· The formulation and development of a National Information and Communication (NICI) plan in every African country, driven by national development priorities.
· Cooperation among African countries to share the success of accumulated implementation experiences.
· Support and partnership with the friends of Africa including bilateral and multilateral development agencies, regional economic organisations and the private sector.
It is expected that the development of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI) will enable African leaders, decision makers and planners to position Africa in the world’s rapidly expanding global economic system and accelerate the pursuit of Africa’s development goals, which include:
· Improvement of the quality of life for every African.
· Economic integration in the region.
· Improved trade and other linkages with the global community.
The African Information Society Initiative adopted the term “National Information and Communications Infrastructure (NICI)” policies and plans to emphasize the importance of communication in the ICT development plans of the African countries, and other ICT initiatives already going on in Africa (Ref. 6).
NICI’s plans and strategies have become high on the agenda of African countries. These plans and strategies are made to reflect the overall development priorities, redefine sectoral policies and support the introduction of new regulatory frameworks so as to improve efficiency, and to mobilize resources for building national information and communication infrastructure among member countries.
Most African countries belong to the industrially weak and agriculturally dominated economies. NICI led socio-economic development policies; strategies and plans will transform these economies into Information and Knowledge Economies (IKE).
The Development of NICI policies and plans is being sponsored by African Government, ECA, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, and latter through its Acacia-communities and information society in Africa-programme. Other partners like USAID, UNDP, UNESCO, and World Bank are also supplementing ECA’s effort in developing NICI activities in member states.
The 23 countries that are involved in NICI activities are:
|
Benin |
Burkina faso |
Burundi |
Cap Verde |
Cote d’Ivoire |
|
Gabon |
Ghana |
Guinea |
Ethiopia |
Mali |
|
Malawi |
Mauritania |
Morocco |
Namibia |
Nigeria |
|
Rwanda |
Senegal |
Sudan |
South Africa |
Tanzania |
|
Tunisia |
Uganda |
|
|
|
The NICI development processes are summarized as follows:
· Need Assessment;
· Sensitisation and high level policy workshop;
· Preparation of NICI plans which involves:
o Identification and selection of programmes, projects and initiatives.
o Development of programme profiles for each of the identified programmes, projects and initiatives.
· Validation workshop (including more sensitisation);
· Preparation of policy including:
o Discussion on policy coordination and implementation organs.
o Policy implementation.
· Resource mobilization;
· Resource Deployment;
· NICI programme implementation and monitoring;
· NICI programme evaluation;
Development of NICI plans is not only a series of procedures and technical prescriptions but it should also be seen as a new phenomena and culture for information sharing to reduce the information gaps between different parts of the population. Collaboration and adhesion of decision makers and all stakeholders to the information society concept is essential for the success of the NICI plans to be developed in member states.
African countries are requested to establish national teams responsible for the development of NICI policies, plans and strategies, the identification of priorities and the setting-up of mechanisms and procedures for follow up and implementation. Therefore the development of NICI plans is undertaken by teams and working with all stakeholders with the aim of reaching a consensus among the various sectors on the needs priorities and actions to be undertaken.
The following are examples of what has been achieved at country level in the NICI development process in Africa (Ref. 4):
· Ghana’s Vision 2020 recognizes the strategic role that ICTs will play in the realization of its objectives. Specifically, it recognizes that in this modern era, it is ICTs that drive productivity, make possible private initiative and creativity, and bestow competitive advantage to the production of goods and services in an open and liberal economy. Ghana has recently launched an ICT strategic policy for the country.
· Morocco is setting up the Morocco Wide Area Network (MARWAN) to link via a fibre optic network all research institutions and universities in the Kingdom and to develop a nationwide virtual library and research laboratory.
· Rwanda has put in place an ICT-led Development Vision that aims at modernizing the Rwandan economy and society using ICTs as an engine for accelerated development and economic growth, national prosperity, and global competitiveness.
· Senegal is implementing a study entitled "Senegal 2015" which examines a number of issues to which ICTs could provide responses - such as adaptation of the education system, expansion of social communication, strengthening of self reliance, management of the effects of increased urbanization, and revitalization of rural areas.
· South Africa is developing a proposal to set up an ICT strategy, which will consolidate all of the existing government networks in one ‘Intranet’ based on a high-speed fibre optic backbone to be built by the telecommunication operator.
· Tunisia has developed a national strategy with emphasis on information and communication infrastructure by setting up a nationwide Internet backbone with cyber cafes co-funded by the Government and the private sector.
· Nigeria Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved a National Information Technology policy in 2001 and the implementation has started. In addition, plans are on for the development of baseline studies and NICI programme.
The following 12 countries have completed development of their NICI plans in 1999: Benin, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ghana, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia and Uganda.
UNESCO promotes three areas of action to encourage the development of electronic networks:
One prominent operational network of UNESCO is the Regional Informatics Network for Africa (RINAF).
The Regional Informatics Network for Africa (RINAF) was initiated in 1992 as a framework for UNESCO’s support to Africa to co-operate to operate academic and public sector computer networking with the inter-governmental Informatics Programme. RINAF started with the support from Italy, the Netherlands and the Republic of Korea and UNESCO’s Regular programme.
RINAF is currently the framework of all UNESCO’s telematics support activity for development in Africa, including the promotion of national and regional strategies and telematics applications for development. RINAF is supporting and promoting telematics in the sector of public concern (including education, research, libraries, media, and culture, within the regional framework of Africa’s information Society Initiative (AISI).
More than 43 African member states are presently participating in RINAF through national coordinating institutions (RINAF nodes). There are also a committee of representatives of five sub-regions (North, East, Central, West and Southern Africa.
Some of the major RINAF activities have been:
The RINAF African Committee proposed the following new project ideas:
The DOT Force was created by the G8 Heads of State at their Kyushv Okinawa Summit in July 2000. This initiative brought together forty-two teams from government, the private sector, non-profit organisations, representing both developed and the developing countries, in a cooperative effort to identify ways in which the digital revolution can benefit all especially the poorest countries and most marginalized group.
The DOT Force has examined in depth the challenges of bridging the digital divide and harnessing the power of information and communications technologies (ICTs) and global networks to ensure opportunity, empowerment and inclusion for all.
The DOT Force has identified priority actions that must be taken by national governments and their citizens, the international community organisation in various forms of partnership to make this opportunity a reality.
The work of the DOT Force has focussed on three main objectives:
· To enhance global understanding and consensus on the challenges and opportunities posed by information and communication technologies, and the role that these technologies can play in fostering sustainable, participatory development, better governance, wealth creation and empowerment of local communities and vulnerable groups.
· To foster greater coherence among the various initiatives, both G8 and other, currently underway or proposed to address these challenges and opportunities,
· To enhance the effective mobilization of resources to address these challenges and opportunities.
The action plans of the DOT Force are enumerated below:
· Help establish and support developing countries national e-strategies;
· Improve connectivity, access and lower costs;
· Enhance human capacity development, knowledge creation and sharing;
· Foster enterprise and entrepreneurship for sustainable economic development;
· Establish and support universal participation in addressing new international policy and technical issues raised by the Internet and ICT;
· Establish and support dedicated initiatives for the ICT inclusion of the least developed countries;
· Promote ICT for health care and support against HIV/AIDS and other infectious and communicable diseases;
· Prioritise ICT in G8 and other development assistance policies and programmes towards enhancing coordination of multilateral initiatives.
http://www.idrc.ca/acacia/focus.htm
The Acacia Initiative is an international effort to empower sub-Saharan African communities with the ability to apply Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to their own social and economic development. The idea of Acacia emerged at 1996 Information Society and Development Conference held in South Africa, the first event of its kind to hold in a developing country.
The two major objectives of the Acacia Initiative are:
· To demonstrate how ICTs can enable communities to solve their development problems in ways that build firmly on local goals, cultures, strengths, and processes;
· To build a body of knowledge capable of identifying the policies, technologies, approaches, and methodologies instrumental in promoting the affordable and effective use of ICTs by marginalized communities, such as women.
Since access to and use of ICTs is a means not an end, Acacia identifies technologies, which are financially sustainable at the community level and efficient in responding to needs.
Community level sustainability depends on factors such as large policy environment, the human talent available to draw upon and the quality of available infrastructure. Based on these, Acacia’s integrated national strategies, and the design of its sub-regional and regional programmes are governed by these key components:
1. Development of IT and telecom policies that are hospitable to ICT access in rural and small town communities.
2. Supporting human capacity and innovative infrastructure that extends IT and communication infrastructure to the rural and small town communities.
3. Encouraging the development of tools and technologies that facilitate the use of ICT by the marginalized.
4. Promotion of applications and services that respond to communities needs.
One unique feature of Acacia’s activities is that they are grounded in participatory community-level research and experimentation. On this basis, community selection is based on the desire to participate, representation and prior experience and knowledge. Thus acacia links the notion of ‘partnership’ to the principles of ‘community participation’ in the identification, implementation and evaluation of projects that affects a community’s quality of life.
The African Virtual University is an interactive – instructional telecommunications network established to give the countries of the sub-saharan Africa direct access to some of the highest quality academic faculty and learning resources throughout the world. Since the launch of the project in 1997, it has contributed greatly to the bridging of the digital divide by training world-class scientists, engineers, technicians, business managers, and other professionals who will promote economic and social development in Africa.
AVU is a $1.2m project using satellite technology to deliver distance education with telephone call-back for voice intervention from the students at the lecture sites. Initially 12 English-speaking countries were selected as pilot for the project but connections have been established in universities in Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Installations in both French and Portuguese speaking countries followed subsequently.
Building upon the success of the pilot phase, AVU that started as a World Bank’s project has now transited into an independent non-profit organization head quartered in Nairobi, Kenya and will be expanding in the next few years into more African countries. The future plan is to reach undergraduate students, faculty and professionals through:
Ø Establishment of learning centres in public and private universities;
Ø Private franchises and on-site professional learning centres housed in corporations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
In addition to offering classes, the AVU maintains a sophisticated, Internet-based digital library of journals, academic studies, and textbooks that allows both students and teachers to access a wide range of information.
Aside from the initiatives discussed above, other initiatives that have contributed to ICT development in Africa include:
· The United-Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC);
· United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Initiatives;
o The Sustainable Development Network Programme (SNDP);
o The ICT Task Force;
· The World Back Group Initiatives
o The Information for Development Program (infoDev)
o The African Virtual University (AVU).
· The US Agency for International Development (USAID) Initiative
o Leland Initiative.
In general the international community has played very strategic roles in the developing IT capacities in Africa. This is evident by the diverse initiatives operating in the continent.
Africa, which with only one fixed-line telephone connection per 300 people has the lowest telecoms density in the world, is catching up rapidly in the mobile phone sector. As the recent ‘GSM in Africa’ conference in Johannesburg noted, the sector is posting an annual growth rate of 100 per cent. That is double the already rapid increase worldwide. Mobile telephony technology can be built up much faster in African cities than laying copper cable, which particularly in the tropical regions is often put out of action by heavy rainfalls. In addition, fixed-line network switching stations in many African countries are hopelessly out-of-date and poorly maintained. In Guinea, for instance, there are 937 outages per year per 100 connections, and that with a total of only 16,200 telephones. Mobile telephony is much more reliable. Africa currently has a total of 5.4 million mobiles in operation, although South Africa, with 3.8 million, has the greatest share of about 70 per cent. The country at present has two mobile network operators, and a third operator was licensed late last year. Eleven million South Africans, more than one-third of the population, are expected to have mobile phones within the next three years. There is similarly rapid growth in other African countries. Many of them, however, must also speed up the issuing of network licences to achieve greater competition. So far, too many countries have had only one network operator, meaning high costs, which in turn limit the number of users. In Nigerians, with less than six months after the take off of GSM services by the incumbent national operator NITEL, MTN and ECONET, more than 350,000 mobiles are already connected to the network with the demand increasing by the day. This is a great leap when compared to the present capacity of 750,000 installed fixed lines with only about 450,000 lines operational.
Opening up to international telecoms companies is also called for. Zimbabwe, for instance, where only national operators are allowed, has low growth in the mobile sector because the country lacks know-how and above all financing.
At the same time, most African politicians are aware that modern tele-communications are the precondition for international companies investing in their countries. The upcoming broadband technology that enables extensive and rapid transfer of data via mobile telephony networks will also enable computers to be connected to the Internet even in less-developed areas. “In theory, farmers far out in the African bush can market their products directly worldwide, obtain advice on plant problems or animal sicknesses and order the remedies online straightaway,” one delegate told the conference. But the recent rapid growth of mobile telephony in Africa can only be sustained if the countries’ high import duties on modern technology is lowered markedly and their slow process of approval of appropriate frequencies is accelerated. The international producers of the technology are keen to develop the African market, where about 100 million people are seen as potential mobile phone users - 20 times the present total.
These trends in the GSM sector suggest that once competition and technical advances have forced the price of hand sets and usage down sufficiently, the fixed-line operators may end up passing on most of their end-user customer services to the mobile operators and concentrating on the provision of broadband national and international connectivity.
Africa is so far behind the rest of world in terms of conventional telecommunications networks that ideas of participating in the world of information superhighway seems at present a difficult dream. However, advanced communications networks are important to Africa as they are to other regions of the world, and for the same reasons. In essence, the continent has to become part of the global information society in order to attract foreign investment and to provide innovative ways of delivering health, education and government services.
Development in ICTs will eventually be the solution to underdevelopment, unemployment and higher earning for many in Africa. It has been calculated that a 1 per cent increase in a nation’s tele-density results in a 3 per cent increase in its gross domestic product. Therefore apart from the stimulus to economic activity, enhanced services also mean more revenue for the operator (Ref. 7).
At the present, the overall size of Africa’s telecommunications market is relatively small. If its various states were to raise their tele-densities to 5 per cent, which is much less than the world average, the continent would represent the fourth largest telecommunications market in the world. For many countries in Africa, however, a quick-fix solution to telecommunications deficiencies is as important as structural overhaul. According to the former ITU Secretary-General Dr Pekka Tarjanne, “It is highly possible that investment in the very latest technologies will provide new cost-effective solutions hitherto unheard of in the developing countries, especially countries which have undeveloped telecommunications infrastructure”; Therefore, If resources can be found, the continent has a unique opportunity to install state-of-the-art infrastructures leapfrogging existing generations of equipments.
1. African Information Society Initiative (AISI) Documents. Supported by the UN Economic Commission for Africa http://www.bellanet.org/partners/aisi/more/index.html
2. Afriboxes, Telecentres, Cyber cafés: ICT in Africa; article by Mike Jensen in Cooperation South: Number one 2001 published by the UNDP Special Unit for Technical Cooperation Among Developing Countries.
3. African Information Society Initiative (AISI): An Action Framework To Build Africa’s Information and Communication Infrastructure. Economic Commission for Africa.
4. African Response to the Information Communication Technology Revolution: Case Study of the ICT Development in Nigeria. Paper delivered by Prof. G. O. Ajayi at the African Technology Policy Studies Network (ATPS) Annual workshop.
5. Jensen Mike (Aug, 2000): African Internet Status. http://www3.wn.apc.org/afstat.htm.
6. Makane Faye(2000): Developing National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) Policies and Plans in Africa. Paper presented during the Nigeria NICI Workshop, Abuja, Nigeria, 28th -30th March 2000.
7. Telecommunications in Africa – A Mountain Still to Climb by Robert Bailey. Regional Report for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).