African countries today face the urgent need to build and reshape their economies and societies in order to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. In order to realise higher economic growth Africa needs to be competitive and productive, while at the same time ensuring a sustainable future. Stakeholders—Governments, Regulators, Private Sector & Civil Society—in a number of African countries must start adjusting to the changing economic realities brought about by globalisation of markets and the ever-faster pace of technology change. For these multi-stakeholder partnerships to be effective, it is important to identify roles and responsibilities that each stakeholder must fulfil. African countries must also modernize their public sectors; encourage and create channels of investments (especially from the Diaspora) and start tackling persistent challenges such as reducing the digital gap, their economies, infrastructure, health, education, agriculture, environment and security.

Information & Communications Technology (ICT) offers an opportunity and the means to respond to these challenges effectively. ICT is “constitutive technology” of the first half of this century; much like electricity or combustion engines has been in the last century. It has become an integral part of almost everything we do. It does not just enable us to do new things; it also shapes how we do them in a transformational and enriching way. ICT is an essential component for increasing productivity, for encouraging innovation and developing solutions for societal problems, and for providing new services to consumers. These constitutive effects will amount to a phase-shift of how Africa’s economy and society function.

Our attitude towards the future of ICT

There are three major perspectives that attempt to distinguish our attitude towards the future of ICT. Optimists—who are widespread and actively propagate ICT as the new remedy to all problems, believe that they will enhance the economic capabilities of many African countries or generally the Third World and will become an influential mechanism for poverty alleviation and social justice. Pessimists—who are becoming more popular these days after a certain decline on the global Internet market and argue that progress in ICT will broaden the digital divide and facilitate further marginalization of the least developed countries. In addition, they fear that the digital age of the Internet will destroy traditional culture and will deprive their states of their past and restrict their future cultural development. Realists—whose approach is the most balanced and reasonable, maintain that society will adapt the technologies, for any technology is aimed at serving people and not vice versa.

ICT Status & Investment Needs

Africa still has some of the worlds least developed Internet connectivity and peripheral ICT deployment. Nonetheless, rapid growth in the number of users, diffusion of mobile phones and wireless technologies, and projects focused on connecting Africa to the global fibre optics communication backbones are encouraging and a good investment for Africa in the future digital information age. In terms of access to ICT, Africa is lacking in investment-intensive infrastructure, such as fixed broadband. The number of broadband subscribers in Africa is small, mainly due to prohibitively high tariffs and limited computer literacy. While the world saw 281 Million broadband subscribers by the end of 2006, one million, less than 0.4 percent, had subscribed in Africa. Broadband access is a major tool for e-commerce as well as e-government, therefore a striking indicator for investment and development. Participation in e-commerce would enable African entrepreneurs and producers to sell their commodities, whose production is cheaper but for which the local demand is lower, to international markets.

The slow growth and lack of investment in main (fixed) lines, has lead to mobile cellular phones becoming the main mode of communication. Cheaper infrastructure and larger regional penetration, affordable handsets, competitive market prices and business models oriented to the needs of the poorer segments of the population, such as affordable prepaid cards, has resulted in a mobile boom in Africa, especially in the last decade. Nevertheless, the share of Africa with 7.2 percent of the worldwide 2.7 billion mobile subscribers shows still a lot of potential for investment and growth. Wireless technology is currently being considered as a major solution for bridging the digital divide and enabling rapid connectivity that Africa desperately needs for its people. Neither 2G nor 2.5G (GSM/GPRS) have fulfilled these high hopes, due to rather expensive handsets, and their focus on voice transmission and regulators’ hesitation to license UMTS. Instead, most investment and hopes are set on broadband wireless access on the basis of WiMax.

African countries need to establish sound regulatory environments. The environment needs to be established, usually with an independent regulatory authority. Despite impressive regulatory structures being put in place, a number of African countries still lag behind in terms of having the expected level of staff expertise. Staff members need to be well experienced, trained and networked with colleagues from other countries in order to exchange experiences and ideas on new emerging issues, such as 3G/4G, VoIP, Next Generation Networks, WiFi, WiMax and Cyber Security. The ICT environment is changing rapidly, and keeping the policy and regulatory frameworks in line with the constant evolution of technologies, applications and services will be a challenge for many governments and regulators in Africa. Creative content sector can become an essential ingredient of the African culture, expressing feelings and thoughts. Culture is a foundation for growth and Africa has an exceptional richness and diversity of culture and content. Through ICT African countries should seek to accelerate the creation and access of their content to the marketplace and encourage investment in supporting such an infrastructure.

Talking of infrastructure, lack of well developed fibre network is one of the major causes of high costs of bandwidth and poor access in many African countries. Today this situation is slowly changing with many African countries establishing connections to the existing international submarine fibre networks through their neighbours who have landing points. Notable infrastructure development efforts include—New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Broadband Infrastructure Network (NBIN), East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), Kenya Data Network (KDN) and Flag Telecom, The East African Marine System (TEAMS) and SEACOM that is financed by the private equity.

Conclusion

The future is knowledge-based and Africa has to allow ICT to shape it. All Stakeholders in Africa need to be able to embed ICT from the outset and to better accommodate the user perspective in future developments of the technology. The mobile boom has already proven that Africa has a strong demand for ICT thus the need for investments in other enabling technologies such as wireless. These demands need to be satisfied in order to guarantee the vital participation of Africans in the future information age.
African governments should also encourage the establishment of transparent ICT investment partnerships with professionals in the Diaspora in order to accelerate ICT development capacity in their respective countries.

References:

International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Information, Communication & Society
Information Society Technologies
Commonwealth Telecommunication Organization (CTO)

Posted under ICT Infrastructure