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| Saving Africa (again) |
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| Monday, 24 September 2007 | |
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Calls for change and investment in Internet connectivity for Africa ahead of a major summit in Rwanda next month. Haven’t we been here before?
Less than 4% of Africans have access to the Internet; broadband penetration is below 1%; and, according to the World Bank, the cost of Internet connectivity in Africa is the highest in the world at US$250 per month or more. While mobile networks and telephones have boomed in Africa in recent years (and may represent part of the solution here), broadband Internet has stagnated. At a UN meeting in New York on Friday Dr Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union, called for a “Marshall Plan” for ICT connectivity to provide universal access by 2012. He spoke of attaining "Internet access in every village, every school, every university, every hospital." "By bringing optical fibres in some of the networks, by just closing the loops, you will avoid excessive Internet transit costs, bringing down the cost by two-thirds", said. Touré "ICT is a catalyst, an enabler in all sectors of the economy", he said. "This would be the accelerator to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015." Touré added, "we don’t need charity for the ICT field. We need pure business sense." With the exception of this last, laudable sentiment and calls for public-private partnership in ICT solutions, much of this rhetoric seems oddly familiar. It should do. Much could have been lifted directly from the 1985 Maitland Report (aka ‘The Missing Link’), which itself was the result of an ITU summit in Nairobi in 1982. That’s right. The UN, the ITU and others have been ‘talking the talk’ for a quarter of a century but steps forward have been few and far between. Nor is this a matter of allowing African villagers to download music from iTunes, watch clips on YouTube or create a page on Facebook. In countless ways it’s a matter of life and death, so in the last 25 years it is fair to assume that there have been more lives lost than saved as a matter of ICT shortages. The latest multilateral effort to address this situation will be held in Kigali, Rwanda, on 29-30 October. The ‘Connect Africa Summit’ brings together the usual suspects; we just hope that they can produce something more than the usual verbiage. Jim Chalmers |
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