IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

In a bid to make sure that the African continent becomes connected via ICT, the intergovernmental commercial organisation-Rascom has said it would partner with other international institutes to implement the project.

“With the second satellite launched recently, we are looking to partner with NEPAD in an e-learning project aiming at providing internet connectivity to more than 600,000 in Africa,” Mr Jones Killimbe, the director general of the Regional African Satellite Communications Organisation (Rascom) said at a news conference in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

According to International Data Corporation's (IDC) newly released predictions for the year ahead, with the global advisory services firm also expecting ICT's influence on economic development and social progress throughout Africa to be particularly pronounced in the next 12 months.

Leaders in ICT and government representatives gathered at the e-Governance Forum to find solutions to the various challenges facing African governments.

Many of these pilots show promise, but their rapid growth also poses challenges: At an eHealth conference held in Nairobi in May and co-organized by the World Bank, health professionals and development partners discussed how to identify the best of these evolving tools and bring them to scale.

Uganda is one example of a country where eHealth start-ups have developed quickly.

Addressing the ICT Indaba at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) on Tuesday, Motlanthe said only 5.7% of Africans had access to the internet and while the continent made up 14% of the world's population, only 3.6% of the world's internet subscribers were from Africa.

"We believe that strategic investment in ICT will allow Africa to increasingly play a role in the development of new applications and technological innovations that are relevant for the needs of our continent and that this will ensure a continued multiplier effect on economic growth," he said.

Promoting faster telephone and internet connectivity for rural communities in the 18 Commonwealth African countries – that is the aim of a Commonwealth Connects project known as the Commonwealth African Rural Connectivity Initiative (COMARCI).

The £1.2 million project was launched in Kampala, Uganda, on 22 November 2007 on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, with a £50,000 seed funding from the Government of Malta through the Commonwealth Connects programme. It involves collaboration with the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) and the International Telecommunications Union.

A delegation of 42 officials participating in the mid-career training programme for mid-level civil servants from multiple countries in the African region visited Chandigarh's Integrated Command Control Centre (ICCC).

The delegation was given an insightful tour of the ICCC, which serves as the nerve centre for various Smart City initiatives in Chandigarh. During the visit, they witnessed live demonstrations of several citizen-centric services.

An India-Africa conference on e-governance is being planned here in March to ensure that benefits of digital platforms are made available for the empowerment of African citizens, a senior official said on Monday.

The conference ‘Digital Africa: Empowered Citizens’ will witness participation of policy makers and government officials from India and 54 African countries.

The Indian government is moving to connect African Union countries with a satellite and fiber-optic network to enable the sharing of India's expertise in education and health care.

The 125 million-dollar support project would also facilitate the sharing of Indian’s expertise in the fields of education and healthcare with members states of the African Union (AU).

Union Minister for External Affairs S.M. Krishna, while talking to senior ministers of 12 African countries via videoconference, spoke about the significance India attaches to developing multi-faceted and enduring partnership with the African continent. Speaking after the launch of the e-network in front of African ambassadors, Mr. Krishna said the pan-African e-Network project is one of the finest examples of the growing partnership between India and Africa “I understand that this is the biggest project of distance education and tele-medicine ever undertaken in Africa,” said Mr. Krishna. “Under this Project we have made available the facilities and expertise of some of the best universities and super-specialty hospitals in India to the people of Africa.”

The installation was notable not only for its speed, but also because it marked the beginning of Africa’s largest information and communications technology-based development project to be funded entirely by a developing country – India.

'During my visit to Africa, I addressed the inaugural session of the Pan-African Parliament on Sep 16, 2004. During my address, I made an offer to set up a Pan-African e-network,' Kalam said.

While the Indian project, dubbed e-Network, is equipped to support tele-education, e-governance, e-commerce, infotainment and resource mapping, the Japanese project is focused on tele-education and e-governance.

Today Francis is a marketing manager in a leading corporate firm in Kenya. The turnaround happened when Francis decided to pursue his bachelor's degree from New Delhi's Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), said to be the world's largest university.

The report, eTransform Africa: The Transformational Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Africa, provides new data on the technological revolution that is taking place in Africa and its transformational impact on the continent’s development. As the World Bank Group reported, at the start of 2012, there were some 650 million mobile subscriptions, making the African mobile telephony market bigger than either the EU or the United States. Some 68,000 km of submarine cable and over 615,000 km of national backbone networks have been laid, greatly increasing connectivity across Africa. The Internet bandwidth available to Africa’s one billion citizens has grown 20-fold since 2008.

Today, this type of deliberation and election of leaders be it at the village or national level cannot be practiced.

Kunbi Oguneye, chief executive of Nigerian Internet solutions provider Suburban Telecom, spoke to Sowetan at the Infrastructure Projects Summit organised by African investor at Melrose Arch in Johannesburg.

The summit aimed to create a platform which would enable project sponsors and promoters to engage with infrastructure investors and development institutions.

Several African governments have tried to curb internet availability for political reasons.

When the undersea fiber optic cables landed on Kenya’s coastal town of Mombasa in June 2009 from the United Arab Emirates, John Thuo, 35, never imagined it meant doom to his cybercafé business.

Thuo, a computer science graduate from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, operated an internet café at an apartment on Jogoo Road on the outskirts of Nairobi.