Adequate budgeting and efficient administration takes ICT development a long way. For developing countries such as Ethiopia which has its telecommunication service under state monopoly striving to create a universal coverage has been the key mission before the country surrenders its state monopoly to the private sector through joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) initiative.
The government has been investing in communications infrastructure to fill the deficit narrowing the gap. Partnering with ZTE and Huawei for technology infrastructure development with over a billion dollars, investment has also been noted as a positive progress. There has been a massive investment on the sector with the initiative to upgrade coverage. Over the last decade, the sector has seen more than 3 billion dollars investment to develop infrastructure and expand service coverage.
Ethiopia's Ministry of Communication & Information Technology (MCIT) will in a month launch 20 mobile applications for 20 government offices, which it has been working on since September 2015, Addis Fortune reported.
Given the mandate to introduce and implement new technology and communication systems in Ethiopia, project operator MCIT has had an e-government plan since 2010. The plan vies to improve the online presence of government services and to improve access to the general public.
Weiterlesen: Ethiopia to launch mobile apps for govt offices
The Ministry awarded the project for the development of 88 e-service portals to Africom in May 2013 for 1.95 million Ethiopian birr.
Another IT firm, ESystems Africa, is also involved in development of 65 portals.
Weiterlesen: ET: Phase Three of the E-government Project under Development
Ethiopia is among those countries with the lowest level of internet penetration and use. A 2014 World Internet Stats report, for instance, claims that Ethiopia has had only 1.9% internet penetration. Similarly, the World Economic Forum also rated the number of internet users in Ethiopia at 1.1%, ranking the country 142 out of 144 countries surveyed in 2012/13. As of December 31, 2013, that number had only risen to 5.5%, according to a report released by the Ethiopian government. Indeed, it was only in 1997 that Ethiopia introduced the internet, and not until 2005 that the first four thousand kilometers of fiber optic backbone were laid in Addis Ababa. This delay in the proliferation of the internet has played a role in delaying the development of internet policies including legislative measures surrounding the internet.
Weiterlesen: The state of internet policy making in Ethiopia
The e-service installation and development was conducted by two private IT solution providers at a cost of 3.8 million Birr. Africom Technologies Plc developed 33 of the e-services portal for 2.8 million Birr while E-System Africahad supplied the remaining 16 at a cost of 1 million Birr it was said at the time.
Weiterlesen: Ethiopian Public Institutions to Offer E-services