Connect Africa - The Summit

As host of the Summit, the Government of Rwanda welcomed over a 1000 participants, including Heads of State/Government and Ministers from Africa and other regions, CEOs and senior executives of global and African ICT companies, heads of international and regional organizations and financial institutions, international and local media as well as other stakeholders.

The Summit had a practical, results-oriented format, including interactive, multi-stakeholder panel discussions, partnership announcements, as well as opportunities for participants to showcase their ICT development projects to potential partners and donors. The Summit also provided an excellent networking platform for leaders from the public, private and financial sectors to meet and forge new partnerships for the future.

Participants in the Connect Africa Summit examined key success factors for ICT investment and development and identified areas for collaboration to:

• expand broadband backbone infrastructure and access networks, using innovative business and financing models, such as infrastructure-sharing and demand aggregation among local and regional institutions. This new infrastructure investment includes national and regional interconnectivity initiatives, such as Internet exchange points and rural connectivity projects;
• enhance workforce training to support employment and growth in the ICT sector and the overall economy;
• stimulate the development of locally-relevant ICT content, applications and services, and
• broaden efforts to develop an enabling policy and regulatory environment for investment, including harmonization across regions and sub-regions.

The Connect Africa Summit was preceded by several months of preparations between the partners, including an analysis of the current situation and requirements, an assessment of constraints and an elaboration of policy options to promote private sector investment, strengthening statistical capacities to improve tracking of progress, as well as the development of specific project proposals for funding that were presented to potential partners and donors.