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Mobilizing Stakeholders
Connect Africa is a global multi-stakeholder partnership to
mobilize the human, financial and technical resources required to bridge
major gaps in information and communication technology (ICT)
infrastructure across the region, with the aim of supporting affordable
connectivity and applications and services to stimulate economic growth,
employment and development in Africa.
Connect Africa will be launched at a Summit of leaders in
Kigali, Rwanda, 29−30 October 2007, under the patronage of the
President of Rwanda, Mr Paul Kagame, as well as the Chairman of the
African Union and President of Ghana, Mr John Kufuor. The Summit is
being organized by the International Telecommunication Union, the
African Union, the World Bank Group and the United Nations Global
Alliance for ICT and Development, in partnership with the African
Development Bank, the African Telecommunication Union and the UN
Economic Commission for Africa.
This collaborative effort seeks to involve various stakeholders
active in the region, including China, India, the European Commission,
G8, OECD and Arab countries, major ICT companies, the United Nations
Development Programme and other international organizations and civil
society.
Objectives
Connect Africa will bring together partners to help implement
a number of ICT projects of significant, catalyzing impact on the
development of ICT infrastructure in Africa. In doing so, partners will
build on the progress of countries which have established an attractive
ICT policy and regulatory environment to accommodate the private sector
investment required for sustainable network build-out. These projects
will in turn trigger a cycle of further investment and development.
Connect Africa aims to complement, accelerate and reinforce
existing public and private sector ICT projects and investments by
targeting major gaps, mobilizing resources, and enhancing coordination
between stakeholders, in support of national and regional activities and
priorities. Ministers of the African Union have identified mobilizing
resources for key regional ICT initiatives as a top priority, and are
expected to actively participate in the
Connect Africa
Summit along with other partners.
Achieving WSIS Connectivity Goals and UN MDGs
Recognizing the significant role of ICT as a catalyst to help realize
the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, leaders from Africa and
around the globe at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005 agreed to a set of specific targets,
including
ten connectivity goals to be achieved by 2015.
These goals were also emphasized by African ICT Ministers as part of
the “Accra Commitments for Tunis 2005” and since reinforced by the
flagship ICT initiatives of the African Regional Action Plan on the
Knowledge Economy, under the aegis of the African Union and the UN
Economic Commission for Africa, as well as the Doha Action Plan Regional
Initiatives adopted at the 2006 ITU World Telecommunication Development
Conference.
Despite this wide consensus, with the 2015 target date less than
eight years away, there is a serious risk of not achieving these ICT and
development goals without concerted action. Connect Africa is the first
of a series of dynamic multi-stakeholder efforts to be planned in
different parts of the world with the objective of significantly
accelerating ICT investment in underserved areas and supporting broader
social and economic development.
Current Situation
Investment in ICT infrastructure in Africa has improved dramatically in
recent years, representing a total of USD 8 billion in 2005, up from USD
3.5 billion in 2000. These figures reflect an increasingly vibrant
private sector investment environment, which has been stimulated by the
opening of most African telecommunication markets to competition,
coupled with the establishment of independent regulators in almost 90
per cent of countries in the region.
This increasingly dynamic environment has resulted in lower prices
for consumers and significantly widened access to telecommunications,
particularly for mobile services in urban areas. The mobile market in
Africa has been the fastest-growing of any continent, growing at twice
the rate of the global market, with a leap from 16 million to 136
million subscribers between 2000 and 2005. Mobile now outnumbers fixed
line penetration by nearly five to one in Africa.
Despite this very encouraging trend in mobile access, effective
high-speed Internet services in Africa needed for important business,
government and consumer applications continue to be either very
expensive (especially when compared to average local incomes) or not
available, depending on the location. This is due to limited broadband
infrastructure investment in many parts of Africa. Where available, the
cost of broadband Internet access in Africa is on average three times
higher than in Asia, for example, where such infrastructure investments
have been made. It is not surprising then that broadband penetration is
below one percent in Africa, compared to nearly 30 percent in some
high-income countries.
In addition, while urban areas are benefiting from increasing access
to mobile telephone and Internet services (albeit at dial-up speeds),
many smaller towns and rural communities remain without any ICT access.
Locally relevant content, applications and services, for both Internet
and mobile, which would support growing usage, are not yet widely
available.
These market gaps present challenges, but they also reveal new
opportunities for private investors and innovative “win-win”
public-private partnerships to complement the successful experience of
mobile telephony in Africa. Recognizing this potential, new players are
entering the market. This has increased the need for coordination and
information-sharing among public funding partners and the private sector
to avoid incoherence in infrastructure and service roll-out across the
region.
Summit Programme
For more details about Connect Africa, please visit:
www.itu.int/ITU-D/connect/africa/2007/summit/programme.html
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