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The broadband challenge

ITU has repeatedly highlighted the importance of broadband for development. Many of the effective applications and services that can foster development, for example, e-commerce, e-government and e-banking, are only available through a high-speed Internet connection. But broadband penetration is low across Africa, with only 635 000 fixed broadband subscribers in 2008, according to ITU’s latest report “Information Society Statistical Profiles 2009: Africa”.

In an increasingly “virtual” global economy, this digital divide is a growing impediment to Africa’s growth. Recent estimates from ITU call for hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, mostly from the private sector, in order to build and improve regional and national infrastructure for information and communication technologies (ICT) across the continent. To attract this investment, there must be the right mix of policy and regulation and carefully crafted public-private partnerships.

Efforts by development institutions suggest that extending broadband communications requires investment in the whole supply chain (submarine cables, regional networks, national backbones and rural access); leveraging private investment; policy and regulatory reform, and stimulating demand for, and use of, networks. It is also widely acknowledged that access to broadband infrastructure, public sector capacity and regulatory frameworks are highly interdependent and need to be addressed in an integrated manner.

One of the big challenges facing Africa is the mobilization of the required resources. ITU estimates that around 92 000 kilometres of fibre-optic links (including 25 000 kilometres of international submarine cable routes) are required to bridge regional and international broadband gaps. This represents an investment of USD 1 billion for an international submarine fibre-optic network and over USD 1.6 billion for regional links. Depending on a country’s size, each will need between USD 50 million and 500 million to deploy national backbone networks.

Achieving the goals of the Connect Africa Summit

Historically, the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group’s public sector arm typically financed projects and programmes with ICT components that often included institutional development, provision of hardware and software, systems studies, and management information systems in health, education and agriculture. More recently, the role of AfDB in ICT has been modest, and mostly focused on providing funds to foster deployment of physical infrastructure through private-public partnerships.

However, at the Connect Africa Summit, in Kigali, Rwanda in October 2007, AfDB took a significant step forward to become more actively engaged in African ICT. Along with other partners, including ITU, the World Bank, the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa, and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, AfDB started working to implement activities aimed at meeting the five goals agreed at the Connect Africa Summit (see box at the end of this article).

Under the first goal of building broadband infrastructure, AfDB has financed studies by the Southern African Telecommunications Association (SATA) on missing transmission links that will interconnect member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The Bank has also contributed some USD 1.5 million for feasibility studies on cross-border links in East and West Africa, concerning the East African Community Broadband Infrastructure Network (EAC-BIN), and ECOWAN — the Economic Community of West African States’ Wide-Area Network.

AfDB is also a partner of the World Bank in conducting studies on the Central African Backbone project and West African Power Pool Broadband interconnection system, and is considering financing studies for the Seychelles Fibre-Optic Backbone. Upon completion of all these studies, stakeholders’ workshops (with participation by the private sector) will be organized by the respective Regional Economic Communities to develop project proposals for consideration by funding partners, including members of the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa.

To help achieve the summit’s Goal 2, AfDB has provided a grant of USD 495 000 for a feasibility study on the Lake Victoria Maritime Communications System. The Bank will continue work on identifying other projects for rural connectivity that it can help by financing such studies.

Most of the studies supported by AfDB, such as the SATA backhaul links and ECOWAN, have policy and regulatory components which fall under Goal 3 of the Connect Africa Summit. Concerning Goal 4 on capacity building, the Bank has started discussions with Tunisia and Rwanda on setting up Regional Centres of Excellence. Also, AfDB and the Government of the Republic of Korea signed a Memorandum of Understanding in October 2008 which includes aspects of capacity building and provides for training courses in ICT during 2009–2010.

Under Goal 5, AfDB (in collaboration with other partners) is developing an e-government programme that will support the development and implementation of e-services. The focus areas for the programme include e-procurement, e-government, and information security.

Strategy going forward

In order to strengthen AfDB’s ability to deliver its commitment to help connect Africa, the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved an ICT Strategy that covers the period 2008–2012. For the first two years the focus is on two pillars — direct financing of broadband infrastructure development, and support for Africa’s efforts to attract private investment through improving policy and regulatory frameworks, with the overriding objective of reducing poverty and bringing about sustainable economic growth throughout the continent. For 2010–2012, the focus will be to create affordable access, competitiveness and economic growth in regional member countries through expanded use of ICT by institutions, enterprises and the public at large.

Through supporting policy harmonization and infrastructure development, and alongside the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities, AfDB is helping to achieve not only the goals of the Connect Africa Summit, but also those of regional and global initiatives. These include the harmonization framework endorsed in Cairo in May 2008 by African ministers responsible for ICT, as well as the Geneva Plan of Action and Declaration of Principles, and the Tunis Commitment and Agenda for the Information Society, adopted at the two phases of the World Summit on Information Society in 2003 and 2005.