GAMBIA

STATEMENT BY H.e. Mrs. Nenneh MacDouall-Gaye
Secretary of State for Information, Communications and Technology

Mr. Chairman,
Honourable Ministers and Heads of Delegations
Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests

I wish to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to the Government and people of Turkey for the warm and cordial hospitality accorded me and my delegation. Allow me, Mr. Chairman to also congratulate you for your qppointment to the chair. Let me also congratulate and thank the out going Secretary General and other officials for having ably conducted the affaires of the ITU. For the incoming officials I wish them good luck and assure them of my government’s full support in the execution of their various tasks towards the attainment of the ITU’s objective of global access to all communications services.

The Government of The Gambia recognizes the important role of the ITU and would continue to support all its programs towards creating an all inclusive information society. I would like my colleagues to join me in congratulating the ITU for successfully planning the implementation of the two most historic world events, WSIS I in Geneva 2003 and WSIS II in Tunis 2005. These two events have opened all the questions and have laid the foundations on which all countries can start to build on and take advantage of the digital opportunities.

The rapid technological advancement in the communications industry poses a great challenge for developing countries. By the time we finish implementing a particular technology the developed world would have moved ten steps ahead. Not only that, we would have to abandon the huge investments in trying to catch up because within a short time the support for the system would have been out of stock. This is a heavy burden on our fragile economies where critical decisions have to be made in spending on basic necessities of life like food, health, education, etc. as opposed to technology even though we know it helps in the provision of such basic needs.

The question here is how do we break this cycle? The need for technology transfer have long been on the agenda and most developing countries have taken major steps in creating an enabling environment by systematically moving towards the liberalization of their telecoms sectors. There is some progress but more needs to be done. To this effect I request that the ITU focuses on the specific needs of member states to help in addressing their individual unique situations. This perhaps may help propel the bridging of the digital gaps.
Mr. Chairman, one major disparity being lamented by African countries is the cost of International Bandwidth. Despite the excess bandwidth in the world, it is the developed world that is benefiting while the poor countries pay exorbitantly and in fact, subsidize the advance world in using the circuits linking them for Internet usage across borders.

Mr. Chairman,

The Gambia has taken a number of strides in making communication services available to all her citizens and thereby closing the gap between the rural and urban area. Currently 230 villages out of 800 have access to not only telephone service but data services with Internet through a rural fixed wireless project (WLL). Ten thousand additional subscribers were connected last year through a CDMA pilot project providing both data and voice. This project is being expanded to provide for an additional 100,000 subscribers. This will greatly impact the teledensity for a country of 1.5 million people within an area of about 11,840 Km sq.

The International Internet bandwidth was increased from 10 megs to 55 megs last June 2006 and an IP MPLS backbone project is being implemented to further improve the local connectivity. This is to provide opportunity for ISPs and other businesses to provide multiple ICT services.

The liberalization policy is systematically on going and we are pleased to say that a third GSM operator has been issued a license. This no doubt will encourage competition and give consumers more choices.

An independent regulator has been established and is fully operational and a new Telecomm Bill is at its final stages of review to reflect the dynamism of the industry as well as the specific needs of the country. This will be placed before parliament in December 2006 for enactment.

Mr. Chairman,

The hurdles are many but there is a strong determination to cross them all. At this juncture there is no turning back and it is incumbent for those leading the race to pull the ones that are lagging behind. It is only through this that an all inclusive information society can be achieved.

I believe that the deliberations that will take place in this historic country where the East meets the West will provide solutions to the bridging of the communications gap and lead us to true convergence.

For Gambia, under the dynamic leadership of His Excellency, President, Dr. Alhaji Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh, we have the vision and mission to transform our society into a knowledge based, technologically advanced, and economically effective one representing the ‘Silicon Valley’ of the West Africa region. This is our ambition and in all aspects the preconditions for effecting this major stride are in place. To this effect, we extend invitation to all and join us in this major socio-economic venture.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you all for giving me this opportunity.