Unlocking Africa’s digital potential: PRIDA initiative boosts spectrum management expertise
The African Union (AU), European Union (EU), and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) are working together to bolster Africa’s expertise in spectrum management, enabling the continent to reap the benefits of advanced broadband and internet-based services.
The AU-EU-ITU joint initiative ‘Policy and Regulation Initiative for Digital Africa’ (PRIDA), aims to foster universally accessible, affordable, and effective wireless broadband and connectivity across the continent.
While Africa’s information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure has improved in recent years, low broadband penetration rates are hindering the continent’s digital transformation.
To overcome this challenge, the PRIDA-ITU Delegation Agreement for Action project, is an endeavour to increase wireless broadband penetration through improved and harmonized spectrum utilization and regulations.
So far, 52 countries have participated in at least one of the 21 intensive training sessions and comprehensive workshops held across the continent.
The PRIDA training in Windhoek, Namibia, supported African regulators from 34 countries with spectrum pricing & engineering solutions, spectrum audit & monitoring.
The Digital and Terrestrial Television (DTT) training and spectrum management workshop in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, enhanced capacities in at least 41 countries to unlock the potential of DTT networks, spectrum allocation and optimization techniques.
“Through our PRIDA project, launched in 2018 and signed by 42 African countries, we have trained more than 2400 experts from the continent out of which 33% are women. We conducted 41 technical assistance activities so far and workshops on spectrum management and spectrum harmonization for wireless broadband development in Africa that saw 157 women participating and receiving specialized training to close gender gaps in spectrum management.” stated Dr Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau.
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About the project
Project number: 9RAF18089
Project title: PRIDA-ITU Delegation Agreement for Action
Description: The project calls for Action on ‘Policy and Regulation Initiative for Digital Africa’ (PRIDA) to facilitate universally accessible, affordable, and efficient wireless broadband services across Africa, unleashing the cross-cutting benefits of ICT services.
Visit the project page for more details.