The Yaoundé Declaration: What it means for Africa

On 28 May 2001, African ministers responsible for telecommunications, assembled in Cameroon to prepare for the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC-02) scheduled to take place in Istanbul from 18 to 27 March 2002, adopted a joint strategy for bridging the digital divide that separates the North from the South and urban areas from rural areas.

Known as the “Yaoundé Declaration”, the strategy is one of several initiatives adopted in recent years by the African plenipotentiaries and by other multilateral meetings. It reflects in particular the active solidarity now breathing new vigour into the continent, and a new awareness which is a strategic departure from earlier initiatives. Furthermore, the Yaoundé Declaration embodies the new vision which Africa plans to convey to the world by implementing the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

WTDC-02 and the Yaoundé Declaration

With Istanbul in mind, Africa’s first step was to take stock of progress in the implementation of the Maitland report, The Missing Link, published in 1985. The aim of the report was to redress the balance in the number of fixed telephone lines between developed and developing countries. Africa noted that, despite the noble aims stated in The Missing Link and the efforts made so far, the situation on the ground has remained static. What is more, nearly two decades on, the situation has been compounded by a new concept: the digital divide, on which all telecommunication development strategies are now focusing.

Through the Yaoundé Declaration, Africa is appealing with one voice to decision-makers, firms, equipment manufacturers, funding agencies and information technology specialists to ensure that the right solution is found to close once and for all the huge gulf in the rate of penetration of information technologies in daily life that separates the people of the North from those of the Southern hemisphere, and Africa in particular.

What prompted the appeal was the meagre results yielded by the enormous efforts which our States have undertaken, in vain, at the instigation of the Bretton Woods institutions in order to restructure the telecommunication sector. The Buenos Aires Action Plan (BAAP) set a target for the developing countries of five telephone lines per 100 inhabitants in urban areas and one line per 10 000 inhabitants in rural areas. The revolutionary growth of mobile telephony in 2001 still leaves Africa with as few as 15 million subscribers, and the advent of the Internet benefits barely 4 million users.

By adding the Yaoundé Declaration to prevailing development strategies for Africa, in particular NEPAD, our region is expressing its appreciation of the encouraging contributions it has received from countries of the North and ITU’s cooperation in the continent’s telecommunication restructuring process. Thanks to them, the rate of connectivity is rising in our cities.

Africa also wishes to alert the international community to the limited nature of results so far and to convince it that mentalities in the continent are in the throes of radical change. The concept of democracy has spread throughout the continent, overthrowing the established order and challenging traditional values. People are constantly making painful sacrifices as they cope with economic crises and demanding structural adjustment programmes, impoverished as they are by falling prices of agricultural goods and armed conflict which is destroying the meagre infrastructures in place today.

The struggle against poverty and the establishment of good governance in public affairs are, without doubt, signs of an awakening on the continent — an awakening that can no longer be reversed. For all these reasons, the West has an historic and humanitarian duty to support, without any new conditions, the elimination of the digital divide, as advocated by the Yaoundé Declaration.

It is against this backdrop that WTDC-02 is taking place. Africa will be going to Istanbul full of hope and with the conviction that the world will be more attentive to its problems. The Yaoundé Declaration, which sums up all the proposals set forth in the various regional and subregional initiatives, lays down guidelines for the work that will be done at Istanbul on the digital divide. It is Africa’s intention to obtain from WTDC-02 new measures to encourage, in particular:

• an increase in teledensity in our States so that telecommunications can play its role as an economic catalyst;

• implementation of pilot projects conducive to universal access in Africa;

• more sustained establishment of equipment manufacturers with a view to developing appropriate technologies at lower cost as a means of increasing teledensity on the continent;

• instant access for people in all corners of the continent to all forms of information, the key to a new society in which people will acquire broader freedom;

• training, human resources development and capacity-building in information technology;

• financial flows from funding agencies to support telecommunication infrastructure development programmes for the benefit of inhabitants in the rural areas of our continent.

What gives these hopes and ambitions their legitimacy is the fact that the entire continent has accepted to open up its telecommunication networks to operators the world over.

Those who are reticent argue the need for short-term financial returns. The counter-argument is that our society is seeking to acquire the information and communication technologies (ICT) it needs for development. With the necessary resolve, a digital Africa can be built and will give globalization greater coherence. The Yaoundé Declaration is both a rational and an emotive plea from a continent in search of equity and fairness in the development of ICTs.