DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: No Magic Wand to Close Telecoms Gap

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gumisai Mutume

JOHANNESBURG, May 6 1998 (IPS) - Since the advent of the information explosion, Africa remains marginalised, yet it provides an ideal environment for the new technologies, experts meeting in South Africa for ‘Africa Telecom 98’, say.

“In the recent past, new technologies have not been readily harnessed to provide a social and economic lift for the people,” said Kwame Boakye president of AfriTel Communications based in the United States.

One of the major reasons for this has been the lack of government initiative, resulting in antagonistic policy regimes and the promotion of state monopolies over telecommunications.

“While most Africans cannot yet make or receive even a simple telephone call, much of the rest of the world is moving to an Internet-enabled paradigm in which people easily communicate globally using text, graphics, voice and video at marginal costs approaching zero,” says communication consultant Thomas Jacquette.

Some 6,000 people from 40 countries have converged on Johannesburg for ‘Africa Telecom 98’, which runs from May 4 to 9, to discuss, once again, the challenges facing the world’s least developed continent as it attempts to utilise communication technology for development.

Africa’s telecommunications development has lagged far behind the rest of the world. As the 20th century comes to a close, one African still shares a telephone line with 99 others, compared to 10 lines per 100 people in Latin America and 64 in the United States.

These figures still however do not paint an accurate picture, because in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa accounts for nearly 90 percent of teledensity.

African governments have committed themselves to an initiative by the Independent Commission for World Wide Telecommunications Development, which calls for the whole of mankind to be within easy reach of a telephone by the early part of the next century.

“Unfortunately since the last decade, teledensity in our region is not improving. Twenty countries barely managed to provide telephones to cover population increases and maintain a constant teledensity over the period 1991-1995,” says Muriuku Mureithi director of the Kenyan-based Summit Strategies, a consultancy in telecommunications investments.

Over the last decade many programmes have been touted as waving the magic wand for Africa’s communications revolution, yet the fruits are yet to be borne.

There is the five-year Leland project sponsored by the U.S. government at a cost of 15 million U.S. dollars. This initiative seeks to extend full internet connectivity to approximately 20 African countries to promote sustainable development. Then there is a World Bank InfoDev programme that aims to fund initiatives to harness information technology on the continent.

The United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) also is running a programme that emanated from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, while the International Telecommunications Union proposes a pilot project for rural telephony.

UNDP’s Internet Initiative for Africa aims to reinforce national internet development in 12 countries through two to three year partnerships between the governments, UNDP, posts and telecommunications corporations and the private sector.

A government must provide 50 percent of the project funds, up to a maximum of 500,000 U.S. Dollars, which will be matched by UNDP. Countries currently shortlisted are: Angola, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Mauritania, Namibia, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sao Tome and Principe, Swaziland, Chad and Togo.

Discussions also are underway with Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ethiopia.

“Africa remains a huge untapped market for telecommunications and information technologies,” South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela told the meeting. “Like other emerging markets, it presents huge opportunities for investors. The investment needs of this rapidly expanding sector cannot be met by the public sector alone.”

By international standards, per capita income on the continent remains low and the majority of Africa’s population cannot afford to spend money on new services and telephones.

Because the majority of Africa’s population is sparsely located in rural areas, one idea suggested, has been public communication outlets, where communities share the fixed costs. Senegal, for example, by 1996, had more than 3,200 telecentres nationwide, creating more than 4000 jobs.

Forty-seven of the continent’s 53 nations have some form of access to the Internet, but there are only a million users, and more than four-fifths of these are resident in South Africa.

“The truth is that most Africans will not gain access to telecommunications without African initiatives, taken by individuals,” says ITU secretary general, Pekka Tarjanne.

“The individual who sublets his or her phone line or sets up a phone shop or telecentre does more to close the development gap than the great corporations and businesses of the world.”