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The AU is seeking to harness ICT's potential for an entire continent that, although it has embraced the mobile phone, is lacking in infrastructure and suffers from a digital divide, writes Valerie Noury
A
frican countries are realising the potential of information and communications technology (ICT) to become a catalyst of socio-economic prosperity.
Indeed, the potential of such technologies has revolutionized many sectors across Africa and has the capacity to fast-track vital services to the continent’s poorest, especially when adapted to the existing financial constraints and to the underdeveloped network of ICT infrastructure that persists across much of the continent. A pair of United Nations-sponsored
events, titled the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS), has been aiming to bridge the global digital divide, using the internet as a key tool. The summit adopted a final document on this matter, the Tunis Commitment, during its second phase in Tunis, in November 2005. The African Union (AU) responded to
this initiative by launching the first African ICT Week (AICTW) during the second phase of the WSIS process. The AU firmly believes in progress toward a knowledge-based economy, with knowledge and information being a key driver of productivity and economic growth. If used efficiently, ICT is clearly capable of impelling Africa’s development towards achieving the ambitious 2015 Millennium Development Goals, complementary to the more detailed and various initiatives of the AU Commission. The star stories in ICT developments in
Africa are not necessarily the groundbreaking technologies, as important as they are, as much as those that have the key capacity to be able to continuously improve the price
performance of computing and communications; those aided by the rapid explosion of bandwidth capacity in fixed and mobile networks; and, of course, the many internet applications that have followed suit with the growth of the internet and the advent of cloud computing. The AICTW initiative provides an
important platform for creating awareness about the opportunities and challenges for the further adoption of more sophisticated and relevant ICT policies across Africa.
Flourishing mobile market In Africa, the potential of ICT is clearly illustrated by the example of the mobile phone, which has taken the continent by storm. Regional and international investors are flocking to a sector that promises – and delivers – high returns. It is also highly suited to Africa, bringing mobility to the large percentage of the continent’s population who still suffer from a lack of fixed lines, poor internet connectivity and no access to a computer. For this reason in particular, smartphones have also witnessed huge growth, given their capacity to harness the internet in places that bandwidth has previously failed to reach. The number of mobile phone users is
expected to almost double by 2015, reaching 172.4 million in Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, compared with 92.6 million in 2009, and reaching combined revenues of $12.6 billion in 2016, according to a recent report from Frost and Sullivan. Africa’s West and Central regions
remains the most dynamic to date in this respect, with each of their countries having an average of more than three mobile phone service providers and significant infrastructure development as many of these countries have invested heavily in fiber-optic cables. Another statistic to illustrate this
momentum is found in Kenya, where the success of mobile banking has set a shining example. Nine out of 10 adult Kenyans
INVEST IN AFRICA 2011
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