The African Development Forum '99:

A strategy to accelerate African development through the increased use of Information and Communication Technologies

1. Justification

2. The key elements of a strategy for Africa

3. Applications to support education processes and meet the needs of Africa's youth

4. Applications in support of the delivery of health care

5. Opportunities for business and trade

6. Creating the enabling policy environment

7. A call for commitment and partnership

1. Justification

Amid talk of the growing digital divide between rich and poor countries, an increasing number of Africans are making innovative use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs).

• In Morocco, a local Internet service provider has landed the contract to digitise the entire National Library of France's paper archives. The scanned pages are beamed by satellite from Paris directly to the data centre in Rabat where they are processed and sent back.

• In Senegal over 10 000 small businesses have emerged to provide public telephone services since the national telecom operator opened up the public telephone market. Now many of them provide Internet access and other PC-based business services. In Dakar, medical students are now being taught by a team of expert doctors in Brussels using video link-ups.

• In 24 university campuses across Africa students are linked to classrooms and libraries world-wide via satellite and will soon be able to obtain degrees in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering.

• In Togo, the world's first Internet-based call centre is being set up to provide globally competitive telephone support services for companies with customers in North America.

• Craft makers around Africa are selling their wares all over the world via the Web through an NGO called PeopleLink.

• In West Africa a women's fishing co-operative has set up a web site that enables its 7350 members to promote their produce, monitor export markets and negotiate prices with buyers overseas.

• In twelve and one half hours, Namibian secondary school students, many with no previous computer experience, successfully computerised 20,897 insect inventory records, thus contributing to the preservation of information about the fifth largest insect collection in Africa.

• At least 11 countries in Africa have initiated school-networking programmes.

These examples are encouraging; they provide early evidence that Africa is able to take advantage of the ICT revolution, seen by many as the last chance for developing countries to provide new job and income opportunities for the next generation, reduce poverty and help close the development gap between North and South. But obstacles remain, including lack of political and public awareness, limited infrastructure, small markets, low levels of education and skills, as well as a variety of policy barriers. Since ECA's launch of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI) in 1996, these issues have been discussed by hundreds of experts through various national and international initiatives, culminating in the first African Development Forum in October 1999 on the Challenge to Africa of Globalisation and the Information Age. The AISI and ADF process has now resulted in a consensus on a development strategy for the continent, which exploits ICTs. The strategy is presented here to the leaders of Africa and their partners.

[Go to Top]

Before outlining the key elements of the strategy it is first necessary to address a concern that is often voiced by national policy makers when considering allocating resources to the use of ICTs. This is most easily summed up with the question: 'Why use scarce funds on new and unfamiliar technologies when needs for basic services such as fresh water and classrooms are not yet met?'. The answer to the question is threefold:

• ICTs are an enabling tool with a multiplier effect which can cut the costs, improve the quality and speed the delivery of basic infrastructure and services;

• ICTs offer many opportunities for rapid economic growth which will ultimately provide more finance for the many demands on the government coffers;

• ICTs have the potential to fundamentally transform the way governance operates, improving the ability of marginalised groups to participate across the spectrum - from the local grassroots level, to national governments and the regional and global forums which have insufficient representation from the South.

Added to this, the risks of inaction will be high when compared to the plummeting costs of the new technologies and the growing potential for investment from private sector partnerships. For example, the World Bank is piloting a project to deliver Internet access to schools anywhere on the continent via satellite for $50 a month each. Where policies permit, the private sector has already shown itself to be keen to invest in the provision of telecommunication services. But experience, in developed as well as developing countries, has also shown that successfully encouraging private sector investment in new technologies requires a kick-start from government, in helping to create the market by providing attractive incentives as well as acting as a model customer.

Leadership

Thus the first item on the agenda must be adopting a sense of urgency and obligation to using ICTs to help solve Africa's most pressing problems. Without this commitment from the highest levels of leadership it is unlikely that national governments will be able to react to the challenges ahead, either quickly enough, or with sufficient vigour to ensure an effective and comprehensive response. Fortunately Africa's policy makers are not yet far behind the developed countries in adopting national and regional ICT strategies. In the US, a national e-commerce strategy is only now being considered. Africa has the added advantage of being able to bypass the massive investments the North has made in older, more expensive and less sophisticated technologies, and is consequently less constrained by the associated vested interests in continuing with the orthodox strategies developed in the previous century.

Once commitment has been made by leaders in Africa, much of the remainder of the strategy falls into place through practice as each nation and region carves its own unique path toward the goals set out here.

Areas of Focus

The next key point of the strategy is to direct actions toward the most important priorities in order to ensure that efforts remain focussed and the available resources are not spread too thinly. The four critical areas that have been identified are:

• youth and education;

• health;

• business and commerce; and

• policy & regulatory change to create an enabling ICT policy environment.

In many respects the four areas are closely connected and so should be seen as part of a cohesive and integrated strategy requiring a clear understanding of the interdependencies and sequence of actions to be taken.

Firstly, the creation of an enabling policy and regulatory environment is essential to ensure that actions taken in the other three areas are encouraged, rather than constrained (as is now the case in many countries) by national and regional policy barriers. Policy change is necessary to ensure that a low cost ICT infrastructure can be put in place for the benefit of all the sectors of society and economy. Similarly, without an emphasis on youth and education, Africa will have insufficient human resources to take advantage of the information revolution and will limit people's access to the social and economic opportunities that it offers. The use of ICTs also promises the potential to dramatically cut costs and improve the quality of both formal and informal training and education, especially within the context of the chronically under-resourced education sector. Likewise in health, the use of ICTs will be key in addressing the challenges of HIV/AIDS and delivering cost-effective public healthcare programmes. In business and commerce, globalisation has combined with the emergence of electronic commerce to create a massive opportunity for Africa's entrepreneurs to market their products and services to the rest of the world and provide the spurt to economic growth on the continent that is needed to fuel improvements in the quality of life for every African.

The strategy targets:

• The key development sectors of education and youth, health and small business development; and

• The policy changes in the ICT sector itself needed to underpin transformation in these sectors.

The detailed plans developed for each of the four sectors to support the overall strategy reflect the need to address gender considerations, exploit opportunities for sub-regional and regional collaboration, engage the diaspora and accommodate different levels of ICT infrastructure.

[Go to Top]

3. Applications to support education processes and meet the needs of Africa's youth

The moves toward a global knowledge society require a fundamental shift in thinking about the methodology of education. ICTs have already begun to exert massive transformation of education systems in developed countries - distance education universities are now quoted on the stock exchange, the best teachers in the world are becoming available anywhere at the click of a button while 'Lifelong Just In Time Learning' has become the order of the day. Failure to similarly change Africa's education and learning systems in the next 5 years will have dire consequences 10-15 years from now.

• There will be no next generation of leadership to guide African institutions in the global information society.

• African intellectuals will be active mainly in the universities and corporations of the North and of other developing regions.

• African children, male and female, will have little or no access to global knowledge and no capacity to exploit that knowledge or generate and defend their own and community livelihoods.

• The brain flood from Africa will make the current brain drain appear a trickle.

By denying African youth the opportunity to contribute their own perspectives and understanding to the global knowledge base, their potential for building peace and ensuring security and development will be significantly minimised.

Technology is changing rapidly, but the development life cycle for goods and services is changing even faster. Learning and teaching systems need to be put in place to allow aggressive responses to the challenges of globalisation, including e-commerce. A pragmatic, practical, innovative Youth and Education Programme is needed, which must be flexible, modular and designed to meet the different needs of African countries. It must develop and nurture responsible, well-informed citizens capable of creating sustainable incomes and livelihoods, thereby reducing pressure on scarce government finances.

Programmes of Action

Transformation in education and learning requires a shift from the traditional methods where one teacher confronts many learners with a well-worn textbook. New technologies create the opportunity for the best minds to exchange information across vast distances, both at country level and across the diaspora. Information can be shared and knowledge developed with large numbers of young learners by communicating across the geographical divide using radio, video, computers and the Internet. Learning should take many forms B the traditional curriculum approach combined with learning through entertainment, through sport, through news about current events and more. African students and educators, as well as many out-of-school youth, are ready to grasp the opportunities for collaborative learning inherent in the new technologies.

The following four layer Programme of Action for The African Learning Network must respond to the challenges in relation to schools, universities, out-of-school youth and gender equity in education. SchoolNet Africa may be one important component of the programme.

Curriculum Development and Access to Information for Learning

Measures to enrich learning of cultural, scientific and social subjects, to lay the foundations for self-guided learning and adapt appropriate media for different learning environments

New Learning Approaches and Outcomes

Measures to promote peer education, community learning ventures, public debate and decision-making skills

Knowledge Sharing and Building Intellectual Capital

Measures to promote the creation and presentation of content and knowledge by learners and teachers and to empower them as global communicators

Programme Sustainability and "Revenue" Creation

Measures to promote the production of knowledge for sale in the knowledge marketplace (e.g. to Centres of African Studies), to protect African intellectual property and to reinforce human capacity in science, engineering and technology

Decisions on Priority Projects

We propose that The African Learning Network be instituted with participation from all African countries and regional groupings. A detailed programme framework and business plan is available. The start-up process recommended for immediate action is the implementation of the following two projects.

Creation of a Learning Centre Networking Tool Kit

• Guidelines for Governments & Education Administrators

• Teacher Development & Network Facilitation Guidelines

• Partnership Opportunities & Guidelines

• Infrastructure & Technical Guidelines

• Publishing & Knowledge Share Guidelines

• Standards, Benchmarking, Monitoring & Evaluation

The Knowledge Warehouse for Youth Education & Learning

• Unlocking Expertise in Africa & the Diaspora

• Repository for Content & Curriculum

• Exchange Programme in Experts and Knowledge Products

• Programme for Propagation of Innovative Models in Learning

 

[Go to Top]

4. Applications in support of the delivery of health care

Africa is facing a continuous health threat characterised by epidemics, the spread of infectious diseases, high levels of infant and maternal mortality, low levels of life expectancy, declining resources for public health, a rapidly expanding global stock of medical knowledge and poor co-ordination between medical facilities.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play a substantial role in mitigating some of these problems. They can:

1. improve access to health services in rural areas;
2. underpin public education campaigns to promote healthy behaviour;
3. transfer diagnostic information to specialised centres;
4. strengthen the basis for decision making;
5. promote information exchange among researchers and students; and
6. enhance the effectiveness of health institutions.

ICT applications in African health care are characterised by islands of donor-supported projects that have little impact on the growing health crisis because they often prove too costly to be replicable. An increasingly African-driven approach that draws expertise into an ever-widening network will have more chance of defining applications appropriate to the different needs of the continent.

ICTs have a role to play in improving the effectiveness of the health sector as a whole by maximising the use of scarce knowledge and limited resources and facilities. They can help reduce disparities between the services available in urban and rural areas and reduce the costs involved in transporting patients to urban facilities. ICTs can be deployed in support of actions to limit the impact of the specific critical problem of AIDS.

Improving Primary Health Care

• Community health information networks that combine local knowledge with information from health providers could play an important role in monitoring health status, promoting community responses and diagnosing community health problems, including those related to maternal and child mortality.

• Population-based data collections B from community to national levels B that reflect disparities in health status and care are crucial to a more equitable health care approach.

• Health information can be programmed into community radios and telecentres; action research is needed to determine the most appropriate media.

Improving the effectiveness of health services

• Lack of adequate and organised information is the source of patient frustration and mismanagement of resources and time. A national health information system has many components from electronic patient records to drug databases (including traditional herbal remedies) to the management of facilities. Sharing experience and knowledge as components develop in different countries could reduce costs and facilitate implementation.

Medical Education and Research

• Medical informatics must be introduced into the regions medical schools B highly specialised programmes can be shared electronically - programmes developed in Africa can be marketed elsewhere in the world B research networks can increase understanding of the specifics of Africa's health care problems, promote collaborative research and disseminate information on telehealth projects.

ICTs deployed in the fight against AIDS

• Electronic data collection and geographic information systems can be developed to map the disease within countries and regionally.

• Multi-media approaches can strengthen the delivery of public education messages.

• Networking of health professionals can accelerate the introduction of new treatment methods.

• Patients networks can break down the sense of isolation and strengthen their public voice.

Integrated responses: nationally, sub-regionally and regionally

No country can implement a comprehensive national telehealth and health information programme but a beginning can be made in priority areas that will lay the foundation for increased knowledge and understanding.

• Creation of a national telehealth task force

• Definition of priority application areas

• Implementation, evaluation and monitoring of programmes

At the subregional level, the emphasis should be on:

• Creation of centres of excellence in telemedecine and telehealth

• Networking among such centres

• Building gradually towards an African telehealth network

At the regional level, ECA should take the initiative to:

• Establish a consultative committee on African telehealth at ADF 2000 - AIDS: the greatest leadership challenge

 

[Go to Top]

5. Opportunities for business and trade

Electronic commerce entails the production, advertising, sale and distribution of products and services through electronic means. It is the fastest growing economic sector globally. Virtually non-existent in 1995, turnover is now well over $100 billion a year and is expected to soar to $7.3 trillion by 2004. The sector is the principal source of new jobs, especially for young people, mostly in smaller and medium size firms. Similar trends are evident in developing countries. Last year India exported over $2billion worth of e-business services. The almost one million Indians now employed in e-business and related sectors in the USA virtually matches the number back home.

Africa could become highly competitive in e-commerce, especially in services, creating thousands of new enterprises and at least one million good jobs within less than five years if the right actions are taken now. This growth will also expand and deepen electronic connectivity nationally, benefiting human development through support to the delivery of education, training and health services.

The Challenge

To realise its potential, electronic commerce must overcome some serious obstacles: limited, expensive and poor quality connectivity; an unsympathetic legal and regulatory framework; an inadequate electronic payments system; very limited access to financing; and deficient transport and logistical systems.

Nonetheless, it is neither necessary nor feasible to remove all of these before promoting electronic commerce opportunities aggressively. While still too few, there are already a variety of notable initiatives in Africa in this area including: radio and television stations broadcasting (and advertising) over the Internet to the African Diaspora; preparation in Africa of abstracts of Canadian Legal decisions; the production of architectural drawings for European clients; and a nascent Internet-based call centre in Togo.

Initially, exports to businesses and the African Diaspora are likely to be the most attractive opportunities. This will lead to the economic reintegration of Africa's diaspora, first as customer and then as investor.

Africa's real competitive advantage lies in the export of such teleservices as accounting, architecture, translation and data entry over the Internet. Call centres that take advantage of advances in technology have the potential to employ hundreds of thousands in well paying jobs. Africa's small-scale producers of existing products will also benefit.

The window of opportunity is narrow. Left behind, Africans will find it increasingly difficult to narrow the widening gap. Electronic commerce rewards those who are first in seizing opportunities. Conversely, laggards encounter major difficulty in replicating and building on earlier successes.

An African Response

To capitalise on e-commerce, the region needs a three-pronged strategy aimed at creating the right enabling and nurturing environment, identifying international, regional and local market opportunities, and providing African e-ventures with the necessary support to become globally competitive.

An opportunities-led integrated approach is needed. Many initiatives in Africa do touch on aspects of this strategy but only in a partial and piecemeal fashion. Usually missing are mechanisms for identifying, validating, and communicating opportunities to African businesses. Important and worthy measures for improving the overall environment for e-commerce are rarely predicated on the need to capitalise quickly on specific opportunities.

Implementing this three-pronged strategy, in ways that reinforce national measures and complement other initiatives, requires the development of an appropriate instrument. Most developed countries have primed the pump of e-commerce through such instruments.

A Consortium for Developing African Electronic Commerce

Africa-based and self-sustaining, the Consortium to develop e-commerce in Africa will bring together all of the stakeholders from governments, private sector, civil society, regional organisations and the international community. To be effective, the Consortium will have to be autonomous.

The world of e-commerce evolves very rapidly. The Consortium must be small, flexible and able to react immediately to opportunities on behalf of Africa e-businesses.

Specific Measures

• A joint declaration in support of e-commerce as a priority for Africa

• Government commitment to set up or improve national programmes to support e-commerce

• National government commitment to collaborate with a small team of experts preparing a detailed plan for the Consortium

 

[Go to Top]

6. Creating the Enabling Policy Environment

The need for African countries to commit to policy and regulatory change in order to develop an enabling ICT environment cannot be over emphasised. Policy change is needed to extend access within countries, to facilitate both sub-regional and regional co-operation and to enhance the capacity of African countries to respond to the global challenges of the emerging new economic order. The ECA's African Information Society Initiative contains a programme of support for broad information and communication policy development that addresses key issues at national, sub-regional, regional and global levels.

National information and communication policies and strategies should address:

• the deployment and use of ICTs within the economy and society

• the development of a local ICT industry to facilitate the production, manufacturing, development, delivery, and distribution of ICT products and services;

• the development of the human resource capacity to meet changing demands of the economy;

• the development of the national information and communications infrastructure;

• the development of the legal, institutional and regulatory framework and structures; and

• the development of standards practices and guidelines to support the deployment and exploitation of ICTs.

It is imperative that gender sensitivity issues be taken into account in the formulation and implementation of policies. Mechanisms need to be put in place to ensure the participation of women in the formulation of national, regional and global ICT policies and to ensure that information and communication policies at all levels are geared toward meeting specific developmental needs of women.

To measure the effects of gender sensitive policies B and indeed the overall developmental impact of ICTs B evaluation and learning mechanisms must be built into all implementation programmes and projects.

Policy to Promote Universal Access to ICTs at the National Level

A special case can be made to identify policy measures specifically targeted at providing universal access to ICTs.

The extraordinary innovations in ICTs can be harnessed to extend access, especially in rural areas. National Rural Access Task Forces on ICT Innovation, with all stakeholder participation, can pursue pilots in innovation in four areas, to test promising ideas with a view to mainstreaming. The aim is to kick-start a national strategy by focusing on the key areas where rapid progress is possible:

• In Financing Mechanisms, by providing micro-finance for community-based ICT micro-enterprises, providing local call tariffs for dialup Internet access from anywhere in the country (as is done in already in 15 countries in Africa), subsidised broadband connectivity costs for education and health institutions (such as through the proposed International E-rate fund), and providing tax-breaks for companies making computer donations to public institutions;

• in Technology Solutions, by building on existing technology such as local radio stations linked to the Internet, deploying low-cost ICT solutions to provide access among rural populations, supporting the spread of top quality low cost open-source software such as Linux, and using transport and electricity networks for connectivity;

• in Institutional Innovation, by supporting local community built and owned networks;

• in Regulatory Innovation, through relaxing existing regulation and piloting new mechanisms, in particular by reducing the high license fees for ISPs and telecom operators that are present in many countries and by allowing ISPs to put up their own wireless data links as long as they do not carry voice traffic, as has been done in Mozambique, Ghana and Uganda.

Sub-regional and regional co-operation policies and mechanisms

Both short-term and long-term policies have been identified for facilitating sub-regional and regional co-operation. The short-term policies are designed to increase co-operation at the sub-regional and regional levels to complement national information and knowledge economy initiatives. The long term policies and mechanism are aimed at taking the initial process forward and maintaining the momentum of co-operation. Both short-term and long-term strategies need to be co-ordinated at the sub-regional and regional levels with the relevant agencies - ECA, OAU, ADB, SADC, COMESA, UDEAC, PATU, URTNA, the African Connection etc.

• Develop a mechanism to improve information exchange on best practices and the sharing of national experiences on ICT strategies and plans at the sub-regional and regional level.

• Put in place policies and procedures on regulatory issues, transit and tariffs as well as in the creation of harmonised spectrum management plans.

• Implement mechanisms and guidelines to encourage joint procurement in ICT products and services and harmonise payments clearing, financial auditing and arbitration in accounting settlements.

• Create a Network of Regulators in Africa to share information, co-operate in practical areas, and build capacity.

• Develop a mechanism to promote co-operation between National Statistical Agencies and Authorities in data collection and the use of information economy-related socio-economic indicators for monitoring the performance of the African economies as they are transformed into information and knowledge based societies and economies.

Policies and strategies to strengthen Africa's voice in global fora

Increasingly, key decisions that impact on ICTs in Africa are taken in global institutions such as WTO, ITU, ICANN, WIPO and World Bank, in areas that include Internet governance, telecommunication accounting rates, spectrum allocation, Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), and telecommunication liberalisation. Yet the capacity of Africa to influence these decisions is constrained by a number of factors, including limited bargaining power and leverage, the absence of coherent, well articulated African positions that anticipate events, lack of technical capacity and experience partly as a result of the brain drain and limited co-operation amongst African countries.

An African response must enhance capacity in research and advocacy through supporting African skills in this area, building alliances between government, private sector and NGOs, improving public understanding and galvanising government action.

• A Network for Research and Dissemination on ICT Global Governance. Based on existing competencies and institutions, on the one hand support the emergence of a regional network of researchers in academia, governments and NGOs to undertake research and elaborate African perspectives and options; on the other, implement a mechanism to translate these into material for mass media and support its wide dissemination. The network would be developed under the auspices of a regional organisation such as ECA working in collaboration of subregional organisations and research networks from Government, NGOs and Civil Society. Support will be expected from international organisations including the European Union.

[Go to Top]

7. A Call for Commitment and Partnership

The strategy articulated in this document represents a consensus resulting from the debates held within the context of the African Information Society Initiative over the last five years. These have been formative years for the development of the global information society. Connectivity B the introduction of real time networking into all spheres of human activity B has emerged and spread much faster than was predicted half decade ago. While the technologies have penetrated less in Africa than in other regions, there is evidence across the board in Africa of efforts to use the new tools to bridge and narrow the digital divide.

The challenge today B to governments, the United Nations system, the development community and the private sector - is to engage with Africa's youth, its entrepreneurs, service providers, administrators and policy makers to support their efforts to define an African information society that meets their national, community and individual goals.

ECA is committed to consult broadly on the proposals contained in this document from now until September 2000. The objective of the consultation is twofold: to refine the proposals and to seek consensus from all potential partners. The proposals will then go forward to the ADF '99 Post-Forum Summit to be convened towards the end of September.

• to strengthen their capacities to address information policy issues in the areas identified here and to examine and respond to these proposals to exploit the new technologies in support of targeted initiatives in the areas of youth and education, health and small business.

• to examine the proposals with respect to the harmonisation of regulatory issues, transit and tariffs, spectrum management, procurement, payments clearing and other measures needed to support the growth of the information society on a sub-regional basis and to begin the process of creating the mechanisms needed to deal with them.

• to support the elaboration of the proposals presented here by actively participating in the consultation process, in the elaboration of the necessary feasibility studies and in the subsequent implementation programmes.

ACRONYMS

ADB - African Development Bank

CEMAAC - Communaute Economique des Etats de l'Afrique Centrale

COMESA - Common Market for East and Southern Africa

ECA - Economic Commission for Africa

ECOWAS - Economic Community of West African States

ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

ITU - International Telecommunication Union

OAU - Organisation of African Unity

PATU - Pan Africa Telecommunication Union

PICTA - Partnership in Information & Communication Technologies in Africa

SADC - Southern Africa Development Community

UDEAC - Union Douaniere et Economique de l'Afrique Centrale

UMA - Union of Maghreb Arab

UEMOA - Union Economique et Monetaire de l'Afrique de l'Ouest

URTNA - Union des Radios et Televisions Nationales d'Afrique

WIPO - International Intellectual Property Organisation

WTO - World Trade Organisation

[Go to Top]