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1. Introduction

The spectacular developments that have taken place in electronics, computers, telecommunications, and broadcasting have ushered in the most significant period of social change since the invention of the printing press, which laid the basis for the industrial revolution. But in Africa the low level of development of the underlying infrastructure needed to make effective use of these new technologies makes it possible that the continent will fall even further behind the rest of the world in quality of life indicators unless drastic steps are taken to address the situation.

There is no doubt that the communications and information infrastructure in Africa has improved dramatically over the past few years. Satellite television, the Internet, cellular phones are now widespread on the continent. But what might have been unthinkable a decade ago, is still a dream for the majority of Africans - those who do not live in the capital cities and are not part of the privileged few. Access to telephones is still extremely scarce. There are only about 14 million lines on the continent - less than the number of phones in Manhattan or Tokyo - and if North Africa and South Africa are not counted, there are only 3 million lines to be shared amongst the remaining 600 million people. Furthermore, most of the lines are concentrated in urban areas while over 70% of the population is rural.

As a result most Africans have never even made a phone call, let alone surfed the web. There are only about 100 000 dialup Internet accounts for 750 million people (excluding South Africa) and because Internet Service Providers are usually concentrated in the capital cities, even if there is a computer available, it is usually a prohibitively expensive long distance call to the Internet. At the same time, most of the available information on the Internet is oriented toward western and urban populations, with few applications relevant to the average person in Africa.

While the overall picture of Africa's readiness to become part of the global information society has been generally gloomy, there have been some notable improvements in some countries over the last few years, and the averages given above obscure large variations in the degree of use of new technologies on the continent and the capacity of the underlying infrastructure.

This report therefore aims to highlight the various strategies and policies that African governments are using or could usefully consider in order to improve the infrastructure needed to support effective use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in furthering national development priorities in economic growth and poverty alleviation. Focusing closely on broadening access into rural areas and on the use of the Internet as a crucial tool in providing access to the information and communication services, key conclusions and recommendations are displayed in bold text.

For the purposes of this report 'information infrastructure' is defined as the means by which ICT applications are made available - telecommunications facilities, the Internet, broadcast networks, computers, software and Local Area Networks. Of crucial importance to this physical infrastructure are the human resources required to install, use and maintain it, and the linked infrastructures - the transport and power supply networks.

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2. Major Challenges and Opportunities - the general context for information infrastructure development Africa

Access to information and use of communication tools in Africa have until recently been largely entirely in the hands of state monopolies. But now that the trend towards open democracy and more liberal market oriented policies has become established on the continent, there is a marked improvement in the availability and diversity of information and communication channels. By the end of 1999 the Internet is expected to be available in the capitals of every country in Africa, up from only 12 countries three years ago. Rates of telephone line growth are at their highest levels ever, and hundreds of new media outlets in print, radio, television and the web have emerged in the last couple of years.

It is probably no co-incidence that these changes have coincided with an estimated average 4.7 percent growth in African GDP in 1998. After years of stagnation these growth levels are close to Asia's, and in the wake of the Asian financial turmoil, it is likely that Africa may even surpass it as the fastest growing region in the world. The information revolution is often said to be Africa's 'last chance to catch up’ and it is already clear that a number of African countries have committed themselves to joining the Global Information Society.

Nevertheless, change is occurring from an extremely low base and the sub-continent has a daunting degree of transformation to effect before standards come even close to world averages. The region has 33 of the 48 countries that are classified as 'Least Developed'. There are no 'High-Income' countries on the continent, and the only countries classified as "Upper-Middle Income' are Gabon, Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles, and South Africa.

Although encouraging trends have emerged in the last few years, the differences between the development levels in Africa and the rest of the world are even wider in the area of ICTs than they are using more traditional measures of development. Only 2.5 percent of the world's televisions are on the continent (which has 13% of the world's population), the overall teledensity is still only about one per 200 inhabitants, computer penetration is less than 3 per 1000 and just one in 1500 has access to the Internet compared to a world average of about one in 40.

Irregular or non-existent electricity supplies are a common feature of the African landscape and are a major barrier to increased use of ICTs, especially outside the major towns. Many countries have extremely limited power distribution networks which do not penetrate significantly into rural areas, and power sharing (regular power outages for many hours) is a regular occurrence, even in some of the capital cities.

The level of development of the transport networks in Africa usually follows the same pattern of limited distribution seen in the telecommunication and power networks. This results in further barriers to the increased movement of people and physical goods, a component of improved socio-economic development that can be supported but not replaced by increased use of ICTs to accelerate transactions and decision making.

Given the conditions described above, it is not surprising that radio is still by far the most dominant mass medium in Africa, with ownership of radio sets being far higher than for any other electronic device. Furthermore, many people listen to the same radio or watch a television at the same time. In fact, large scale sharing of information resources is a dominant feature of the African media landscape - readership of newspapers is often above 10, it is estimated that there are usually 3 users per dial-up Internet account, and it is not uncommon to find most of a small village crowded around the only TV set, often powered by a car-battery or small generator. As a result any information and communication policy development would be severely deficient if it did not take into account the much greater access that these traditional media provide to the African public.

Actually part of the problem is that perceived costs are greater than real costs. Many people with long experience in the industry have yet to adapt to the full impact of the 00plummeting prices and exploding amounts of bandwidth and computing power that are becoming available.

In summary, the major barrier to increased use of ICTs is the lack of pervasive low-cost telecommunications, broadcasting, Internet services and linked infrastructures, especially in the rural areas. The cost of access is seen as a primary problem associated with the lack of ICT infrastructure - if costs are lower, there is increased demand for infrastructure and greater traffic, which in turn would lower the unit cost of delivering the service through the increased economies of scale.

The low level of economic activity in Africa clearly reduces the economies of scale needed to attract investment in infrastructure, but the global information infrastructure can connect people irrespective of distance and background, so markets with sufficient critical mass to attract financing are possible, as long as there is effective collaboration to consolidate demand, and a co-ordinated policy to ensure that the human resources and the transport and power networks are also available.

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3.1 Broadcasting

It is has been estimated that over 60 percent of the population of Africa can be reached through existing terrestrial radio broadcasting networks, but in rural areas the content is usually limited to the one or two channels operated by the government's national broadcaster. In most cases the national broadcaster is the organ of the state, although legislation is often silent about the control of public broadcasting and in some cases its license (if it has one) is not under the authority of a regulator, but of the Minister of Information. Without adequate re-alignment of the public broadcaster, efforts to promote plurality and diversity of the airwaves are unlikely to reach their full potential.

At the same time, public broadcasters are increasingly under pressure to generate revenues in order to compensate for decreasing national budget allocations. In order to compete with newly-established commercial stations, public broadcasters have little choice but to act as commercial broadcasters and this inevitably encourages them to put a lower priority on the less commercially viable public service missions - the duty to inform, educate and promote cultural heritage. Thus without renewed financial commitment from government there is a danger that public broadcasters will focus more on economically attractive programming formats, leading to increased use of imported content and a reduction in the use of local programming. The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, for example, has already closed its educational television station and leased out the frequency to commercial broadcasters, which largely transmit entertainment programming.

An increasing number of commercial stations are being established in the major cities following liberalization in many countries, however, the private sector has not shown much interest in assuming the higher costs and uncertain advertising revenues in setting up rural radio stations. Given the extent of rural poverty, profit-driven entrepreneurs have little or no interest in broadcasting to these more marginalized communities. This state of affairs has been reinforced in some countries such as Tanzania where broadcasting policy does not allow private broadcasters to reach beyond 25 per cent of the country. As a result real choice in local radio stations is not available to the majority of the population in Africa.

Furthermore, as the majority of the commercial stations in Africa focus on entertainment and news and information output is limited, often a re-broadcast of the national broadcaster's news. Many people in cities also now tune into the growing number of local FM rebroadcasts of international short-wave stations such as BBC World Service or Voice of America for their local information. Local news and current affairs, especially that focusing on events outside of the capital, are rarely broadcast. Although most licenses issued require the broadcast of significant quantities of locally relevant information, these rules are often flaunted as enforcement is constrained by the insufficient resources allocated to broadcasting regulators.

In an effort to create more diversity some countries, such as Ghana, Mali, South Africa and Uganda have issued notable numbers of community radio licences, but their long-term viability is by no means certain. Even in South Africa, except for a well-endowed religious broadcasting sector, community license holders are struggling to find the resources to begin and to continue broadcasting. As a result, explicit recognition and sustained support in legislation for content development and community broadcasting is likely to be required for independent rural radio stations. In addition, the elimination of bureaucracy and delays in allocating spectrum for new radio services is necessary.

This could also include providing access to the national broadcaster's transmission network and supporting community radio stations that incorporate multi-purpose community telecentres, an approach being tested in South Africa, as a natural mix of services increases the likelihood of achieving sustainability. In addition, increased use of the Internet by these stations can be encouraged to provide a low cost means of obtaining audio clips for rebroadcast locally. This medium is already being used by the Panos Institute to provide a database of audio material for francophone radio stations in West Africa accessible through the web. A number of countries now have radio stations that broadcast live over the Internet, attracting significant interest from the diaspora, however they lack an effective distribution network in the US and Europe, making it difficult to serve sufficient numbers of listeners.

The coverage pattern of national television is similar to radio but even more restricted, being largely confined to major towns. Some countries such as Cote d'Ivoire have made major strides in bringing television to rural areas, but again this is almost exclusively the domain of the national state run broadcaster. Other countries still do not have their own national television broadcaster - even relatively well-developed ones such as Botswana.

However even where local television coverage is extensive, content usually consists of a high proportion of B-grade US and European re-runs interspersed with ageing documentaries and a smattering of local news. For those who can afford subscription-based services, the opening up of broadcasting regulations has increased the availability of international microwave and satellite-based television programming. The trend is similar to radio coverage, with the BBC and Canal+ common in Anglophone and Francophone audiences respectively. Portuguese colonial history is similarly reflected with services of the national television broadcaster - RTP - being re-broadcast in the Lusophone countries, while the US-based CNN is common across the entire continent.

Clearly additional resources need to be provided to the local television and film sectors in order to dilute the high proportion of foreign content with more local programming. Collaboration with the more developed economies on the continent could assist in this process, both at a human resource capacity building level, and in sharing the costs of infrastructure and programming. Egypt and South Africa have already moved into the international TV distribution arena. In 1995 a private South African company launched the world's first digital direct-to-home (DTH) subscriber satellite service called DSTV, providing over 30 video channels and 40 audio programmes to the whole of Africa. Last year South Africa's public broadcaster, SABC, launched Channel Africa, a satellite based news and entertainment channel aimed at the continent to compliment its existing short-wave radio service. In 1998 North Africa started receiving DTH TV broadcasts from Nilesat, the continent's first locally owned geostationary satellite, capable of broadcasting up to 72 digital TV programmes simultaneously. Operated by the country's national broadcaster, ERTU, Nilesat's coverage extends as far south as northern Tchad, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia, as well as to Morocco in the west.

The continent is also now covered by digital satellite broadcasts from the US-based startup company WorldSpace which recently launched a satellite focussed on Africa. Broadcasters in Europe, the US and in Egypt, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali and South Africa have already signed up to provide content. A total of about 80 audio channels will be available to anyone on the continent who can afford about $150 for the special digital radio required. Data services are also available. In addition, Worldspace has established a non-profit foundation (the Worldspace Foundation) that will manage 5% of the channels for the public benefit and development goals.

Currently the audience for satellite broadcasts is largely confined to the elite who can afford the equipment and subscription fees. But with growing competition in the market and decreasing costs of equipment, this medium has become increasingly attractive for governments to support the rebroadcasting of local content over digital satellite systems and assist remote community radio stations and telecentres to obtain receiving equipment at low cost.

Digital broadcasting systems are also now providing data services, including the transmission of web pages, email and graphics such as weather maps. As a result, the ability to download data and access the Internet at high speed through these systems needs to be supported in rural areas, especially where telecommunication links to capital cities are costly and slow.

Like other developments in the era of digitalisation and convergence, digital broadcasting is far more efficient in its use of radio spectrum, and thus will increasingly challenge one of the central historical tenets for regulation of the airwaves, namely efficient use of scarce public resources. At the same time, the Internet and telecommunication infrastructures can provide sufficient bandwidth for broadcasting services and video or audio on-demand.

With the provision of dual-function broadcasting and telecommunication infrastructures, the distinctions between traditional regulation of carriage and content are blurring, and the development of appropriate policies in the area of content are becoming more important. As is the need for clear and transparent spectrum allocation. As a result governments will need to re-evaluate the principles of their regulatory policies in this area and examine the impact of convergence on regulatory structures and regulatory models. So far only one country in Africa - Gambia - has given authority to a single independent agency for management of both telecommunication and broadcasting, while South Africa plans to enact legislation next year which will merge the telecommunication and broadcasting regulators.

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3.2.1 The infrastructure

The deficient telecommunication infrastructure in Africa has been well documented on numerous occasions as one of the most serious barriers to the effective use of ICTs on the continent. Although there has recently been a rapid increase in the rate of expansion and modernisation of fixed telecommunication networks, this is off a very low base and much of the growth is in the urban areas. While the number of main lines is now growing at about 10 percent a year across Africa, the overall teledensity is still only about one per 200 inhabitants.

Comparing regions, the countries of the Sahel and Central Africa, such as Niger and Zaire have less than 2 telephone lines for every 1000 people. North Africa and South Africa have a teledensity of around 35 per 1000, while West and East African coastal countries have densities between 2.5 and 10 per 1000. With the exception of North Africa and South Africa, only a few smaller countries have so far been able to increase their teledensity above 1 in 50 - these are Botswana, Cape Verde, Gabon, Mauritius, Mayotte, Reunion and Swaziland.

On a worldwide basis, the sub-Sahara can be seen to have by far the least developed infrastructure in the world. In 1996 the region contained almost 10 percent of the world's population, but only 0.4 percent of the world's telephone lines (about 3 million lines, excluding North and South Africa). This is fewer than the number of lines China installed in 1997 alone, and there are over 1 million people on current waiting lists for a phone, not counting hidden demand from those that have not even attempted to apply for one.

The limited teledensity is also linked to the fact that a much smaller proportion of the population can actually afford their own telephone - the cost of renting a connection averaged almost 20 percent of the 1995 GDP per capita, vs. a world average of 9 percent and only 1 percent in high income countries. However, policy makers need to be aware that there is a very large variation between countries in the charges for installation, line rental and call tariffs. In 1996 the ITU determined that the average business connection in Africa cost $112 to install, $6 a month to rent and $0.11 per 3-minute local call. But installation charges were above $200 in some countries (Benin, Mauritania, Nigeria and Togo), line rentals ranged from $0.8 to $20 a month, and call charges varied by a factor of almost 10 - from $0.60 an hour to over $5 an hour. Since then local call tariffs in some countries have increased even further, to over $8 an hour (Uganda, Gabon and Tchad) making extensive use of the Internet in these countries unaffordable to all but the larger organisations and a tiny domestic elite.

Despite the high cost of installation and line rental, the number of public telephones is still much lower than elsewhere - about 1 for every 17 000 people, compared to a world average of 1 in 600 and a high income average of 1 in 200. However an increasing number of operators are now passing over the responsibility for maintaining public telephones to the private sector and this has seen a rapid growth of private phone shops in some countries. The most well known success of this strategy is in Senegal which now has over 7 000 commercially run public phone points, employing over 10 000 people and generating about 30% of the entire network's revenues. While most of these are in urban areas, a growing number are being established in more remote locations, especially with the Senegal PTO's aggressive rollout of backbone infrastructure which is in the process of linking 2000 villages and towns by fibre optic cable.

Smart-card based public phones have also been widely adopted across the continent, creating a new revenue stream in the sale of airtime by small shops and telecentres. This infrastructure already forms the basis for more advanced value added telephone-based services, including e-commerce, especially if more universal smart-card systems are adopted, including the ability to use the cards in different countries.

Cellular services now comprise about 20% of the total phones on the continent (outside South Africa) and are available in 42 countries, supplied by about 80 operators who provide access mainly in the capital cities but also in some secondary towns and along major trunk routes. The number of cellular subscribers in 1997 was estimated by the ITU at over 225 000 outside of South Africa and is probably closer to 600 000 today. In South Africa the cellular market outpaced all expectations, reaching over 3.2 million and covering 70% of the population areas in mid-1999. About half the countries have more than one operator, with two being the norm, although a growing number of countries such as Madagascar and Zambia have three operators, while Tanzania has 5 cellular providers. Prices for cellular usage are high, averaging over US0.50 per minute, although interestingly, the new monopoly cellular operator in Ethiopia recently introduced its service with the lowest tariffs in Africa - about US0.30c per minute.

A majority of the systems in use in Africa are now based on the digital GSM standard, although international roaming agreements and data communication facilities are rare and need to be encouraged.

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3.2.2 Targets for improved telecommunication infrastructure

One of the more important tasks for policy makers in defining priorities for telecommunication network development is the setting of universal service objectives (USO) for the provision of services. More precisely, universal service goals in most developing countries have been deferred in favour of 'affordable universal access' which focuses on the widespread provision of public facilities at reasonable cost, rather than personal services installed in every home. For example, in the case of South Africa, the goal is to ensure that no person must walk more than 30 minutes to obtain access to communication facilities. In Gambia, the government has decided that all villages with 2000 people or more must have access to basic telephony, while in Botswana the policy goal is to achieve this in villages of 500 people or more. Ghana, Kenya and Malawi have also adopted specific universal service targets to ensure that marginalised populations are better able to participate in the information society.

A number of other countries have given their operators broad universal service obligations without defining the specific targets. However few obvious trends have emerged in the way USOs have been defined in Africa. Clearly goals will be different in each country, depending on factors such as the level of economic development and population demographics, but a clearer framework and methodology for setting USOs is still needed by policy makers.

This is especially important at the moment because convergence and the availability of new technologies is causing some definitions of universal service to move away from a focus purely on voice telephony to include access to more advanced services such as the Internet. The impact of this will need to be urgently assessed because many PTOs, such as South Africa's Telkom, are now rolling out wireless infrastructure in rural areas which cannot provide acceptable speeds for Internet connectivity, simply because of out-of-date USOs.

Also, the effective use of Internet and other advanced services requires a significantly higher level of knowledge and skills, as well as more specialised equipment such as computers. As a result, USOs will need to include a basic definition of the types of services to be provided, their expected cost of use for the consumer, and means of technical or other support for their effective use.

Similarly, knowledge of the best mechanisms for achieving USOs is scarce and requires further study and information exchange. A growing number of countries, such as Mauritius, South Africa, and Uganda, have adopted a mechanism known as a 'Universal Service Fund' to which telecom operators contribute a small percentage of their revenues (0.16% in South Africa). The fund is then used to finance rural network infrastructure development. In other countries, such as Morocco, the telecom operator license fees are used to finance rural telecom projects. Botswana has adopted another strategy in which the government foots the bill for ensuring that rural villages have access to telecommunication services by contracting the operator to build the necessary infrastructure.

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3.2.3 Strategies for achieving accelerated roll-out of an affordable telecommunication infrastructure

Most African states have begun to realise access to communications is a basic human right and that a more pervasive and accessible telecommunication infrastructure is a prerequisite for increased socio-economic development and not an outcome. But state owned telecom operators do not have sufficient resources to expand the network to anything close to desired levels or to provide the advanced services that are now required. For example, it has been estimated by the ITU that it would cost $6-8 billion to add an additional 4.5 million lines.

One of the problems the operators have had in obtaining sufficient revenues for infrastructure rollout is that for many governments direct revenues from the telecommunications sector is still an important part of the general revenue base and often one of the largest single contributors to GNP. This usually means that public network operators are not free to re-invest their profits in network development. In addition most revenues from privatisation’s and license fees ($10.5m in the case of Ghana's second operator license) go straight to the government exchequer, which means investors need to find additional funds to finance the aggressive network rollout targets usually stipulated in the sale to the strategic partner. As these funds must ultimately be recovered through higher tariffs charged for service, the charging of high license fees is counterproductive to universal service goals. The exception to this is in cases such as Morocco where license fees, such as the recent million dollar second cellular license, will be used specifically for rural telecommunication projects.

Another major problem for some operators in raising revenues is that government departments are usually the largest users of telecom services in the country but are often reluctant to pay their bills. An ITU study of 10 sub-Saharan African countries found that the average bill recovery rate was 60 percent, with the state in most cases being the largest debtor. Hopefully the increased commercialisation of the sector will reduce the incidence of this problem, but many governments will still need to pay off their debts to telecom operators in a timely manner to ensure that they can function in a more market related fashion.

Furthermore, the pending reform of the accounting rate system which currently channels a major portion of telecoms revenues to African PTOs, and increased use of alternative channels (principally call-back, by-pass, GMPCS, VSAT and Internet telephony) could reduce some of the major sources of telecoms investment capital. Finally, the lack of cross-border connections within Africa currently means that most intracontinental calls are routed via Europe or the United States, which costs African providers as much as $400 million a year in transit fees, according to the ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau. This suggests that strategies for dealing with the reform of the accounting rate system need to be developed and projects such as RASCOM's African telecommunication satellite, and ComTel's COMESA countries digital backbone, should be encouraged and supported.

While the measures described above will to some extent improve the availability of funds, to obtain the level of financing required to meet current needs, the crucial role of private sector involvement in telecommunications infrastructure provision has been recognised, not only in Africa, but worldwide. This has coincided with technical developments in the sector which make telecommunication infrastructure more amenable to an open competition environment - in contrast to other traditionally state operated infrastructures such as roads, water and power, where it makes little sense to have multiple competing networks, there are now a plethora of satellite, cable and wireless alternatives that can all be made available to the end-user.

The basic strategy that has been adopted is to commercialise the national operator and sell a share to a foreign strategic investor. This normally includes an obligation to ramp up network infrastructure in return for a monopoly on basic services, usually for 5-10 years. For example in Cote d'Ivoire, France Telecom agreed to increase the number of lines in operation from 110,000 to 400,000 within four years, MTN must install 60,000 lines in Uganda, and in Ghana, Telekom Malaysia was required to more than quadruple the number of lines in service from 60,000 to 275,000 in five years, while competitor Western Wireless is expected to build 55,000 lines in three years.

Although Africa has lagged behind most other developing regions in embarking on this strategy, the last few years has seen a flurry of activity and significant private investment has been attracted to the continent (see table). In many countries laws have also been passed to allow joint ventures with the incumbent operator. Competition in non-basic services such as data, paging and mobile telephony is permitted in about half the African countries. However only Ghana, Uganda, and Madagascar have taken the further step of licensing a second operator to compete with the incumbent monopoly (some countries such as Mali have opened the telecommunication sector to competition but have not yet licensed any new operators).

About three-quarters of the countries have taken the first steps in the process - separating postal functions from telecommunications and corporatising the national operator as a nominally independent entity from government. Thirteen countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda have taken the next step of partially privatising their national telecom operators, and 15 more, notably Cameroon, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi and Tanzania intend to do so shortly. However this represents less than half the countries on the continent - by comparison, about three-quarters of the Latin American countries have privatised or announced privatisation plans. In a few countries, such as Niger and Tchad, private investors are involved in the international operator (international services are provided by a separate entity to the land-line and domestic service provider in some Francophone countries ).

Source: ITU

Many of the strategic investors in the privatisation’s to date can be linked to previous colonial ties, such as Portugal Telecom's investment in Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Sao Tome et Principe, and France Telecom's investment in Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Madagascar and Senegal. Telekom Malaysia has also been a notable investor (South Africa, Guinea, Ghana).

In most of the strategic sales, governments have opted to initially part with a minority share - usually 30-40%. However in the case of Guinea, 60% was sold, and in Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea Bissau and Sao Tome the percentage was 51%. Because of the guaranteed monopolies that have been offered with these sales, international investors have been willing to pay a relatively high price for their share of the PTO. European operators are typically valued at $1,000 to $1,500 per line but for its investment in Senegal's Sonatel, France Telecom paid nearly $5,000 per phone line.

Aside from the sale of a share in the operator to a strategic investor, a number of other options have been considered for raising capital, improving services and/or obtaining better access to human resources and technology transfer. These include:

	Initial Public Offer of shares to employees, to financial institutions and to the public. This has been used effectively in Europe and Asia but so far is not common in Africa, although in South Africa a 10% share of the PTO will likely be allocated in this manner.
	Revenue sharing - e.g. Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) in which the operator contracts a private investor to install and operate the service initially, and they are rewarded by a share in the profits for the initial period. This financing option has not been used significantly in Africa but has gained favour in other parts of the developing world, primarily in Asia.
	Management Contract - introduction of private management expertise without any transfer of ownership e.g. Cable and Wireless' contract with the Botswana and Sudanese PTOs.
	Joint venture in a limited area of service - e.g. many cellular networks and FCR's joint ventures in Internet service provision with some of the Francophone African PTOs (e.g. Madagascar).
	Sale of bonds to members of the public who are on the waiting list for a telephone.

So far the use of these options has been relatively limited in Africa, which suggests that awareness raising and further study of the alternative strategies for restructuring the telecommunication sector is still required. This could entail circulation of detailed case studies of the developing countries with experiences that can provide useful insights into the approaches to liberalization. Also, the opportunities for regional or sub-regional collaboration on approaches should be examined so that possibilities for increasing the economies of scale can be identified.

The measures described above are intermediary steps in the process that is generally expected to lead to full competition in the sector. However in Africa there is so far little commonality on policies regarding full competition except that most African countries have maintained the exclusive right of the monopoly operator in the provision of basic telephony - only about 5 countries have committed themselves to the WTO/GATS agreements on opening up the market to competition in basic services by 2005. Currently only Ghana, Uganda and Madagascar have allowed the introduction of competition in the local loop, although licenses have been issued for limited competition in areas of Mozambique, Nigeria and Sudan. In the case of Ghana, US-based Western Wireless led a consortium that bought a 20-year fixed and mobile license with a guaranteed 5-year duopoly with the incumbent PTO.

Thus as the exclusivity of monopoly operators is gradually terminated across the continent, one of the most crucial unresolved policy issues is to define the most beneficial market structure of the telecommunication sector. In some respects monopolies have all but ended in most countries, due to the licensing of mobile operators which have rapidly become competitors to the fixed network as alternate primary providers of voice telecom services. Because of the pent up demand for lines and the inability of the fixed line operators to provide service, the demand for cellular lines has usually exceeded all expectations, especially as they are attractive alternative to the limited public telecom networks for businesses and for domestic use by the privileged (the two most profitable sections of the market). Also, cellular telephony has usually involved the private sector which has been able to institute more aggressive and better financed roll-out plans than the state-owned PTOs. A minority of the cellular operators are state owned (about 20), with the majority being private and a few are joint ventures between the PTOs and the private sector. Monopoly cellular operators are still present in about half the countries.

However as cellular/mobile tariffs are usually much higher than in the fixed networks they cannot yet provide low cost voice communications for the masses. Neither can the current generation of technology provide reasonable Internet access speeds. With increased competition and new generations of cellular technology this may change, but the current approach is the continued opening of the markets to new participants in fixed line services. However beyond that, the precise strategy and shape of competition remains relatively undefined. It should be noted that Africa is not so far behind the industrialised world when it comes to deregulation of the telecommunication sector, and the assumption that liberalization models and universal service objectives which have been developed in the North can simply be re-applied wholesale down South needs to be strongly questioned.

There are a number of factors which indicate that African policy makers may need to develop their own special strategies in this regard. It can be seen that the rationale for continued monopoly operation to achieve universal service objectives emerged in a developed country environment where telecommunication infrastructure costs were relatively high and where most of the population lives in densely populated urban areas which can be serviced at relatively low cost in conjunction with high volume business users. In this environment the USO was only needed to cover the relatively greater costs of serving the small minority living in sparsely populated rural areas with voice services only.

These factors are not generally applicable in Africa today - network infrastructure roll-out and usage costs have already plummeted, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. This will be aided by the exploding quantities of fibre, wireless and satellite bandwidth which can make rural areas as easy to reach as urban ones. Also, convergence means that operators can use the same infrastructure to provide many more services than just voice calls to the end user. In addition, because of Africa's demographics, the great majority of the population and the bulk of demand for telecommunications will be in the rural areas, rather than the urban areas.

On top of all this, the Internet model of network development has emerged which reduces requirements for national network planning, allowing anyone to build a part of the network and to be able to sell excess bandwidth and a wide variety of services to third parties in order to cover the cost [10]. Examples of this include the Universities of Zambia and Mozambique which have become leading Internet Service Providers to the public following the establishment of their facilities for internal use. It is no co-incidence that these service providers rely extensively on VSAT and wireless systems to access and deliver their services independently of the monopoly voice operators in their countries.

The generally accepted view in the past has been that rural services do not generate sufficient revenue to be profitable. But with the cost reducing factors described above, combined with the increase in services that can be supplied, this may no longer be the case, especially if revenues from increased numbers of incoming calls are taken into account.

All this suggests that new rural telecommunications services in Africa may actually be profitable, and that traditional USO's combined with restricted moves toward full competition in the sector may not be the best strategy for Africa. A more rapid introduction of open competition in the sector may actually be a better model for achieving the required levels of infrastructure development. While this strategy will require careful regulation and may put additional burdens on regulators to ensure a level playing field and rollout to disadvantaged areas (and could also jeopardise the revenues of the incumbent operator) the increased development and economic growth in other areas created by the accelerated diffusion of the network would more than justify the loss of direct income for the PTOs and national governments, especially since existing networks only service a small minority of the current population. In any case, the loss of revenues from the incumbent operator should be balanced by increased tax revenues from the many smaller operators and other businesses whose growth has been assisted by an improved infrastructure provided effective tax collection methods are in place.

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3.2.4 Implementing Telecommunication Policy - The Role of the Regulator

In the past, the PTOs or the relevant Ministry acted as both operator and regulator, but the introduction of competition and the growth in importance of the sector means that greater regulatory resources are required, as well as measures to limit the potential abuse of powers by the incumbent operator. So regulatory and radio frequency management are normally taken away from the operator and given to an independent body. However, by early 1999 less than half (about 20) of the African countries had established some form of independent or quasi-independent regulatory body for the telecoms sector.

Many of the regulators were established in tandem with the privatisation process (such as in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda), others were established independently, prior to other aspects of sector restructuring. (See Table for examples of different regulatory structures). However newly-appointed regulators, still learning the technicalities and intricacies of the sector, are having to make policy in a highly-sophisticated and technology-driven industry. This suggests that ensuring that the regulator is fully established and well prepared before further sector reform takes place is highly desirable so that the agency is in the best position to make the right decisions.

One of the problems in ensuring the regulator has the necessary complement of skilled staff has been that the agency is usually part of the civil service. This means that it can only pay government salary rates, which are usually far below what a person of the calibre required can earn elsewhere, and that it must adhere to standard government hiring procedures. This suggests that consideration should be given to allowing regulators to become parastatals able to set their own salaries and hiring procedures.

This need is reinforced by the fact that Independence from direct government control is an important feature of a regulator, and this usually means that they must have financial autonomy, (raising revenue through licenses and fines etc.), and that the executive represents stakeholders and is not solely appointed by government. Currently most 'independent' regulators are appointed by, and answerable to the government, and are not subject to full public consultation and accountability. It should be noted that although regulators may act as advisors to the state, they are normally responsible for carrying out government policy rather than formulating it.

Source: M. Jensen

The key responsibilities usually given to an independent regulator are:

	License allocation, emphasising transparency of process. This also includes the development of performance targets for operators
	Issuing of tariff guidelines, approval of tariffs and interconnection fees
	Creation of a stable and predictable environment for both investors and consumers
	Ensuring human resource development goals and addressing gender and disability issues
	Numbering and adherence to standards
	Allocation and management of radio frequency spectrum
	Promotion and monitoring of free and fair competition - this means ensuring a level playing field and mediation of disputes between stakeholders, especially in controlling the abuse of dominance
	Consumer protection, including ensuring a seamless national network and furtherance of universal service objectives.

In view of the rapidly growing importance of wireless systems, the area of spectrum management is becoming an increasingly important task and regulators will need to be provided with sufficient resources to understand the technical issues and to put in place appropriate spectrum management plans and monitoring capabilities to ensure radio frequency licenses are adhered to.

With the move from a single operator to multiple operators in a competitive environment, policy on interconnection of networks becomes a crucial issue. Any customer of one network should be able to connect to the customer of any other network and new operators must have open access to the incumbent operator networks which must be subject to special rules to ensure that they do not abuse their dominant market position. These rules usually include:

	a requirement to meet all reasonable demands for interconnection services from other operators;
	transparent and cost-based interconnection fees;
	non-discrimination;
	publication of information about the network and advance notification of changes to the network that might affect interconnecting parties;
	confidentiality of information received from other operators; and
	separation of universal service charges

As part of the interconnection arrangements, regulators usually need to ensure:

	Fair and equal access to numbering, frequencies and directory databases;
	The same access to customer premises equipment enjoyed by the incumbent operator; and
	Equitable facility sharing - rights of way, poles, conduits, radio towers, buildings etc.

As the incumbent operators have little or no incentive to negotiate with new operators, their control over essential facilities means that delay is one of their most powerful weapons. Regulators often need special vigilance to ensure that the natural and often cultural tendencies of the incumbent in this respect are guarded against. This means that enforcement is a key role for the regulator and it should therefore be equipped with sufficient powers and tools to intervene and resolve disputes. In many instances the courts are an expensive and poorly suited instrument for resolving these issues, so the regulator will need to be able to lay down penalties for breaches in performance requirements and levy interest to ensure prompt payments. Later, as competition further develops and the dominance of the incumbent operator diminishes, the regulator will be able to withdraw and rely more on commercial negotiations between the players to achieve national goals for network development.

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4. Computers and Computing

Africa's level of computerisation is very low, primarily because of the high cost of equipment relative to the low levels of economic development and the lack of skills to make effective use of comouters. Although prices in Africa have decreased as markets have matured and greater competition has ensued, prices are still inflated as many import tax regimes still treat ICTs as luxury items, which makes these imported items all the more expensive, and thus even more unobtainable for most people. Notable exceptions to this are in Mauritius, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda which have reduced import taxes to less than 10%. In many cases however communications equipment and peripherals are still charged at higher rates. (See Table).

Examples of Import Taxes for ICTs in Africa

Source: M. Jensen

Although the very limited use of computers is readily apparent in Africa, accurate estimates of their penetration are notoriously hard to gather. There have been few effective centralised systems of monitoring implemented, especially with the high duties and sales taxes discouraging declaration of imports and transactions. In addition, technology convergence and rapid change in the technologies makes useful categorisation of equipment types even more difficult.

Most recent estimates for the number of PCs in Africa put the average at about 3 per 1000 people in 1996, however some studies such as ACCT's 1995 survey indicates that this may be an over- estimate by between 3 and 6 times, making the average closer to less than 1 per 1000. Some of the wealthier countries such as Botswana, Mauritius and South Africa have significantly higher levels of penetration, at least 5 per 1000, perhaps up to 20 per 1000. Account should also be taken of the number of users sharing a single computer, which is much greater than in more developed regions.

With the great lack of resources in the public sector in Africa, the penetration of computers is generally much lower in government, with by far the majority of PC equipment being used by private companies. Computers are mainly used for accounting and word processing, although spreadsheets are used to some extent for forecasting or as a simple database applications. The limited number of database systems often use Microsoft Access, but many national documentation centres and archives, as well as small university and NGO libraries, use the UNESCO/IDRC developed ISIS / microISIS package for bibliographic data. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and digitisation facilities are beginning to be installed by some universities, ministry planning departments and municipalities.

Almost all of the PC equipment uses Intel or Intel-compatible processors except for the publishing industry where there are significant numbers of Apple PCs. Microsoft Windows is the dominant operating system, although because many PCs are older machines using 386 and 486-processors and there are still large numbers of DOS-based systems. Because of poor maintenance and insufficient skills to diagnose system problems and swap parts, there are many out-of-commission machines which could easily be re-activated, suggesting that improved training programmes in computer maintenance are necessary, especially in the public sector.

Underutilization of existing computer resources is also very common, caused by the preponderance of many standalone PCs in the same office with no use of Local Area Networks (LANs). The connectivity provided by a LAN dramatically increases the utility of the ICT infrastructure, especially if there is an Internet connection that can then be shared by all the users on the LAN. Often an office may have many machines, but only one with a modem connecting to the Internet. This usually means that there is competition for the machine and a shared email account, which is not conducive to effective use of the Internet.

Although there are as yet few examples, the use of low cost equipment such as Network Computers (NCs) and set-top boxes needs to be examined as an important means to reduce costs and increase the use of ICTs in Africa. A number of pilot projects have been established to test these options. Recently a South African cellular phone and subscription TV distributor, Teljoy, has begun marketing a set-top Internet access unit for US$300 which uses the TV screen as the monitor.

In wide-area networking, where local area networks are connected to the Internet, as well as for many ISPs across Africa, the free operating system based on UNIX (Linux) is already widely used. Recent versions of the package have now been tailored for consumer use and are being increasingly supplied with new PCs, by Dell, Compaq, IBM and others. The Netscape web browser and email package, and the WordPerfect suite have been ported to Linux and are being distributed free for personal use, making it possible to set up a functioning office or ISP business without purchasing any commercial software. This suggests that the use of free and open-source software should be promoted as a means of cutting costs and increasing local control over ICT resources.

The Millenium Bug or Y2K problem has gained significant attention across the sub-continent, especially because there are large numbers of older machines in use and very limited resources or skills to ensure their compliance. Most large corporations, parastatals and government departments have launched Y2K programmes but it is unclear how many will meet the deadline. The issue is mitigated to some extent by the fact that relatively fewer mission-critical systems have been computerised in Africa, and service interruptions in basic infrastructure such as telecoms and electricity are already common.

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5. The Internet and other advanced data services

Riding on top of the telecommunication and computer infrastructure, the extent of Internet use is a good indicator of the overall status of a nation's level of information infrastructure development. As mentioned earlier, at the end of 1996 only 12 countries had local access, but by early 1999 only Congo (Brazzaville), Eritrea and Somalia were still without local Internet services and these countries are expected to be fully connected by the end of the year. Nevertheless Internet access in Africa is largely confined to the capitals and major towns. Although a growing number of countries (currently 14) have Internet points of presence (POPs) in some of the secondary towns, with this generally limited coverage, for most people in Africa it is still prohibitively expensive to use the Internet.

Aside from the problem of the majority of potential users being a long distance call to the major urban centres where ISPs are located, local call tariffs are also a major barrier for small organisations, poorly resourced public institutions and anyone outside the upper income bracket. In contrast to North America where local calls are free giving the public effectively permanent access to the Internet if they wish, even in African countries with the lowest local call charges, these constitute the largest part of the expense in maintaining Internet connectivity. In the many countries where local calls cost upwards of U$4 an hour (in some countries it is as high as $10/hr), and for anyone dialling long distance, usage is usually restricted to email. There are numerous examples in Africa of organisations provided with an Internet connection that has lapsed due to lack of budget to pay the phone bill or usage charges.

The problem of local call tariffs and Internet usage is not unique to developing countries - European countries such as Eire and UK are also considering adopting flat rate local call charges in an effort to help catch up with North America’s Internet boom. However the predominantly rural distribution in Africa is a peculiar factor and it is clear that special strategies will be needed to address it. It is unlikely that these are going to be similar to strategies adopted in the predominantly urban North, but surprisingly, there has been little exchange and dialogue on this issue with other developing regions.

Clearly satellite distribution will play a key role in rural Africa in the future, but there is also a simple policy that can be quickly and easily adopted which radically improves connectivity for those countries with low local call charges. This is where the PTOs have made it a special policy to provide local call Internet access across the whole country. To do this, the local telecom operator establishes a special 'area-code' for Internet access that is charged at local call tariffs, allowing Internet providers to immediately roll out a network with national coverage. With the massively reduced costs for those in remote areas that this provides, it is surprising that so far only 13 countries have adopted this strategy [5].

While call charges are the major problem, Internet service provider subscription fees are also a contributing barrier to access. Currently, the average total cost of using a local dialup Internet account for 5 hours a month in Africa is about $60/month (usage fees, telephone time included, but not telephone line rental). According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 20 hours of Internet access in the U.S. cost $29 in 1997, including telephone charges, although European costs are higher ($74 in Germany, $52 in France, $65 in Britain, and $53 in Italy). The high cost of access in Africa is apparent when it is noted that these figures are based on four times the number of hours of access, and that these countries have per capita incomes which are at least 10 times greater than the African average.

Countries with larger numbers of ISPs generally have lower Internet charges, as is evident in Mozambique where there are at least 8 ISPs, when compared with Uganda where there are only two. In general it has been observed that prices have dropped and service quality has improved whenever competition has been introduced into the market. However charges vary greatly in different countries - between $10 and $100 a month, largely reflecting the different levels of maturity of the markets, the varying tariff policies of the PTOs and the different national policies on access to international telecommunications bandwidth.

In response to the high cost of full Internet services, the slow speed of the web, and also because of the overriding importance of electronic mail, lower-cost email-only services have been launched by many ISPs and are continuing to attract subscribers. Similarly, because of the relatively high cost of local electronic mailbox and web services from African ISPs, a large proportion of African email users make use of the free Web-based services such as Hotmail, Yahoo or Excite, most of which are in the US. But these services can be more costly in telephone time and more cumbersome than using standard email software, because extra online time is needed to maintain the connection to the remote site.

There is also a rapidly growing interest in kiosks, cybercafes and other forms of public Internet access usually called Telecentres, which are adding PCs to community phone-shops, schools, police stations and clinics to provide improved universal access and lower costs by sharing the expense of equipment and access amongst a larger number of users. In this way shared public access facilities exploit the convergence of technologies to provide cost effective services in under-serviced and remote locations. The concept has also received considerable support from the ITU and other members of the international community, as well as a number of national governments and public telecom operators. This has resulted in over 20 pilot telecentres scattered through the continent (with the majority in Ghana, Mozambique and Uganda, as well as in Benin, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe) set up to test different models, means of implementation and mechanisms for sustainability. The telecentre approach may be one of the most important means of providing access to advanced services in rural areas and therefore needs the support of all stakeholders, as well as further study to determine the most appropriate models.

The rapidity with which most African public telecom operators have moved into the Internet services market is also noteworthy. Because of their larger economies of scale and spread of their network, PTOs can have a considerable influence on the cost and availability of Internet services. However this has been offset by many countries which have not adopted cost-based tariffing of the service or have lacked the commitment and technical skills to manage the service efficiently.

Nevertheless, in the last three years PTOs have brought Internet services on stream in 31 countries and similar moves are afoot in four others (Liberia, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda). However, even where cost-based tariffing has been implemented, such as in Mozambique, Internet access to the national hub and upstream link costs are still 8-12 times more expensive than the equivalent link in the US. The World Bank estimates that telecommunications costs for local and international circuits often constitute about half of an ISPs operating costs and that international leased line tariffs are up to 5 times higher than rates available from alternative providers.

Usually the PTOs operate the international gateway or access to the national backbone, and leave the resale of end-user Internet access to the private sector. (See Table) In a few countries the PTO operates an international gateway in competition with the private sector, namely Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia. While this may not be the most efficient arrangement, it has served to ensure prices for ISPs are kept low, and has also introduced a measure of redundancy into the local network. Unfortunately there is often no local connection between the two International links (peering), so the local ISPs do not get the benefit of an alternate route if one of the links goes down.

Source: M. Jensen

Due to high international tariffs and lack of circuit capacity, obtaining sufficient international bandwidth for delivering web pages over the Internet is still a major problem in most countries. Excluding South Africa, the total international outgoing Internet bandwidth installed in Africa is about 50Mbps. However this means that on average about 5 dialup users must share each 1Kbps of international bandwidth, making for slow connections to remote sites.

As a result a growing number of African Internet sites are hosted on servers that are in Europe or the U.S. This is especially necessary for countries where ISPs operate their own independent international links without local interconnections (peering), such as in Kenya and Tanzania, which means that traffic between the subscribers of two ISPs in the same city must travel to the US or Europe and back. This makes it more efficient to host outside-country, and is also being encouraged because web hosting costs can be relatively high in Africa, while there are many free hosting sites in the US and Europe.

One response to the bandwidth problem is that incoming bandwidth is now starting to outpace outgoing bandwidth following the introduction of asymmetric links by a number of Internet satellite broadcast services such as Interpacket’s Espresso, and Infosat. These allow ISPs to limit traffic on their expensive existing links to outgoing data only, and to use a low-cost TV satellite dish for receiving the higher volumes of incoming traffic. This can substantially reduce the operating costs for the ISPs and increases the speed of access to the web for their users.

The use of two-way satellite-based Internet services using very small aperture terminals (VSAT) to connect directly the US or Europe is usually the cheapest way for ISPs in countries outside South Africa to connect to the Internet. As a result these have been quickly adopted wherever regulations allow, however this is only permitted in very few countries, namely Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, which all have ISPs that are not dependent on the local telecom operator for their international Internet bandwidth.

With the exception of some ISPs in Southern Africa, almost all of the international Internet circuits in Africa connect to the USA, with a few to the United Kingdom and France. However, Internet Service Providers in countries with borders shared with South Africa benefit from the low tariff policies instituted by the South African telecom operator for international links to neighbouring countries. As a result South Africa acts as a hub for some of its neighbouring countries - Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland.

Aside from a link between Mauritius and Madagascar, there are no other regional backbones or Internet links between neighbouring countries in Africa. The main reason for this is that the high international tariffs charged by telecom operators discourage Internet Service Providers from establishing multiple international links. As a result ISPs are forced to consolidate all of their traffic over a single high cost international circuit. This means that significant and rapidly increasing capital outflows from the region are occurring for Internet traffic between African countries which is paid to US or European service providers.

Furthermore, ISPs must foot the entire cost of the connection to Europe or the US, which effectively gives the developed country ISPs free access to the continent's network and further increases the costs that ISPs in Africa must bear. This effectively means the deficiencies with the international accounting rate on telecommunications is being replicated in the Internet area. To avoid this, support should be provided for the efforts being made by members of the Internet community in Africa to raise the issue in international fora and to partner with other similar efforts such as the Asian forum of telecom operators and regulators, which is also opposing this same imbalance in Asia.

Other advanced services such as ISDN and video conferencing are generally not available - the only countries in Africa able to provide ISDN services are Egypt, Morocco, Mauritius, the Seychelles, South Africa and Tunisia. A wider adoption of ISDN services will markedly improve the availability of video-conferencing and thus improve the international business environment and the ability to deliver telemedicine services.

Voice over Internet (VOIP) services are not officially available for use by the end-user anywhere in the region, and none of the telecom operators have implemented voice over IP technology for their internal traffic except for Egypt Telecom which is routing some of its voice traffic to the US using Internet protocols. However due to the virtual impossibility of monitoring and enforcing restrictions on particular types of Internet traffic, it is known that increasing numbers of Internet users are at least experimenting with VOIP products and fax over the Internet using services based in the US or Europe and used mainly for international calls. The major current limitation on the use of these products is the lack of international bandwidth.

Internet governance issues have generally fallen outside the ambit of national policy makers in Africa, largely because of the history of the Internet as a self-governing entity. However as the importance of the Internet has grown, various global Internet policy making initiatives have emerged. So far Africa has had little involvement in these activities but it is becoming increasingly important that the region becomes more involved and develops effective representation structures to ensure that it has a say in global Internet governance issues.

There have been discussions and disputes over domain name management, which have been resolved with varying levels of success. While a number of PTOs and governments have assumed that they have the right to manage the domain for their country, the top- level domain name manager - IANA - has generally upheld the right of the first local registrant to manage the domain as long as there are no substantive complaints about the quality of management.

Of greater concern perhaps are domain name registering companies based in the US and Europe such as NetNames, which have colluded with the local registrant to sell domain addresses to multinational corporations in the name of guarding their brand name or trademark domain as intellectual property. For example Estee Lauder and Levi Jeans, among many other companies, have been persuaded to register their domains in countries where they have no real presence, such as Libya and Malawi. This activity has effectively corrupted the true value of the domain address as an indication of location.

However this is not a major issue for policy makers as it does not significantly affect the operation of the Internet and two more important areas of Internet governance are now beginning to emerge for policy discussion. The first is Internet machine numbering (IP address allocation) which is currently being managed on Africa's behalf by US and European bodies. Following a successful conference in Benin last year attended by ISPs representing a majority of African countries, a regional body (AfriNIC) is in the process of being formed.

The second major issue is electronic commerce, which will have a major impact on the consumer, is becoming a vital tool for large companies, and also represents a large opportunity for small and medium scale businesses (SMEs) to compensate for their traditional lack of access to national and international markets. Small scale entrepreneurship is widespread throughout the region and its potential for improving local economies is well recognised. But SMEs are typically less able to manage the fixed costs involved in assessing and adopting the benefits of investments in new technologies. There is thus a strong rationale for governments to address the problems that impede SMEs from using the information infrastructure for electronic commerce. At the same time, taxation issues around electronic commerce transactions will need to be examined.

South Africa, for example, has just launched a public debate on the issues of electronic commerce. The aim is to identify the infrastructure and regulatory requirements in areas such as taxation, digital signatures and authentication, public privacy, intellectual property and encryption. A variety of working groups have been established on the issues and the debate will be continued in public meetings and on the Internet at a special web site set up for the process - http://www.ecomm-debate.co.za. Related to this is a programme to issue everyone in the country with an email address. An interministerial committee looking into the development of a multipurpose universal smart-card was established in South Africa last year comprising members from the private sector and the other relevant ministries, such as Home Affairs, Transport, Finance and Health. An MOU on the development of a common platform for the smart-card has been signed by the various parties, including the Banking Council.

Linked to e-commerce are issues relating to the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). While not strictly an infrastructural issue, the ease with which the Internet allows copying of intellectual property means that IPR issues are becoming increasingly important as use of the Internet grows. Protection of intellectual property is a complex issue that is often insufficiently dealt with at the national level with respect to new technological developments. Also, so far Africa has not been well represented at the global forums on IPR, namely the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). This suggests that African states should renew their commitment to supporting the two African IPR bodies on the continent.

Source: M.Jensen

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Because of the relatively small markets in Africa, international collaboration is seen as a key factor in increasing the economies of scale needed to reduce costs and to attract sufficient private sector investment. For example, if groups of countries combined their telecommunication operators into a single entity more and larger investors may be interested in financing its infrastructure rollout. It would have much greater bargaining power in sourcing inputs and selling access to its user-base. Similarly costs could be substantially reduced if countries can collaborate on establishing sub-regional hubs for their intercontinental and sub-regional traffic.

Sub-regional collaboration between countries in the development of strong regulators and legislation is also an important means of addressing some of the infrastructural issues. For example, six countries in the Southern African grouping of 13 SADC countries (Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia) have agreed to a legally binding protocol on Communications which includes commitments to Universal Service and adopting model policy and telecommunications legislation. In a related activity, regulators in SADC countries have formed a group called the Telecommunication Regulators of Southern Africa (TRASA) as a forum to exchange ideas and experiences. In addition, SADC member states adopted a 'Theme Document' at their plenipotentiary in February this year entitled 'SADC In the Next Millenium - the Opportunities and Challenges of Information Technology' which maps out a course of action for establishing a 'Southern African Information Society'.

On a broader scale, the Conference of African Ministers of social and economic planning requested the UN Economic Commission for Africa to set up a 'High-Level Working Group' to chart Africa's path onto the global information highways. An expert group was appointed by ECA to develop a framework document entitled the African Information Society Initiative (AISI), which was adopted by all of Africa’s planning Ministers t the subsequent meeting of the Conference of African Ministers in May 1996.

Combined with the Abidjan African Regional Telecommunications Development Conference held the same year, as a regional initiative, AISI has created significant internally generated pressure from the responsible ministries to urge their administrations to adopt appropriate regulatory, tariff and service provision policies. Since then, communications ministers from over 40 African countries have provided high-level endorsement for the telecommunications development policies encapsulated in the common vision document they published last year called the African Connection, whose target is to lay 50 million lines in Africa over the next 5 years. This has subsequently become a project of the Pan African Telecommunication Union (PATU) which was recently restructured and its headquarters moved to Nairobi.

The first concrete project of the African Connection was to hold a promotional and connectivity awareness raising car rally in which the South African Minister of Telecommunications, drove from the most northerly tip of the continent in Tunisia to its most southerly point in South Africa. Accompanied by a team of 40 journalists and support crew on a Hercules cargo plane, the rally gained strong support from the telecom operators and relevant ministries in the 11 countries it passed through. The next stage of the project is to open an African Connection Telecentre in all 52 African states.

On a global level, only seven African countries, including Ghana, South Africa, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Mauritius, have made commitments in the area of telecommunication as part of the general services falling under the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). However GATS will affect almost all African countries as they are members of the WTO. GATS commits its members to a separate regulator with transparent regulation, liberalization and fair competition. The Co-ordinated African Programme of Assistance Services (CAPAS) is aimed at assisting countries on trade in services to support national negotiating teams to develop strong and informed positions in the rounds of GATS negotiations. However a study conducted by UNCTAD found there is a lack of co-ordination between and among the various national ministries concerned. In particular, the Ministries of Trade and Commerce and the Telecommunication ministries appeared to have little or no dealing with each other on the issue. The African Regional Telecommunication Conference in Abidjan recommended that the activities of CAPAS should be extended to countries not currently involved in the project, and that countries should consult together and co-ordinate their positions prior to future rounds of WTO negotiations.

Aside from this rather limited involvement in the WTO, there has been even less African participation in other global fora on information infrastructures. One of the other major problems that needs to be addressed is the lack of collaboration between the Anglophone and Francophone countries. This division limits the effectiveness of Africa's positions in global forums and reduces the potential for regional and sub-regional activities.

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7.1 Integrated National Infrastructure Planning

The African Information Society Initiative (AISI) identified the need for multi-stakeholder groups in every African country to formulate and develop a national information and communication infrastructure (NICI) plan driven by national development priorities. Information infrastructure development naturally forms a large part of these efforts. Among the countries that have so far begun the process for developing in-depth national information infrastructure and communication development plans with notable infrastructure components are Gambia, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tunisia and Uganda - see table below. The experience developed by these countries in trying to formulate new policies will be of considerable interest to others considering the same undertaking.

The following major stakeholders are usually engaged in the policy process:

	Government ministries
	Private sector, both national and international, as a key supplier of investment, finance and technical services;
	Independent regulatory bodies as implementers of policy directives and responsible for managing regulatory system;
	The telecommunications sector with vital interest in sectoral policy reform, investment and services;
	Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) with increasing roles as providers of services in society;
	Scientists, IT personnel and professional bodies as providers of input on the technological, scientific and human-resource implications and requirements of NICI; and
	International and regional institutions involved in supporting the NICI policy making process.

Examples of some of the various NICI planning processes in Africa are given in the table below. Among some of the important outcomes in the infrastructure area of NICI plans include:

	Identification of linkages between national development priorities and infrastructure requirements;
	Reduction of Import Duties;
	Assessment of the telecommunication and Internet market sectors;
	Agreement between the various relevant ministries to improve co-ordination between different infrastructure roll-out plans (roads, transport, electricity, telecommunication, water etc), so that roads, for example, are not dug up more than once to lay cables or pipes;
	Development of goals for improving telecommunication and Internet links with neighbouring countries;
	Identification of changes to legislation required for e-commerce;
	Assessment of existing projects to roll-out telecommunication and broadcasting infrastructure;
	Assessment of the penetration of computers, Internet, television and radio amongst the public;
	Process for setting up a national Network Information Centre (NIC) and various Internet domain registration procedures;
	An assessment of the HRD needs and sources of training available;
	Development of projects for various sectoral networks - Education, health, trade, government, agriculture, etc; and
	Definition of the roles and responsibilities of the different actors.

Source: M. Jensen

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7.2 Public/private sector partnerships

One of the important principles that has gained attention among efforts to improve information infrastructure roll-out has been the idea of public/private sector partnerships, and/or 'smart partnerships'. These are based on the idea that many areas of infrastructure development can be best achieved through a mix of government and private sector involvement. This is already taking place amongst telecommunication operators that have been partially privatised, but the range of other possibilities is generally unclear and identification and awareness raising of the opportunities for public/private partneships needs to take place.

These could include areas such as network development and maintenance for the delivery of government services, the joint operation of telecentres, Internet Service Provision and operation of broadcast networks.

Although this reports focuses on the issues relating to the improvement of specific information infrastructures, it is clear that the availability of sufficient human resources will continue to be an overriding issue in many areas and has been alluded to in number of instances above. Awareness raising is also in some respects a human resource development issue which will continue to be important, as is the more general need to develop the capacity to deal with the rapid changes being brought on by the use of new technologies.

The major problem in the area of HRD is that the pool of expertise in ICTs in the region is relatively small (at all levels, from policy making down to use), which contributes to the limited deployment of infrastructure and the high price of access. Rural areas in particular suffer with very scarce expertise in computer maintenance and software troubleshooting. With the very low pay scales in the African civil service this problem is virtually insurmountable for government infrastructure operators who are continually losing their brightest and most experienced to the private sector. This situation is not unique to Africa or developing countries, but is also being faced by the developed world where infrastructure demands have also outpaced the supply of experienced staff. However this is simply exacerbating the situation in Africa, because experienced technicians are easily able to find much higher paying jobs in Europe and North America. The only effective response to the HRD problem is to make sure it is high on the agenda of every organisation.

Currently the availability of specialist training in infrastructure operation and installation is extremely limited on the continent. In Africa there are only two major regional centres for training in telecommunications - ESMT in Senegal for francophone countries and AFRALTI in Kenya for Anglophone countries. Through an ITU support programme they are expected to be transformed into Centres of Excellence in Telecommunications Administration (CETA). CETA is intended to provide senior-level, advanced training and professional development in the areas of telecoms policies, regulatory matters and the management of telecommunications networks and services.

A number of telecommunication operators maintain their own training schools but these usually suffer from the same lack of financial resources being experienced by the operators themselves. The German international technical training assistance agency, Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft (CDG), has sent a large number of telecom trainees to Germany over the last 20 years, and many other development agencies have similar, if smaller, programmes.

In general the international community has already played a strong role in training and capacity building in Africa and it is expected that this will continue to be an important activity for developed country assistance agencies. Other examples of the wide range of projects in this area that have been instituted include:

	The Establishment of a Global Telecommunications Academy by the ITU. This will operate as a brokerage service for distance learning courses. Once established, the Academy is to be self-financed through a fee payable by every course participant. The Academy aims to create a cooperative network of partners by pooling existing resources in universities, training institutes, financing bodies, governments, regional organizations and telecommunications operators, and has as its goal the promotion of training and human resources development in developing countries;
	In the Internet area, the Internet Society runs an annual developing countries training workshop where in-depth training is given to participants who are sponsored through funds raised by ISOC from the private sector. Over 100 Africans were trained at each of the last two workshops. The UNDP's SDNP programme and USAID's Leland initiative have also trained significant numbers of network technicians;
	In Cameroun UNITAR and ORSTOM have collaborated in a joint project focussing on technical capacity building in Sub-Saharan francophone Africa. The first training centre and courses have been established in Cameroon (CITI-CM) with support from the WorldBank's InfoDev fund, and additional funds from from Orstom, ACCT and others. Funds are being sought for CITI-CI (Côte d'Ivoire), CITI-SN (Sénégal), CITI-BF (Burkina-Faso), CITI-BE (Bénin), CITI-ML (Mali). At CITI-CM a network engineering course is now being run regularly;
	An Internet training programme for institutes, schools and other agencies of higher learning in Francophone and Lusophone sub-Saharan African countries called Internet pour les Ecoles Inter-Etat d'Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre has been established in a related effort under the Diderot Initiative. The first seminar was held in Montpellier, in July 1997, with support from INRIA and financed by the French Ministry of Co-operation; and
	COMNET-IT, established by the Commonwealth Secretariat (ComSec) in Malta to support ICTs in Commonwealth developing countries, and provides a number of ICT support activities such as scholarships for Commonwealth country students to obtain post graduate degrees in computer science. A Regional Training Workshop on Strengthening Electronic Communication Capacities of women's organisations was held in January 1998 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Proposed HRD activities that have attracted attention include:

	Creating awareness raising programmes to improve public understanding of the application of IT, with co-operation from the public and private media, and to publicise government use of IT;
	Ensuring that all educational institutions have full Internet access, particularly for University students who are often barred from using the campus Internet service due to lack of facilities;
	Developing training programmes in rural areas to teach basic infrastructure maintenance skills; and
	Establishing 'centres of excellence or specialisation' to train policy makers, network operators and users in government and private sector, and provision of opportunities for advanced training at existing regional centres of excellence. Centres of excellence are expensive to maintain and there may be a perception that high quality training can only be obtained outside the region, making it difficult in some countries to attract good students in sufficient numbers to justify expenditures. Regional centres of excellence, coupled with seasonal outreach facilities and distance-learning programmes to strengthen national centres should prove to be an effective solution in many cases.

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8.1 Broad needs and Goals

	Develop new institutional models and change existing institutions to take into account the new dynamics of an information society;
	Ensure sufficient awareness of the necessity of, and requirements for, infrastructure development among policy and decision makers;
	Encourage the development of an improved culture of information exchange and sharing;
	Urgently address the severe deficiencies in the underlying telecommunications networks and high costs for its use, including the adoption of targets for telecom infrastructure roll-out on the continent;
	Reduce the high cost of communication services and equipment relative to income levels;
	Find innovative ways to meet the ICT infrastucture needs of the 70% or more African people who live in rural areas;
	Ensure recognition by government of the increased role of ICTs in the development process, and in the integration of Africa into the global economy;
	Accelerate the development of policies to improve the environment for increased investment in the telecommunication sector, in particular through the creation of more attractive environments for increased local and foreign private investment;
	Develop 'smart' partnerships between governments, the private sector, intergovernmental organisations and international development agencies to address infrastructure needs;
	Institute national information and communication infrastructure policy development mechanisms involving broad participation from all sectors;
	Institute a major expansion of human resource development and skills transfer programmes using innovative approaches to education and training at all levels;
	Improve regional, sub-regional and bilateral co-operation between countries and economic blocs in Africa;
	Develop and communicate a clear vision of Africa's needs to the rest of the world;
	Develop a comprehensive strategy for improving the availability of international bandwidth; and
	Ensure that marginalised groups, in particular, women, youth and the disabled are prioritised in obtaining the necessary skills and access to ICTs.

8.2 Awareness Raising

	Improve the awareness of the importance of a connectivity strategy at the top levels of national decision making including special efforts to sensitise heads of state and chief executives of the private and public sector to the broad policy goals and the importance of the information infrastructure to other sectors;
	Ensure that technical language used is accessible to policy makers and obtain examples of case studies which demonstrate how connectivity makes a difference in the lives of people and in meeting development challenges;
	Encourage activities to raise awareness among policy makers, assisting them to define local policies for improving connectivity;
	Encourage activities to raise awareness among African PTOs to help them take into account the seismic shifts occurring in the global telecommunications environment;
	Organise specific awareness raising programmes and pilot projects on the potential of developing public shared access facilities (e.g. smart pay phones, telecentres, community information centres) to help overcome the high cost of access in rural areas and help to address universal access goals;
	Develop means to encourage involvement of the diaspora in developments in Africa; and
	Make use of existing international and national events to reach further consensus on strategy.

8.3 Government policies and regulation  

	Develop clear and well co-ordinated policies and guidelines through broad national participation, international consultation and within agreed regional and sub-regional frameworks;
	Ensure that there is sufficient public funding for the establishment of effective regulators and national broadcasters;
	Improve the capacity of regulators to evaluate new technologies and projects, ensure adherence to regulations and to avoid being unduly influenced by the PTOs and sector ministries to which they are responsible;
	Respond to shifts in revenue generating opportunities caused by GMPCS, Internet telephony, call-back and refile;
	Ensure transparent policies and corruption free licensing and procurement procedures;
	Develop responses to the global changes in accounting rate agreements, GATS and WTO agreements. This would include developing strategies for telecom operators to cope with the impacts of the changing accounting rate regime, Internet telephony and by-pass and examining the effect of these developments on the profitability of new capital investment;
	Avoid privatisation before an effective regulatory environment is established;
	Formulate policies on restrictions on foreign ownership and cross ownership;
	Institute regular reviews of sector policies and regulatory arrangements which are aimed at improving connectivity. This would include development of mechanisms to monitor the progress of infrastructural development;
	Make case studies of countries (including some outside Africa) that have had sector reform for some time to identify effective policy and legislative models;
	Participate in efforts to establish regional and sub-regional information exchange and collaboration mechanisms;
	Ensure that consumers benefit from the reduced cost of international access and that tariffs are cost based;
	Ensure that exclusivity in licenses granted does not restrict the choice available of new technologies and services;
	Adopt licensing policies to facilitate the take up of the services that will be provided over new infrastructures such as GMPCS, the power grid and VSAT;
	Reduce government taxation of telecom operators to ensure that they are able to re-invest more of their profits in network expansion;
	Ensure that license fees levied on new operators are not too large to reduce the availability of capital for network buildout or will increase tariffs to consumers;
	Ensure interoperability with the existing networks of new infrastructures such as GSM cellular and other wireless systems, including roaming, directory services and sufficient data speeds for internet access;
	Ensure that there is a free market in the provision of infrastructure and value added services.
	Develop responses to the technological impacts on intellectual property rights;
	Develop community approaches to infrastructure development by making provision for village level or other small scale operators (NGOs, community groups, women's groups and small businesses) wishing to invest in establishing services for their local needs and allowing the establishment of local telecommunications co-operatives;
	Reformulate universal service obligations in concrete terms in the light of new technology options now available;
	Ensure that the provision of access to infrastructure coincides with special programmes to support indigenous content and applications development, and the establishment of procedures to identify priority sectors of the economy for special connectivity efforts, including prioritising initiatives involving youth and women. This would also include ensuring that government invests in network infrastructure to link all public institutions - in particular local government offices, post offices, schools, clinics and libraries;
	Establish procedures to ensure that development projects in all sectors have an ICT component built into them;
	Eliminate import tariffs on ICT related equipment and services; and
	Identify mechanisms to encourage local manufacture of suitable ICT equipment.
	Introduce policies to address the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem.

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8.4 Finance and investment

Institute policy measures to encourage international and local private sector investment.

Encourage national regulatory bodies to work with national and international investment promotion agencies to establish 'one-stop-shops' with sound investment package incentives to attract foreign investors. This could include: Developing a clearinghouse mechanism, for use by operators and entrepreneurs seeking investment, to make widely available the information needed to prospective investors; Developing guidelines and identifying sources for the production of the information required by investors including financial reporting of existing operations, new project proposals, market analysis and general economic investment and risk analysis; Develop online information resources (web sites) for use by entrepreneurs to identify sources of  investment and development funds; Create special opportunities to allow local financial participation; Support the establishment of the African Telecommunications Development Fund and sub-regional funds to act as a means for pooling investment and attracting the private sector, the international community and other telecommunications development funds such as WorldTel; Encourage support from development agencies with a regional focus, as the ADB and the Lome/EU, for regional connectivity projects in the context of improving economic integration of the continent; Improve the sharing of information on models for public/private partnerships; Develop innovative methods for reducing the cost of equipment in new investments in infrastructure, such as through making use of the technology with the best price/performance ratios, and also through pushing for relaxation in the tied procedures of procurement in bilateral loans and suppliers credit, as well as by using joint procurement strategies; Reduce the perceived and actual risks in investment by setting up a special insurance company for telecoms development in Africa. This would include government action to bring down risk levels as outlined further above and in the Policies section; and Improve the consultation between potential service providers and end-users to develop business models which can provide more affordable services.

8.5 Human resources and capacity building

	Encourage the development of sufficient human resources to design, install, maintain and use new infrastructure and applications;
	Create centres of excellence able to train policy makers, network operators and users;
	Augment this by supporting the sub-regional centres of excellence such as AFRALTI and establishing international databanks of specialised human resources and training centres;
	Establish mechanisms for skills transfer and capacity building, in particular in the areas of regulations, telecommunications network buildout skills, wireless usage and PC equipment maintenance, including in-country secondments and exchanges with developed countries and other countries in the region and common certification and accreditation programmes;
	Improve retention of skilled staff through better recognition of their abilities (higher rankings, increased remuneration and  provision of on-the-job training in return for commitments to the employer.);
	Commit resources to ensuring that at least all tertiary institutions have full Internet access down to the student level and develop programmes to link secondary and primary schools to the Internet as soon as possible;
	Develop online further education and training programmes;
	Develop national programmes to encourage computer-literacy at all levels; and
	Establish telecentre operator training programmes.

8.6 Technology

	Develop critical assessments and improve the availability of information on the expanding range of technology options available. This would include:
	Improving information exchange between operators on the results of technology trials, to increase the availability of sound experience on the technology options and choices;
	Revisiting the broad guidelines used to choose between satellite and cable systems in light of new technological developments and the increased presence of competing international providers;
	Improving mechanisms for regional and sub-regional information exchange among operators and carry out case studies of different technology solutions;
	Improving the use of information from existing studies such as RASCOM, verifying the assumptions used and formalising the methodologies;
	Identify potential areas amenable to the development of local manufacturing of equipment;
	Ensure that new technologies are complementary and not destructive to investments already made;
	Develop national and sub-regional frequency and spectrum management plans;
	Explore the use of push technologies and asymmetric connections to the Internet to improve the utility and cost effectiveness of the medium; and
	Improve the degree of regional co-operation in the choices of cable and satellite technologies. This would involve exploring the potential of regional or sub-regional collaboration in the adoption of common technologies and processes of standardisation, a) to create local manufacturing base and b) to create economies of scale, c) to streamline licensing and type approval procedures.

8.7 Regional co-operation and partnerships

	Develop regional partnerships to accelerate and optimize the development potential of increased infrastructure roll-out;
	Distinguish between needs for connectivity between African countries and connectivity with countries or regions outside of the continent;
	Develop regional and sub-regional co-ordination procedures on regulatory and tariff policies;
	Improve information exchange between countries on best practices, restructuring models and regulation, including the development of inventories of projects and the creation of mechanisms for comparing operational and network build-out performance, including fulfilment of universal service commitments;
	Assist regulators in developing forums on a sub-regional basis to address common issues.
	Adopt common standards for the use of new technologies and in procurement procedures;
	Clarify the role of PATU in these activities;
	Collaborate on joint procurement strategies to further reduce costs and reduce the impact of the limited human resource base;
	Create sub-regional spectrum management and frequency plans for radio based connectivity;
	Adopt mutually compatible standards for key regulatory documentation and systems to enable investors to expand more rapidly into the markets of neighbouring countries (such as license formats, inter-connection agreements and universal service obligations);
	Adopt common strategies on reducing tariffs and transit charges for telecommunication traffic and implementing roaming agreements on mobile networks (both GMPCS and terrestrial cellular), including the establishment of a mechanism for clearing payments and financial auditing units for arbitration in accounting settlements;
	Exploit the role of regional organisations and intergovernmental agencies in sensitising heads of state and other high-level decision makers, both nationally and within the international community;
	Develop regional or sub-regional telecommunications funds;
	Support the regional projects outlined in the African Connection produced by the forum of African ministers of communications;
	Support, expand and improve existing regional telecommunications infrastructures and initiatives - PANAFTEL, INTELCOM1, RASCOM, SAT-3, etc;
	Increase the involvement of the existing regional intergovernmental structures for stimulating connectivity initiatives - COMESA, SADC, ECOWAS, UDEAC, Lome/ACP;
	Make efforts to harmonise and reduce duplication among other sub-regional network; infrastructure building efforts, in particular those of  COMESA, SADC, the East African Co-operation, RASCOM and PANAFTEL;
	Expand and improve telecommunications links between neighbouring countries and establish direct connections between African countries where current routes travel via Europe or the US;
	Strengthen existing regional maintenance and training centres, such as ESMT and AFRALTI, and establishing other where necessary;
	Develop a regional research network amongst African universities to carry out R&D in areas of infrastructure development;
	Develop multi-country sectoral projects in content and applications to improve demand for infrastructure; and
	Identify sub-regional telecommunications hubs which can provide telecom services to other African countries at the lowest possible cost by sharing inter-continental links.

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8.8 International co-operation and partnerships

	Encourage the international development community to assist efforts to improve infrastructure;
	Encourage support for the capacity building goals described above under 'Human resources';
	Support the development of electronic information sharing and distance training resources to fulfil the needs described in 'Finance and investment' and 'Policy and regulation' above;
	Support the need to reduce the costs of international Internet connectivity by establishing a forum like the Asian group of telecom operators and regulators who are lobbying the FCC and European regulators to require ISPs to pay for their share of the link costs;
	Make efforts to reduce the difficulties of obtaining multilateral financing which currently takes an average of three years and to reduce the complexity of disbursement procedures and the stringency of conditions;
	Encourage participation in Partnerships for ICTs in Africa (PICTA) -  the co-ordinating mechanism for development agencies working in areas relating to the support for the use of ICTs in Africa;
	Assist in the development of ITU's African Information Management System for telecommunications operators;
	Encourage the ADB, ECA, UNDP and the World Bank to be facilitators for investment and resource mobilization for infrastructure development projects in the region.

8.9 Targets and monitoring

	Encourage the use of milestones used to focus on the evaluation of the progress and impact of activities; and
	Develop checkpoints to identify individual countries that are falling behind in their network development.

Bibliography and References

Africa's Information Society Initiative (AISI) Documents (ECA) http://www.bellanet.org/partners/aisi/more/index.html

Bridging the Gaps in Internet Development in Africa - Report (IDRC). 1997 http://www.idrc.ca/acacia/studies/ir-gaps.htm

CTA Observatory on ICTs http://www.agricta.org/afagrict-l

Centre international pour le developpement de l'inforoute en francais (CIDIF) http://inforoutes.cidif.org

Continental Connectivity Indicators. Mike Jensen 1999. http://www3.sn.apc.org/africa/partial.html

General Trends in Telecommunication Reform Volume 1. 1988. ITU

World Telecommunicaton Development Report. ITU 1999

Global Connectivity for Africa Conference Report, 2-4 June 1998, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. World Bank and ECA.

International Institute for Communications in Development (IICD) http://www.iicd.org

ITU Rural Connectivity and Telecentres http://www.itu.int/ITU-D-Rural

Netheads versus Bellheads - Research into Emerging Policy Issues in the Development and Deployment of Internet Protocols. Final Report For the Canadian Federal Department of Industry. T.M.Denton Consultants, Ottawa. 1998 http://www.tmdenton.com/netheads.htm

World Bank Internet Economic Toolkit for African Policy Makers. Http://www.worldbank.org/infodev/projects/finafcon.htm

Partnership for ICTs in Africa (PICTA) http://www.bellanet.org/partners/picta

SADC In the Next Millenium - Theme Document 1999– http://www.sadc.int/theme.htm

Telecommunications and Universal Service - International Experience in the Context of South African Policy Reform. Sean O'Siuchru. IDRC. 1996.

Telematics for Development In Africa - Symposium Position Paper (ITU/UNESCO/IDRC/UNECA). 1995. http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Padis/telmatics_Jensen.html

The Internet and the South - Superhighway or Dirt Track? - Report (Panos). 1996 http://www.oneworld.org/panos/panos_internet_press.html

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