A US VIEW OF DIGITAL AFRICA'S PROSPECTS - AN OFF-THE-RECORD BRIEFING

Most of News Update's coverage is firmly rooted in ICT events in the African continent. For this issue, we've taken time out to visit the USA to see how Africa looks from the other side of the Atlantic. America is the richest and most powerful nation on the planet and what it does will affect the state of Africa. It plays host to a whole range of bodies whose budgets and work will impact on the state of digital development on the continent.

Digital divide issues in general - and those of Africa in particular - have had almost unprecedented attention in America. They have engaged some of the sharpest minds in the US technology sector. But after all the euphoria and policy hoopla, things now stand at a crucial crossroads. This is what the Americans might call "a heads-up" for Africa and a lot hangs on getting things right. If the private sector individuals see their efforts fail to make an impact, then Africa will be back to being 5-10 minutes at the end of a long world sales meeting.

In the course of our US visit we talked to a wide range of individuals drawn from very different backgrounds. In order that you can hear and understand their views and perceptions as clearly as possible, this briefing is provided on an "off-the-record basis": no views or quotes are attributed.

Even for the well-informed American citizen who reads the foreign news pages of the broad-sheet newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post, Africa has not really made a great deal of an impression except for famine and human interest stories. As one technology consultant who has done work in Africa put it: “It is very much off the radar in the US. The success of the Indian software industry has made quite an impression but the only thing in Africa to register has been the success of cell phones."

There has been renewed interest recently in the continent because of the visit by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and U2's Bono. There is talk of a new US$10 billion Millennium Fund but congressional approval has not yet been obtained. But whilst this is seen as good news in Africa, O'Neill is widely seen (according to one Washington insider) as an "entertaining lightweight" who allows his tongue to run ahead of his brain in making public statements.

His comments about Ugandan water wells go to the heart of a fundamental misunderstanding between America and Africa (and the wider donor and NGO community). Private sector people (of whom O'Neill is one) frequently ask: what are the metrics? In other words what are the numbers? By this they mean how can you quantify the problem you're trying to solve, what precisely are you going to do to solve it and why will it make a difference? Africans and the wider donor and NGO community tend to stress the complexity and intractability of the problems to be addressed: little surprise that they find it easy to sneer at what they see as the naiveté of someone wanting to cut through complexity to find solutions. But as one NGO person deeply involved in Africa admitted ruefully:"40 years of capacity building and what have we got to show for it?"

O'Neill in a speech last week on his African visit at Washington's Georgetown University stressed 3 priorities: education, water and health. He laid stress on the connection between aid, accountability and governance. However when pressed on the connection between this and American foreign policy implicitly admitted that "strategic partnerships" (as in the case of Pakistan) might override these principles.

This echoes a broader shift that will affect Africa. Before 9/11, it might have been possible to engage the Administration's attention but now the prospects are much less promising. Time and again people said what one observer of Government put forcefully: “Africa’s a bloody serious problem but we've got others more pressing on our hands elsewhere".

The idea of using ICT in places like Africa has produced a wide-ranging consensus between the private sector, donors, foundations and NGOs. The idea of ICT as a tool for development and economic growth is widely accepted and understood. The difficulty has been turning this policy consensus into decisive funding and investment decisions. As one foundation person put it, there's been a difficulty "productising" from this policy consensus: in other words how do you produce sustainable projects in either market or need terms? One private sector initiative has gone through all sorts of ideas but is finding it difficult to identify products or services that will make sense in commercial terms.

From the African perspective there is certain amount of suspicion of private sector involvement. Time and time again, we are asked: what's in it for them?

There are three main reasons why individuals and companies in the technology sector in the US are interested in Africa:

*   It represents an intellectual challenge: They are fascinated by the opportunity to see whether they can find solutions using technology and business savvy. They have the classic American "can do" attitude and relish the challenge. They have seen technology transform economies and lives in a different context and believe it might be possible to create this effect in Africa.

*   It is enlightened self-interest: The mantra of "Smaller, cheaper, faster, better technology" means that it should reach a cost where emerging markets will begin to develop. One company is consciously looking to find a way of making sufficiently cheap devices that meet a need that will begin to create these new markets: “In a commercial sense, there's a need for growth (in Africa) and there's a market not being served." There's also a growing acknowledgement that innovation may now come from the South as well as developed countries as they begin to make use of new technologies. There's particular interest in wireless technologies which the USA has not really fully developed.

*   There is a genuine, caring interest: There is a tradition of philanthropy and service in parts of US public life that for those elsewhere is sometimes hard to understand. For some, with wealth goes responsibility for others less fortunate.

But now the excitement of the early love affair between the tech sector and Africa is over and they are beginning to see the incompatibilities in the relationship.

One quoted a country in Africa where the government changed (through elections) and the present administration seems to be systematically tearing up all the contract commitments made by its predecessors: "This is not a basis for long-term external investment". They are also appalled by the daunting obstacles of the African legal system for anything contractual or regulatory in business terms. African governments need to understand that they are still placing enormous obstacles in front of those wanting to invest: some of the recent telco privatisation processes are viewed as being particularly opaque.

They are beginning to see the difficulties of creating business ideas that will "scale-up" in a continent of small markets and very limited management cadres. Why do these business ideas need to scale-up? Because if you put money in you will need to be making investments on a sufficient scale to make adequate returns to justify your original investments. Therefore Africa is stuck in an unbearable double bind: its ICT markets are too small to justify large-scale investment but without large-scale investment they have little or no chance of getting larger. What the US tech minds are trying to find is a pivotal key investment that will unlock other streams of growth in these markets.

All those we spoke to believed that the creation of more competition remains essential. There are many US tech and telco companies doing business in Africa but only a few are doing so in a ways that are helping to change the shape of the business environment by introducing new competition or extending services.

They have also begun to understand the difficulties of working in markets where government is such a large part of the environment and potentially one of the biggest customers. As you would expect, Government doesn't behave with commercial instincts and it has simply too many priorities to be decisive about creating ICT strategies for change. African governments ought to be able to harness this private sector interest to attract external investment but all too often they treat external investors as if they were donors to be parted from their money. US tech people find this worrying and are unlikely to fall for it.

The policy consensus referred to above has been forged through a range of bodies that have brought governments, inter-governmental organizations, the private sector, NGOs and charitable foundations together: the G8 Dot Force (reaching the end of its time-limited existence), the UN ICT Task Force and the Markle Foundation's Digital Opportunity Initiative being amongst the more significant.

For these great big policy leviathans, it's the end of the beginning. They've agreed in broad terms where they'd like to go and the route forward has been mapped out. But it's like a large plane has taken off but is now having difficulty finding places to land. As they start to "engage gears" at a country level, they are finding it harder to take next step to implementation. Sure, there's no shortage of projects but how do you find those that will make the differences claimed in the much-trumpeted advocacy examples given in your analysis?

Americans use the expression "getting traction" to express the idea that something is actually beginning to be successful in market terms and the phrase recurred in several conversations. One of the confusions is that the NGO/donor sector (for all its talk about sustainability) is actually looking at social projects that have little or no chance of making profits as they meet social needs outside the market, whilst the private sector believes that in order to grow these markets you have to find things that will make a profit. There are occasionally projects that seem to have the potential to bridge this divide: they meet social needs but are capable of being offered at on or near market prices. We came across two; one involves health reporting and the other concerned with satellite communications for remote areas. There are probably more out there. That said, four consistent criteria for ICT projects come through from all sides: "Sustainability, replicability, scalability and affordability."

The UN ICT Task Force is bidding to inherit the mantle of the (shortly to finish) G8 Dot Force. It has no funding but is trying use the UN's respected neutrality to act as a broker between projects and funders. In theory this should be a good role and they certainly "talk the talk".

However because it is a UN body it is unable to provide straightforward "leadership by ideas": it is not able to say to countries that there are things that will make you more successful. The more thoughtful senior personnel in inter-governmental organisations realise this and are somewhat frustrated. As one put it: "It's necessity to show intellectual leadership in the process but there's not much sign that's happening."

There is no doubting the sincerity of UN ICT Task Force's commitment but there are those that question its effectiveness. One person closely involved in the process told us: "Important private sector executives on the Task Force are pissed off and are talking of taking a walk". Put at its harshest, inter-governmental bodies want the money the private sector can bring but don't want to give it any real influence either in ideas or policy terms.

The source of the private sector's frustration is old-style UN behaviour - national interest lobbying, over-elaborate formal processes, bureaucratic time-scales and the issuing of lofty statements. They fear that the lack of emphasis on action is the disease, not the symptom. They feel there is a patronising attitude to private sector involvement, particularly in the  context of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). (See report on the African regional meeting in Bamako below). They want them to be involved but will not allow them to circulate papers spelling out their ideas to others involved.

Several people (from the private sector, NGOs and intergovernmental organisations) openly wondered what this long and convoluted process that will only finally conclude in 2005 will achieve. Cynics in the development community noted that this was only two years before the 2007 poverty targets are meant to be met, leaving not much time for "the information society" to actually make any impact on them. If this is really a democratic process (which we doubt) then it is not really very effective. As one private sector initiative executive commented: "They need to manage by objectives and do something more meaningful than simply issuing more damn proclamations."

Put plainly, he means they have to define achievable objectives and indicate where the money is coming from to meet them. Meanwhile all is not well with ICT initiatives in the NGO sector in the US. Two "new wave" digital divide organisations are in financial trouble from lack of funding and one with a major initiative in the making is financially stretched. Another merged with a long established organisation not so long ago because of the difficulties of fundraising as a new organisation. And yet another recently cut its staff by a third because of the downturn in charitable giving. The funding climate is currently not very favourable for new ICT initiatives according to one well-informed trust officer: “A combination of the dotcom bubble burtsing and 9/11 have meant that priorities have shifted in this country."

Nevertheless as with the private sector, there's considerable interest in what lessons might be learned from new technologies in the African context: “There’s lots of people in rural America interested in experiments in wireless provision and eagerly awaiting to see how these initiatives play out in places like Africa." The underlying problem is perhaps best summarised by one person with several years African experience under his belt in both consultancy and government: “Anything we have (in technology terms), you can get in Africa. There's no chasm out there called the digital divide that you fall down.

It's the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' distributed geographically in different ways. There are highly skilled people in Africa. The telephone provision statistics are improving dramatically. The general problem is who can afford it". The challenge for those wanting to change Africa's prospects through ICT is how to work with the energy and potential created by recently policy initiatives in ways that will open new prospects for its have-nots.

REPORT FROM BAMAKO: AFRICA STAKES A CLAIM TO BEING PART OF THE WORLD INFORMATION SOCIETY

African ICT leaders converged in Bamako Mali on May 28-30 at the invitation of President Alpha Oumar Konare with one objective  - to assess key challenges, opportunities and constraints and develop a common vision and a plan of action to address the challenges of an information society for Africa.  After three days, the 51 countries assembled came up with a declaration on the framework for the long march into the information society as a negotiating platform at the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) to take place in Geneva in 2003, writes Muriuki Muriethi.

The African Regional Conference also known as a Bamako 2002   made declarations on the following issues:

- That global information society address the interests of all nations big and small.

- Local content have space in the information society and indeed be accorded high priority.

- There must be a guarantee of fair access for African people.

- To create partnerships to build the global information society without leaving out the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Bamako 2002 also set out principles to achieve the declarations cited above that;

- All citizens be provided with means of using ICT networks as a public service.

- Every citizen be guaranteed freedom of expression and protected access to information in the global public domain as part of an inalienable right to access information constituting a heritage of mankind.

- The technology supply is diversified by removal of regulatory, political, and financial obstacles to meet to the needs of the citizens.

- Promote free software to spread technology at least cost The full statement is available at: http://www.geneva2003.org/bamako2002/docs_word/Dec_bko2002_en.doc

Bamako 2002 was organised under the patronage of Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General under Resolution (A/RES/56183) promulgated by the UN on Dec 21^st 2001. The resolution sets the framework to convene a World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) with an objective to formulate a common vision and understanding of the global information society. WSIS is expected to adopt a declaration of principles and an Action Plan to facilitate effective development of information society and help bridge the digital divide and to be held in two phases. Phase 1 will take place in Geneva in Dec 2003 while the second phase will be in Tunis in 2005. The UN selected the International

Telecommunications Union (ITU) as the technical agency to lead the WSIS process. Bamako 2002 was therefore a key entry point for Africa into WSIS process with themes based around Information society and Africa   ­ what it can get, give, preserve or benefit from the information society Bamako 2002 did not start with empty plate. On the table, Africa had the African Information Society Initiative (AISI) (http://www.uneca.org/aisi/aisi.htm) launched in 1996 as a framework to the information society. The vision is an information society by 2010.

*   Defining the information society

Out the outset, there was a concern that the Information Society was still evolving and Africa has not made a rendezvous to dock in the fast moving Information society. An even greater difficulty  was a working definition for the information society. Yoshiu Utsumi, Secretary General of ITU offered a  definition as a society that will exhibit or experience the following features:

- Freedom from tyranny of distance.

- Economy of scale will no longer important.

- Death of hierarchical distribution of products and services.

African with up to 70% of its population in the rural areas face challenges that can be addressed by the information society as defined above. From that perspective, Bamako 2002 set out the terms for Africa to be a player in the information society, to benefit from the opportunities provided, and to seal the digital divide.

At the regional level, there are many initiatives taking place in Africa designed to encourage an information society. These initiatives tend to be tied to institutions not the broader cause of obtaining the information society and are therefore tending to work in isolation.  An initiative by

Ministers of Communications in Africa - African Connection (http://www.africanconnection.org) is intended to create a common ground among the many initiatives and marry the initiatives to a cause, not to an institution. African connection has noted the striking features of e-readiness surveys at national level. One country for example carried out six surveys with different e-readiness tools and unfortunately, the outcomes are so markedly different to be unlikely to be beneficial.

However by and large, countries themselves have not been left out of the processes of creating an information society. Sixteen countries, big and small, took to the podium to share their experiences and visions at the national level in the quest for an information society. The size of the network did not deter them from aspiring to build an information society.

Despite a relatively smaller infrastructure, Central Africa Republic is struggling and dreaming of an Information Society for its 3.4 million population. Being a land locked country, creating an information society is the way to go by exploiting: e-commerce, distance learning and telemedicine. Using these tools, it can overcome the disadvantage of being landlocked with its network of 8,000 fixed lines, 14,000 cellular connections and 2 cyber cafe’s On the other hand, Zimbabwe indicated that it has already launched a comprehensive e-readiness survey. The outcome will guide the deployment of a coordinated strategy to launch a Knowledge economy (K-economy). According to the Deputy Minister of Transport and communications, the government will launch an e-awareness week to popularise the quest for a "k-economy".

In all the presentations, the key challenge is where to place the championship of the information society within the government. While many countries see information society as a telecommunication infrastructure issue and therefore placed under the ambit of the ministry responsible for telecommunications, others saw it as a science and technology issue. A growing number of countries have elevated it to a higher national level. Mali the host country recognise information society as cross cutting issue that best functions at higher level: the Prime Minister is in charge of it.

*   DIGITAL DIVIDE - A HYPE TO SIDETRACK AFRICA FROM DEVELOPMENT?

One unanswered question was whether digital-divide is more than simply "hype" that will sidetrack Africa while the key issue is a development-divide.  While the lack of ICT infrastructure is glaringly obvious, this is also true for other sectors of socio-economic development in Africa and there is perhaps too much emphasis on it at the expense of the other developmental goals. This tends to narrow down and over-simplify a huge national and regional development challenge to a sectoral development objective whereas the one (ICT) should be seen a subset of the other (development).

An interesting dimension of the information society discussions was the human rights aspect and recognition that the core business of information society is information and knowledge.  By moving information and knowledge into the private domain through an Intellectual Property Rights regime protected by copyrights laws, Africa may become locked out from its own information. Additionally, the wholesale privatisation of the means of access to information (telecom infrastructure, internet and broadcasting etc) would lock out  access by the poor. The two components ­ control of information and knowledge on one hand and the control of the means of access are critical for Africa to participate meaningfully in the information society. Bamako 2002 did not fully address the ownership of information and knowledge but declared information to be a fundamental human right that WSIS has to guarantee. No mechanism was addressed to reconcile this fundamental human right to information with profit driven, private sector entrepreneurship in the delivery of information.

Infrastructure was repeatedly recognised as critically lacking. Data provided by ITU depicted chilling statistics. Despite the fast growth in the last few years, the penetration for fixed, mobile and the Internet was still very low in Sub Sahara Africa (SSA).  Forecast penetration in SSA by 2005 for Internet, mobile and fixed would be a paltry 0.58, 1.22 and 1.1. More still needs to be done to alter the pattern of growth.  Due to poverty in the region, a way forward would be to address affordability and which calls for the reduction of the cost of the technology. Africa effectively "rents" its technology because it has to rely on organisations on outside Africa to provide it and therefore cannot control costs of technology.  A way out according to Jan Mutai, Secretary General of African Telecommunications Union was to gradually build a research capacity in Africa, create or join existing standardisation bodies as the key to eventually getting out this "rent position".

In the meantime, however, Africa should move with what it has. It took 5 years to build 30 million cellular lines, it should use the next few years to build another 30 million Internet connections to launch itself on the information society highway.

*   SIGNIFICANT OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE PRIVATE SECTOR

For the private sector, this is an on opportunity. It can build the massive networks like WASC by Alcatel with a high profile presence at the conference or build applications with emerging entrepreneurs. A growing opportunity is the exploitation of offshore ICT back-office work for developed countries.

The Senegalese President announced the launch of the first undersea cable (WASC) linking West Africa to Asia through South Africa on May 27th, a day before the conference. This is a milestone for the delivery of the increased bandwidth to Africa.  In the skies above, Rascom is due to launch two satellites costing US$400M at 249¹ east to be managed by Rascomstar registered offshore in Mauritius. The ownership of Rascomstar comprise of 30 African telcos with an equity of US$41M, GPTC of Libya US$42M, Alcatel with US$18M as major players. Signatures on the contract for the manufacture of the satellite is due within next few weeks.

A significant step has been taken to bring bandwidth to   Africa through WASC, more however will need to be done to bring the same in Eastern Africa with no submarine cable being plan in the near term and more significantly to extend the bandwidth inland.

*   OAU ABSENT FROM THE TABLE

After the serious discussion at the conference, one was left wondering what African institutions can bring on board to build the information society. The OAU and all its agencies apart from African Telecommunications Union did not participate. The same African political leadership who participated in UN Resolution A/RES/56183 establishing the WSIS process failed to remind the OAU to participate in Bamako. This is disheartening considering that EU was at the high table promoting the interest of European region. As Africa moves to recreate the OAU as the African Union in July 2002, Africans are keenly hoping to see proactivity from this premier organisation in African economic renaissance.

Another feature was the high representation of the Francophie in the conference, something not commonly found in other African conferences. Indeed Boutros Boutrous-Ghali the Secretary General of the Agence Internationale de la Francophonie was present in person and addressed the opening ceremony. The flip side of course, was that the leadership of the Anglophonie was noticeably absent. The Commonwealth was not there but you might question whether its presence necessary?

Despite its flaws, Bamako 2002 was a serious attempt to take stock of the challenges towards the evolution of an information society and prepare a foundation for future decisions on WSIS. For his foresight, President Alpha Konare deserves credit by taking the challenge and offering Africa a platform to negotiate itself a stake in the WSIS process. No doubt in appreciation of this, the conference called for his appointment to lead the preparatory process to Geneva 2003. In hindsight, Mali sitting astride the harsh Sahara desert and among the poorest country in the world rekindled the thoughts of the poor continent of Africa in the world arena. Despite the poverty, Mali stood tall to invite Africa and took the initiative to bring Africa on the table. This table was near Timbuktu (or more correctly Tombouctou) at the edge of the Sahara and a major crossroad to the prosperous north under the Songhai Empire in 14^th century. By then Timbuktu was a leading terminus giving hope for trans-Saharan caravans as they headed in the uncharted terrain of the Sahara desert in search of prosperity. 500 years later, Mali gives hope in the uncharted and fast evolving information society and a challenge to the poorest continent   to stand up tall on WSIS table to stake its claim in the information society.