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World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Africa Regional Preparatory Conference Address
by Mr. K.Y. Amoako, Your Excellency, John
A. Kufuor, President of the Republic of Ghana, On behalf of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), I want to welcome you all to this Second African Regional Preparatory Conference of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). I also want to take this opportunity to thank the Government and people of Ghana for generously hosting this event. As a son of this soil, I remain very proud of the warm Akwaaba that we always extend to our visitors and this event is no exception. We meet in Accra this week for what His Excellency, President Kufour has described as: “An historic stopover in an African journey towards an Information Society”. My colleagues and I, at the ECA, could not agree more with this sentiment. For us, this meeting,
convened exactly half way between the Geneva and Tunis phases of the Summit,
is critical. Because it provides an important opportunity to review Africa’s outcomes from Geneva and formulate a regional action plan that will serve as a basis for a united African negotiating position, in Tunis, at the end of this year. Excellencies, It is fair to say
that we left Geneva in 2003 with reasons to smile, but at the same time
without any doubts about the challenges still ahead. At the same time, however, we left Geneva acutely aware of three key outstanding deficits in the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) capacity in the region: First, that there is a need for much greater political commitment on the part of African governments to comprehensive ICT development; Second, that there is a need for more commitment from international and local partners to financing ICT for development initiatives in Africa; and Third, that it is imperative that all stakeholders play an effective role in the information society. It is these issues
that we now seek to address as we head for Tunis. And, with the formulation and implementation of numerous national e-strategies across the region, we now see several ICT champions emerging. Indeed, we have several such prominent champions with us in Accra today. Tunisia, under the leadership of President Zine-el Abidine Ben Ali, is one of the leading examples of ICT development in Africa. The country has also done the continent proud by bringing WSIS Phase Two to Africa. I am therefore delighted that Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, is here with us today. And, as the video just shown demonstrates, President Paul Kagame, who is also with us today, has put Rwanda in Africa’s ICT premier league. Your Excellency, ECA is grateful to you for the strong support you have given our regional ICT efforts as well as your vocal appreciation of our work in this area. To be sure, many other countries represented here today are also making big strides in the ICTs field, including the host country. As President Kufuor has already elaborated this morning, Ghana has set up the Kofi Annan Centre for ICT Excellence and now has a strong national ICT policy in place. Additionally, we also have several first-rate international champions of ICTs in Africa with us. Allow me to recognize ECA’s core partners in this field who financially supported the planning and logistics for this conference. They include the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Canada Fund for Africa, Industry Canada & IDRC, La Francophonie, UNESCO, and the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP). Excellencies, It is almost ten years to the day since African stakeholders began an intense, but somewhat late, dialogue on the information society and what it meant for our region. Many of you will remember the situation on the continent a decade ago, when the importance of seizing the opportunities offered by the information age was not as much on the policy agenda in Africa as it is today. It was in response to this situation that ECA worked closely with member States in order to formulate the African Information Society Initiative (AISI) which set the regional framework for accelerating Africa's participation in the information society and bridging the global digital divide. We, at ECA, are pleased to note that, there has been a decade of ICT progress in Africa since the launch of this initiative in 1996. From a situation where, a decade ago, most countries languished under telecommunication monopolies, the reverse is now the case. Telephony is one key example, which I am sure, has impacted on all of us in this room and millions of others. In 1993, there was no country with a competitive market environment for telecommunication. However, by 2004, 41 countries had competitive markets, allowing mobile telephony to flourish. Since 2001 when Uganda became one of the first African countries to have more mobile phones than fixed-lines, more than 30 other nations have followed suit. In Morocco, Kenya and Nigeria, mobile subscribers outnumber fixed-line users at an incredible ratio of 6:1. Clearly, liberalization and privatization measures have been key to allowing competition. Whereas there were only 5 independent telecommunication regulatory agencies in 1992, there were 40 such bodies in 2003. Furthermore, Africa’s commitment to ICTs for development has also been demonstrated through the NEPAD Action Plan, which identifies information technology as a key priority sector. Looking back therefore, we can see that we have certainly come a long way in the last ten years. But looking forward,
and at the situation in other regions in the world, we can also see that
we still have a long, long way to go. This year presents a perfect opportunity for this, as 2005 has been targeted as a critical year in the international community’s battle against poverty. In September this year, the UN will hold a special session of the General Assembly to review progress and step up efforts towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. It is already clear that serious action is needed if Africa is to achieve the Goals in 2015 rather than over a hundred years later. We know, for example, that on present trends, Sub Saharan Africa is unlikely to achieve Goal one (the eradication of extreme hunger and halving of poverty) until 2150. And we also know that on present trends we will not achieve the second goal (universal primary education) until 2130. As a result of this knowledge, there are already several useful initiatives underway dedicated to spurring a major global effort to put Africa on track to meet the Goals. I want to mention just two of them this morning. First, there is the work of the UN Millennium Project Task Force, that was established by the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan in 2002 to develop a concrete action plan for meeting the Millennium Development Goals. The Taskforce recently presented its report, Investing in Development, which calls for a major up scaling in development financing by the international community. It estimates that, in order for sub-Saharan Africa to reach the MDGs, aid will have to increase, in real terms, from last year’s level of just under 25 billion US dollars, to 37 billion this year and then climb steadily to 73 billion by 2015. The report makes a strong argument that this increase is essential if we are to deal effectively with several fundamental structural impediments, including small market size, adverse trade relations with the rest of the world, low agricultural productivity and a heavy disease burden. Information and communication technologies can significantly help us overcome many of these structural impediments - I will focus on that a little later. The second initiative is the Commission for Africa, established by Prime Minister Blair, on which I am honoured to serve, alongside President Mkapa of Tanzania, Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia, and several other prominent Africans and international leaders. The Commission aims to propose a solid package of measures that the international community must urgently take in order to seriously tackle Africa’s poverty trap. Over the past few months, my fellow commissioners and I have therefore been discussing the best options for enabling positive change in Africa. Our recommendations,
which will be published in the Commission report next month will provide
input to the discussions on Africa at the G8 Summit in Scotland in July,
which Mr. Blair will chair. The harnessing of ICTs for development is a critical element of the new thinking and action that is needed in order to tackle the major challenges faced by African countries. It has therefore also been a key feature of the Commission’s work. Let me just mention three examples of how ICTs can help progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. First, the construction of ICT infrastructure in rural areas can contribute to the achievement of the principal millennium goal by stimulating a technological transformation in the agricultural sector. Second, ICTs can help in the achievement of the second goal by, increasing the supply of teachers through ICT-based distance education. Third, ICTs can contribute to the achievement of all the health related goals through expanding and enhancing the delivery of basic health services. I am happy to learn that the various pre-conference workshops have addressed some of these issues and have identified recommendations for moving forward. Therefore, in concluding, I want to highlight the main areas where I hope this Conference will help Africa pick up the pace as we move towards Tunis. First, we must move quicker with Infrastructure Development, as this area continues to be the Achilles heels of Africa’s Information Society. For many countries the cost of updating telecommunications infrastructure is immense and constitutes the most daunting constraint to deploying ICTs. Another issue we must seek to resolve is the legal and regulatory framework. We simply need to move faster in improving national legal and regulatory environments in order to facilitate the effective introduction of information and communication applications in various essential fields. We will not optimize the available digital opportunities until we do so. The other unresolved issue is Financing Mechanisms for the Information Society. We need to be bold and innovative in this regard. Africa also needs to show that it is ready to carry more of its own load in this area. For example, this meeting could make a big push for ICT investments to become a permanent feature of African national budgets, and not just items of expenditure from donors. I will be chairing a high-level round table on this topic later today. I hope that through this dialogue some consensus will emerge as to the way forward. The final issue is captured in the Conference theme: Access. What is unique about this event is the presence of not just ICT activists and digital experts. We also have physicians and health workers, people working in agriculture, businessmen and women, as well as policy-makers from various sectors and many, many others with us. This to me is a clear sign that we have started to mainstream the Information Society. The involvement of so many different development actors can only help to enrich and strengthen our discussions on the Conference theme from a real development perspective. I therefore hope that we will leave this meeting with concrete recommendations on how we can best further this process. Excellencies, I am certain that with all hands on deck we will make the Second Africa Regional WSIS Conference the productive event that it deserves to be. Let us go forward from Accra to Tunis with commitment and resolve on our side. Thank you. |