Excellencies

Honorable Delegates

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

It is with great pleasure that I take this opportunity to welcome you all to this Global Connectivity for Africa Conference.

I wish to most profoundly and sincerely thank the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the World Bank, the Information for Development Program, the ITU, the ADB and Government of the Netherlands for hosting this conference.

Communication services have become a critical facilitating input to conducting business in an increasingly globalized economy. They are also becoming a major tool for government and other institutions to deliver social and other services effectively. The ability of African business men and business women to compete in the market place as well as the ability of African governments to deliver services effectively will increasingly hinge on the ability of African policy-makers to kick-start a process of rapid development in their countries communication sector.

Given low level of development in the telecommunication sector of most African countries and given a scarcity of resources (financial, technological and human), the challenges are enormous. Today, most of the world is cruising into the era of information super-highway while a vast majority of our people suffer from either a total lack of telephone service or else unreliable phone networks. Many of which still rely on antiquated telecommunications equipment. As a result, a large portion of our region and rural areas cannot enjoy the basic quality of life taken for granted by most communities in the industrialized world. Applying the most advanced telecommunications technologies to these areas may be the most viable and possibly the sole solution that will enable them. to make the leap needed to become part of the information society.

The telecommunications industry has shown a very rapid and on-going change ever since the micro-electronic revolution and associated development of technologies such as digitalization and fiber-optic transmission. The sharp drop in capital costs associated with these new telecommunications technologies has brought about the demand for new and sophisticated services by business and consumers alike. The digitalization of telecommunications equipment have accelerated the merging of telecommunications and information and dramatically reduced the cost of transporting and processing information.

A major consequence has been the expansion of new services with implications for moving away from simple telephony to multimedia services merging voice, data and image. Another major consequence is the growing number of technology choices for meeting communication needs: such as, mobile systems, fiber-optics terrestrial digital microwave system and satellite.

However, these advanced technologies alone shall not eliminate all the problems of telecommunications development in Africa. Constraints on communication development in Africa are numerous. I will only mention three.

(a) Finance

Lack of adequate financing is one of the greatest obstacles to the development of the communication sector in African countries. Yet Africa has to make unprecedented investment in telecommunications infrastructure development to achieve modest results.

Multilateral financing takes long to arrange with an average time of three years from the preparation of the projects: disbursement procedures are complex and conditions stringent.

Bilateral loans and suppliers credit increase the cost per line because of the tied procedure of purchase. As a consequence, the installation cost of a telephone line in developing countries compared to the developed is more expensive. Venture investment in various modalities is better suited in expediting.

Shortage of skilled personnel, lack of management expertise and experience and low productivity, characterizes the human resources in the telecommunications sector is most of African countries. Ways and means should be sought to properly address this deficiencies.

Almost all telecommunications equipment in African countries are purchased from outside the region. The lack of technology is not a critical constraints with regard to the acquisition of equipment. Importation of equipment poses a problem with regard to the availability and cost of spares which increases maintenance difficulties. Some suppliers price their equipment relatively low, but spares are relatively high. Also as technology is constantly advancing, developing countries find themselves stuck with equipment for which spares are no longer available.

In the majority of African countries postal and telecommunication services are managed together. Policy, regulatory and operational functions are not clearly delineated. The Sector Ministry is responsible for overall supervision and policy, the national public telecommunications operator also exercises considerable influence over the policy. Furthermore, where separate regulatory body has not been established the public telecommunication operator exercises regulatory functions.

In order to alleviate these constraints, in consideration with the globalization of the world economy together with the technological revolution which calls for globalization of the provision of the telecommunications services and globalization of ownership and Management of the industry, the African telecommunication industry has gone through the following changes:

• Seventeen incumbent operators in the region introduced some degree of privatization;
• Fifteen new private mobile cellular companies have started-up operation since 1995;
• The number of internet host computers had reached 130,000 by the beginning of this year due to the increased number of private internet service providers; and
• More than ten countries of the region established independent regulatory agencies.

Furthermore, considering the unsatisfactory quality of current international and domestic long-distance telecommunication in some African countries and considering the financial and administrative constraints in providing telecommunication services to the most rural areas most of African countries have singed the MOU of the GMPCS (Global Mobile Personal Communication System) and actively participated in others LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and MEO (Medium Earth Orbit) Satellite as well as optical fiber projects such as Africa One and OXYGEN. The integration of Africa into the global information network through Global Connectivity is highly acceptable and beneficial in a place where this connectivity is the only option. I leave the effects of the global communication on the fundamental policy issues, sovereignty issues by passing of the existing network in international traffic etc. for your thorough discussion and recommendation. This I believe will help bring these connectivity opportunities to fruition.

In an effort to improve the standard and increase the penetration of the telecommunication service Ethiopian continued to exert unreserved efforts in that direction. During the past two weeks alone we have added 75, 000 additional new lines to our system.

In the coming two years it is planned to increase the telephone lines by 650,000. It is also planned to establish the service to more than 400 small towns using Very Small Apparatus Terminals (VSATs) and will introduce Cellular Mobile Service in the capital and six major towns before the end of 1998.

Honorable Delegates

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

In conclusion, as you all know, Global Connectivity is the most new option which shall obviously contribute for improved telecommunication in Africa. I hope this conference shall explore the impediments on application of this new technology in the continent and give solutions and recommendations to overcome these barriers.

May I wish this Global Connectivity Conference every success in its deliberation.

Thank you all for your attention.