ICT Partners Reflect on Africa’s Infrastructure Challenges
By Mercy Wambui, Communication Officer, ECA
08 September 2005

Members of Partners in Communication and Information Technologies for Africa (PICTA) and Global Knowledge Partners (GKP) began a two-day meeting on 7 September 2005 in Addis Ababa, to reflect on “Making Infrastructure and Access Efforts in Africa More Effective”.

Co-hosted by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Connectivity Africa and GKP, the forum is a cross-fertilization of minds, set in an informal “open space” participatory facilitation format. Ideas are not prescribed, but proposed by donors and non-donors alike in order to evolve concrete outcomes and commitment. PICTA, a network of donors and agencies working to improve information exchange and collaboration around ICT activities in Africa has evolved significantly and includes civil society and private sector actors that are members of GKP.

“There is no solid foundation for an inclusive information society without an affordable and accessible infrastructure,” said ECA’s outgoing Executive Secretary, K.Y Amoako in his opening remarks. He highlighted the achievements made so far by this “Club of ECA’s like-minded group of highly committed partners,” and pleaded with them to “push forward the agenda of access in Africa and see to the mass usage and access to Africa’s schools and villages”.

Aida Opoku-Mensah, Officer-in-Charge at the Development Information Services Division (DISD) pointed out that infrastructure will continue to be Africa’s weakest ICT link – and no one agency can harness the enormous investments required.

“We will all need to think out of the box, and find creative solutions,” she said, adding that scaling up e-commerce projects for women entrepreneurs, as an example cannot be done due to the lack of infrastructure in Africa.

Russell Southwood, from Balancing Act Africa pointed out the need to discuss failed infrastructure projects “I like failure, because we can see why we went wrong and avoid repeating past mistakes.” He said.

On his part, Ben Akoh from Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) called for “the need to move toward debunking the mysteries surrounding infrastructure cartels and initiatives in Africa – such as SAT-3 that have for some reason remained mythical.”

Tambo Ichiro from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) noted that the exchanges in the forum are very useful in terms of having a better understanding of who is doing what to advance Africa’s infrastructure.

For more on PICTA, GKP and related initiatives: www.uneca.org/aisi