Press Release No. 12/1997

GIIC and UNECA to Hold High-level Symposium in Ethiopia on Private and Public Sector Partnership in Building the African Information Society

Addis Ababa, 5 May 1997 -- The Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) are hosting a high-level symposium to strengthen private and public sector partnership in the implementation of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI).

Attending the meeting -- to take place at the ECA's headquarters here in Addis Ababa on Wednesday 7 May 1997 -- will be representatives of all fifty-three African countries including ministers of social and economic development, planning, communications and finance along with information and communications leaders from around the world. The symposium will be broadcast live in Africa in an M-Net production on Digital Satellite Television (DStv.

The GIIC is an international non-governmental organisation of leaders from over 40 of the world's foremost information and communications technology companies.

"The GIIC provides a framework for bridging the gaps between the public and private sectors, between developing and developed countries, and between diverse industry sectors from around the world" says Dr. Derrick L. Cogburn, GIIC Africa Regional Director and symposium coordinator.

On the same day the GIIC will release its "Statement of Addis Ababa" which strongly supports private and public sector partnerships in building the African Information Society. The GIIC Statement proposes a set of principles that might guide the implementation of the AISI as plans for National Information and Communications Infrastructure (NICI) within each African country. Thus, the AISI should:

• Be African led, but within a global context;
• Take into consideration the substantial work on NICI in Africa that has preceded it, and related work worldwide on developing the Information Society;
• Encourage developing countries to cooperate with each other, as well as with the developed world;
• Promote African and global private sector leadership in the introduction of NICI in Africa, together with active participation from the public sector, civil society and international organizations;
• Be driven by applications and services and not by technology;
• Foster transparent plans and policy frameworks for NICI involving all relevant stakeholders, based on the promotion of:
• • rights in information access and use;
  • global trade and investment;
  • diversity of content;
  • telecommunications competition;
  • interoperability and appropriate standards;
  • privacy, data protections, data security and intellectual property rights.

Furthermore, the GII Commission encourages the ECA to:

• Develop an on-going mechanism for private sector participation in the coordination of the AISI;
• Facilitate greater coordination of African countries within the World Trade Organization;
• Develop effective strategies for sub-regional, regional and global coordination.

The GIIC delegation will be co-chaired by GIIC Commissioners Koos Bekker, CEO of Multichoice Investments Limited and Dr. Hisham El Sherif, Chair of RITSEC, IDSC and ITI of Egypt. Other leading members of the delegation will include:

• Souleymane Sall, President, Silicon Valley, Senegal and GIIC Commissioner;
• Ashiek Manie, head Information Society and Governance, Telkom SA Ltd, representing GIIC Commissioner Dikgang Moseneke;
• Blaise Judja-Sato, Director Business Development, Teledesic Corporation, representing GIIC Commissioner Denis Gilhooly;
• Hamadoun Toure, Africa Manager, ICO Global Communications, representing GIIC Commissioner Olof Lundberg;
• Dr. Robert Day, Strategic Relations Manager, CSIR, representing GIIC Commissioner Dr. Geoff Garrett.
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Joining the GIIC delegation as panelists will be:

• Lucienne Abrahams, Chairperson of the National Information Technology Forum, South Africa;
• Christine Kisiedu, Director University Library, University of Ghana;
• Karima Bounemra Ben Soltane, Director ECA Development Information Services Division; and
• Dr. Steven Ncube, Senior Manager, Development Bank of Southern Africa.

The media briefing is scheduled for 13h00, 7 May 1997, in the UNECA Conference Room 2, where the GIIC will deliver its "Statement of Addis Ababa." Further information on the GIIC and its activities can be accessed on the GIIC web site at: www.gii.org/giic/ or the ECA Web site at: www.un.org/depts/eca.

The M-Net production on DStv will be on the PAS-4 satellite on channel 25 (C-band) and channel 32 (Ku-band), from 09h00 to 16h00 central African time. (All other times in this announcement are Addis Ababa local time.)