Introduction
In 2006, almost half of the working population
of the developed countries will work in sectors
which provide or use, on the whole, products
or services related to information
and communication technologies. However, in sub-Saharan
Africa, the teledensity is approximately of two
lines for 100 inhabitants and, in the world, only
0,6 % of Net surfers are African. Although the
number of mobile telephones increased at the
point to exceed the number of fixed telephones,
Africa remains in the drag with regard to the
transition towards the economy of information.
To ensure truly the economic and
social development continent, it is necessary to
increase, on the
whole, the use ratio of the ICT. The governments
must create a favorable environment in fields such
as the formulation of the policies and the executives
lawful which contribute to the growth of this sector.
Although the initiatives concerning the TIC and
the national electronic strategies multiplied these
last years, the governments did not measure their
incidence on the life of the populations.
That is what explains the launching
of the Scan-ICT initiative. The mainl objective
is to help Africa to ensure the transition
towards
the society of information by creating
the capacities allowing to collect and manage information
and data which contribute to the development of
the ICTand encourage the investment in this sector.
It acts of a joint activity of the economic Commission
on Africa (ECA) and of the Acacia program of the
Research center for the international development
(CRDI). This last coordinates the activities of
the initiative Scan-ICT in Ghana, in Morocco, in
Senegal and in Uganda whereas the ECA coordinates
these activities in Ethiopia and in Mozambique.
The CRDI, the European Union (EU) and the Norwegian
Agency of cooperation for development (NORAD)
finance this initiative.
The basic studies concerning the
Scan-ICT project were undertaken in six African
countries, namely: Ethiopia, Ghana, Morocco, Mozambique,
Uganda and Senegal. They are based on
indicators elaborated at the first
workshop on the methodology and the scheme of work
of the
project held in November 2002 at the center of
conferences of the United Nations in Addis-Abeba.
The participants in the workshop had defined the
principal fields in which it was advisable to collect
data, namely the infrastructure, the applications
sectoral (education, health, public sector, private
sector) and the economy of information. It had
been agreed that, as far as possible, the institutions
which took part in this project could collect additional
data on other topics.
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