The government is investing a great deal in putting in place policies, strategies and programmes all aimed at promoting a vibrant ICT industry.

This was revealed yesterday by Dr. Ignace Gatare, the Minister in the President’s Office in charge of ICT. He was addressing experts from over 20 African countries at a stakeholder’s meeting that began yesterday.

The public policy forum that brought together African ICT experts is dubbed AfriNIC (African Network Information Centre).

"Rwanda’s development vision is built on a strong commitment of engineering an ICT-led socio-economic development with potential of transforming the country from a highly agriculture-based into a middle income, knowledge-based economy,” he said.

Gatare added that the country believes that ICT constitutes a powerful tool for innovation and an instrument for socio-economic transformation.

"We value ICT as an instrument for accelerating our good governance and decentralisation, unity and reconciliation programmes, improve efficiency of our health care and boost the quality of education in Rwanda.”

He stressed that considering current trends in IT, most of the applications and services rely more on internet, leading to an increase in computer network complexity which in turn requires more innovative solutions.

He commended AfriNIC and AfNOG (African Network Operators’ Group) for convening the high level continental meeting in Kigali. According to Adiel Akplogan, the CEO, AfriNIC, this forum aims at discussing the internet protocol management in Africa.

"Our main focus is to switch to IPV6, the next generation of the internet protocol because it will mitigate the effect of the shortcomings of the currently used IPV4,” he noted.
"The internet uptake lies on our commitment and engagement to serve the cause.”

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