While many African countries have made remarkable achievements in advancing information and communication technologies (ICTs) and telecommunications, funding remains a challenge. This was highlighted, yesterday, by ICT experts at the ongoing International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Regional Preparatory Meeting taking place in Kigali. Sector players said inadequate financing of ICT initiatives has always hindered the efforts to promote the ICT sector, especially in developing countries in Africa. “Indeed ITU, together with all the member countries, has achieved a lot in terms of helping people on the continent benefit from emerging technology. However, we can’t deny that there are challenges of funding some of the regional projects that exist,” said Andrew Rugege, the ITU regional director for Africa. To enhance the implementation of regional initiatives and deal with the financing challenge, Rugege appealed to member states to engage all stakeholders. “The issue of funding is not faced by Africa alone; even other regions have faced the same. This is due to the economic downturn that has happened, but if we want to deal with this, member states need to engage all the stakeholders and form strong partnerships,” he said. Christopher Kemei, the director of licensing compliance and standards at Communications Authority of Kenya, said while ICT is growing at a fast rate, many financing institutions in Africa see it as commercially unbankable. “I think this is why the region is struggling with the slow implementation of many of the projects, especially ICT infrastructure projects. They are quite sensitive so many financing institutions tend not to consider them,” he said. Kemei, whose country is leapfrogging technology, suggested that the private sector is critical for countries to overcome this challenge. “In Kenya, where we have the biggest ICT hub in Africa (Silicon Savannah), and other multi-billion projects, the private sector has taken the lead to advance most of these ICT projects,” he said. Connectivity challenge Rugege also noted that connectivity remains another challenge that Africa is facing, which he said needs urgent attention if the continent is to ensure ICT development. “Connectivity remains a problem in our region, especially wireless broadband connectivity, so we have decided to focus on this to help countries establish broadband infrastructure. We are talking about fiber optics, satellites, and microwaves among others. What we need in Africa is the last mile connection,” Rugege said. Although some countries have rolled out fibre optics, Rugege explained that distance taken to move from where these fibre lines exist to the user is still high and that the region needs the ‘last mile connection’ for people to fully benefit from the broadband networks. Youth and ICT minister Jean Philbert Nsengimana, while officiating at the opening of the conference, stressed the need to connect the region and what Africa should do to ensure a fully connected society. He said it is critical to provide broadband to citizens, government offices, schools, hospitals, and businesses. Nsengimana cited an example of the country’s Smart Rwanda Master Plan 2020. “We committed to universal access to broadband by 2017, using a combination of the national fibre optic backbone network with more than 6,000 kilometres that is already installed, and a last mile of 4G LTE planned to reach 95 per cent population coverage by 2017. We are also deploying large-scale WiFi networks as well as TV White Space based networks. Indeed, one of such WiFi networks is being rolled out in partnership with ITU, and I take this opportunity to thank them once again,” he said. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
