Adding flesh to EA’s fibre backbone

Much has been said about fibre optic connectivity, both within East Africa and in relation to the international gateway connecting to the global fibre.

Many of these statements have not paid adequate attention to the overall picture of connecting East Africa within, and to the rest of the world, so as to realise the desired economic benefits.

In October 2007, the World ITU Summit, known as the first Connect Africa Summit, was held.

The summit was hosted by Presidents Paul Kagame (Rwandan), Blaise Compaore (Burkina Faso), Ismail Omar Guelleh (Djibouti), Abdoulaye Wade (Senegal), Pierre Nkurunziza (Burundi) and Bingu wa Mutharika (Malawi).

Also present were leaders Constance Simelane, Deputy Prime Minister of Swaziland; Beer Charles, President of the State Council of the Republic of the Canton de Genève; and Sha Zukang, United Nations Under-Secretary General on Economic and Social Affairs, representing the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Yet others were Hamadoun I Toure, Secretary-General of the ITU; Craig Barett, Chairman of Intel and UN-GAID (UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development); Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank; and Alpha Oumar Konare, the then Chairperson of the African Union Commission.

Connect Africa was a global multi-stakeholder partnership to mobilise the human, financial and technical resources required to bridge major gaps in information and communication technology infrastructure across the region and to the rest of the globe.

Emphasis was laid on the need to support affordable connectivity, applications and services to stimulate economic growth, employment and development throughout Africa.

The private sector was called upon to play a more visible role in the pursuit of this vision and, where necessary, there would be a private-public-partnership to spur this development.

In that light, the following goals were put forth for implementation: Summit Resolutions for Africa Goal 1: Interconnect all African capitals and major cities with ICT broadband infrastructure and strengthen connectivity to the rest of the world by 2012.

Goal 2: Connect African villages to broadband ICT services by 2015 and implement shared access initiatives such as community tele-centres and village phones.

Goal 3: Adopt key regulatory measures that promote affordable, widespread access to a full range of broadband ICT services.

These include technology and service, neutral licensing/authorisation practices, allocating spectrum for multiple, competitive broadband wireless service providers, creating national internet exchange points and implementing competition in the provision of international Internet connectivity.

Goal 4: Support the development of a critical mass of ICT skills required by the knowledge economy, notably through the establishment of a network of ICT Centres of Excellence in each sub-region of Africa and ICT capacity-building and training centres in each country.

This is with the aim of achieving a broad network of inter-linked physical and virtual centres, while ensuring coordination between academia and industry