IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The government’s 2000 national ICT plan was created using the four five-year cycle idea in order to gauge where the country was heading and what could be created and established. The first cycle, which ended in 2005, laid the groundwork for the last five years ICT initiatives to be established.

The government is now working with the private sector to identify innovative, information-driven and ICT enabled solutions to boost economic growth.

The solutions referred to as 'SMART' are expected to be a citizen-centric and business-friendly, accessible and sustainable Information and Service Delivery ecosystem through public and private investments.

The Ministry of Youth, and Information Communications and Technology (ICT), together with industry players, recently took part in an ICT Backward Joint Sector Review 2014/15.

"When I reflect on what we've achieved over the last one year or so, putting it in broad categories it is access, capacity and services. "I think we have moved quite a bit," Jean Philbert Nsengimana, the Minister of Youth and ICT said.

Consequently the government has developed within its overall ICT architecture a component which caters for the use of ICT in boosting service delivery within the practice of medicine. Tele-medicine has been the ICT component developed by Rwanda Development Board's IT department to assist in this endeavor.

Darla Rudakubana, the ministry’s communications specialist commented that the cost of the entire project amounted to $164,000.

She further explained that the scheme would seek to distribute handsets at sector level and smart phones at district level and this action will lead to better reporting and response from the authorities.

The money that was cleared through an International Development Association (IDA) financing grant for the Regional Communication Infrastructure Program - Rwanda Project (RCIPRW), is supposed to increase the availability of broadband to more than 700 Rwandan institutions including schools, health centers and local government administrative centers. IDA is the concessional lending arm of the World Bank.

The Kigali MAN is especially designed to deliver Internet connectivity at lower cost to all the city's districts. The government will initially lay fiber optics before moving to complete the "last-mile" connections to government institutions, the private sector and homes.

The initiative will enable Rwanda to connect to the Internet internally to support services like digital libraries to be accessed by schools in Rwanda, said Nkubito Bakuramutsa, executive director of the Rwanda Information Technology Authority.

When complete, a national backbone will enable Rwandans to use e-applications and for the government to execute e-services and business and information exchange that need high speed broadband Internet.

The contract obliges KT to provide technology, equipment and relevant application materials to the government of Rwanda.

The nation’s leaders have not only spoken about it, but also made policies that favour the development of this sector; and they are many. For the example there is the One-laptop-per-child programme; there is the village phone; e-health (tele-medicine), and many others.

Zoellick said this during a video conference held in Addis Ababa Ethiopia where he was attending African Union Summit.

The video conference was linked to different African cities including Rwanda.

When we compare the ICT industry in Rwanda at the pre- Genocide period and today, there is a big difference. I doubt whether the ICT sector had any mention during the pre-1994 government's plans and policies.

The only technology worth talking home about then was the fixed telephone network and the sole public radio station, all of which were only accessible to a tiny privileged minority.

For all its challenges, Rwanda is by nearly all accounts making tremendous strides, working to re-build into a modern, knowledge-based economy. In fact, a number of Rwanda-watchers these days see the country on track to become the hottest IT spot between Cairo and Durban, a kind of “Silicon Valley of East-Central Africa.” But it certainly did not have to be this way…

The biggest ICT for development event in Rwanda wrapped up in June with the entire country geared for a technological boost, as more than 250 delegates from bilateral donors, civil society, the private sector and academia, and over 500 online participants from across the globe met in Kigali to discuss an major overhaul of the country’s ICT capacity to better address Rwanda’s lingering development challenges.

Registering a land transfer in an outlying village in Rwanda requires a number of journeys — to the nearest subdistrict office to get forms to fill in, which then have to be notarised, to a bank to pay the notary’s fees, then back to the government office, probably returning later to check the status of the process.

From mid-year, registration can be done online. For people with no internet-capable device of their own, this could be done at a government centre, or a cyber café, or the place perhaps where they already buy phone airtime and do their mobile banking.

The New Times reports the partners in the initiative, dubbed “YouthConnekt”, include the Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising, Tigo, and HeHe Ltd, a mobile solutions company.

Speaking at the launch of the platform, Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Minister for Youth and ICT, said the development was a historic moment in the efforts to expand communication and interactions.

SAP Africa has announced the successful graduation of all 75 South African students from its SAP Skills for Africa job creation initiative. The South African chapter of the SAP Skills for Africa initiative was announced four months ago and forms an integral part of SAP Africa’s commitment to train ICT consultants across the continent.

The successful graduation today of all 75 South African students follows the first group of graduates from Kenya who completed the SAP Skills for Africa training certification in 2013 and 2014, as well as in Morocco in 2015.

ICT spending in Saudi Arabia will reach 35.9 billion in 2016 as organizations across the Kingdom have started to embrace digital transformation initiatives in an effort to optimize costs and improve their business process efficiencies.

'The Saudi ICT market is highly competitive and only the most progressive service providers with strong capabilities around emerging technologies will continue to grow' says Abdulaziz Al-Helayyil IDC's regional director for Saudi Arabia Kuwait and Bahrain.

Ildeniz who has worked tirelessly to expand the use of ICT among women and underserved communities in the Middle East and Africa, including spearheading the World Ahead program, which is designed to address the digital divide and promote rural technology development, spoke to Diana Al-Jassem of Arab News in Riyadh to spotlight on Intel's latest development projects in Saudi ICT market.

Leading IT companies like Intel, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others actively support the government and are pursuing initiatives aimed at strengthening the spread, access and utilization of technology in the education sector in the Kingdom. This also includes equipping teachers and students with the necessary skills to adapt to new learning techniques.

One of the landmark developments in this context was when Saudi Electronic University won first place prize in the best digital courses, as well as the third place prize in the training quality program to give them sufficient information on how to use this technology and transfer it to the students.