He said the government had already set up an agency to deal with rural electrification by establishing a universal communication access fund to facilitate connectivity to rural and under-served urban areas in the country.
He made the remarks when launching the 6th Commonwealth Telecommunication Organisation (CTO) - Connecting Rural Communities Africa Forum - yesterday.
He said the government in collaboration with stakeholders was presently implementing programmes to promote rural communication centres (tele-centres) to bring various communication services closer to rural populations.
“We are determined to overcome challenges associated with rural connectivity. There are a lot of challenges but we are determined to address them starting with the major ones,” he explained. He mentioned illiteracy rate, poverty and energy crisis to be addressed first.
He noted that the continent faced numerous challenges ranging from weak ICT policy frameworks,lack of adequate financial resources, poor technical support and skills, defective connectivity and unreliable power supply.
ICT has been recognised and declared worldwide as essential for sustainable socio-economic development and has demonstrated the potential in exploiting existing new business opportunities, facilitating various sectors of the economy to grow and empowering people to overcome many barriers and challenges in their daily lives.
The president said ICT had proven to be a vehicle for promoting innovation and creativity, for expediting transformative processes in systems and in positive cultural and mindset changes.
He cited specific areas benefiting from ICT to include improvement of governance through e-government initiatives and the provision of education, health and various social services that were boosting the economy and people’s wellbeing.
In this regard, the government is at an advanced stage of completing the construction of the national ICT broadband backbone (NICTBB) that will connect all districts and regions through a 10,000-km optic fibre cable.
The NICTBB already connects two major submarine cables of SEACOM and EASSy. In line with the Kigali Connect Africa Summit, Tanzania has already created virtual landing stations for submarine cables through the NICTBB at the respective cross-border points of Malawi (Kasumulo station), Rwanda (Rusumo station), Burundi (Kabanga station), Uganda (Mtukula station), Zambia (Tunduma station) and Kenya (Namanga station).
This connectivity affords landlocked neighbouring countries to access international connectivity via submarine cables that have landed in Tanzania.
Meanwhile, the government plans to strengthen technological education in rural areas to speed up adoption of technological changes from an analogue to a digital system.
This was said yesterday by Minister for Communication, Science and Technology Prof Makame Mbarawa during discussions organised by the CTO.
The minister said a technological education strategy intended to fast-track application of digital technologies down to rural settings.
Already, he said, the government had established constructive communication facilities that would simplify the implementation of the government plan.
“The government has mobilised sufficient funding to facilitate application of the digital technology in rural areas,” he explained but could not disclose the exact amount of money set aside for the purpose.
He, however, said the funds were sourced from fees and taxes paid by mobile phone providers. Under a digital system application drive, the minister said the government would facilitate the development of multi-distribution channels with different contents.
He then urged owners of local channels to prepare good contents to suit local consumption and compete in the communications sector.
“We expect changes across all East and Central African nations by 2012 and 2015 respectively, as a result more competing channels with either the same or different contents may arise,” he said.
For his part, Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (Tcra) director general Prof John Nkoma said the country had been undergoing different technological changes, noting, however, that adopting the digital technology was part of long-term government’s plans.
With the introduction of the digital system, he said “customers will now access and use communication devices with a lot of potential.”
Despite government efforts to speed up the shift from analogue to digital systems many rural dwellers are still uneducated on the application of the new technology.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sylivester Domasa
Quelle/Source: IPPmedia, 25.08.2011
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