Speaking at the opening of the 16th Ordinary Session of the AU Executive Council, Abdoulie Janneh, the UN under-secretary-general and executive secretary of the Economic Commission of Africa, said ICTs can improve performance of businesses and the efficiency of markets.
The UN official also said ICTs can empower citizens and communities by increasing their access to knowledge.
ICTs provide several opportunities for our countries. For instance, as mobile phone usage expands, it will facilitate health, commerce, trading, and financial services such as m-banking and m- payments. African can now use their mobile phones to make person to person payments, transfer money, purchase prepaid electricity."
"ICT devices also provide a wealth of information that have enhanced the education and knowledge stream for children, leading to their future understanding of Africa's development challenges, human rights issues and the science and technology underpinning ICTs," Janneh said.
Noting that Africa has made some milestones in embracing and adapting to the Information Society and the use of ICTs, the UN official said there is still some way to go.
"For instance, Africa needs to be integrated much faster into the knowledge economy that has come about as a result of the ICT revolution."
"Therefore some critical foundation blocs need urgently to be put in place, namely by way of infrastructure, regional backbones and connectivity," he said.
Janneh said Internet growth and speed is still limited in Africa where there is only one fixed broadband subscriber for every 1,000 inhabitants, lagging far behind Europe which has 200 subscribers per 1,000 people.
The UN official said he is happy to report that up to 40 African countries have made good progress in adopting ICT strategies especially through National Information and Communication Infrastructure Plans (NICIs).
"Tremendous efforts are also underway to launch e-health, e- government and e-commerce applications in related sectors. Through initiatives such as e-CEMAC and e-SADC, ICTs are being sued in support of regional integration to promote harmonization of national policies and regulatory frameworks."
He said EAC looks forward to working closely with its partners especially the African Union Commission in monitoring the summit outcomes on ICTs.
During the forthcoming AU summit which will be held under the theme "Information and Communications Technologies in Africa: Challenges and Prospects for Development", African heads of state and government will assess the progress the continent has made in in ICTs in the past years and map out strategies for the future development so as to bridge the digital gap with the other regions in the world.
Thanks to the great efforts from the African governments, ICT development in the region has been featured by high growth with the number of mobile cellular subscribers and Internet users growing faster than in other regions in the world in the past years.
Despite the fast growth, Africa's ICT penetration levels are still far behind the rest of the world, with very few countries in the continent reaching ICT levels comparable to global averages.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Xiong Tong
Quelle/Source: Xinhua, 28.01.2010
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
