A preparatory meeting to lay the groundwork ahead of the November meeting of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) will be held in Ghana next month.
The three-day meeting will take place in Accra from 2 to 4 February, and is aimed at negotiating an action plan on achieving the continent-wide distribution of communications technologies.
Discussions are expected around the type of global partnerships Africa requires to finance such access, and these are expected to be heated and in-depth, especially in light of the Digital Solidarity Fund proposed at the first WSIS in Geneva and adopted by the African Union (AU) Summit of Heads of State, held in July last year.
The meeting`s theme will be "Access - Africa`s key to an inclusive Information Society", and is expected to include concrete proposals for attracting investment in ICT and recommendations on e-strategies and how these can help develop sectors such as education, agriculture and commerce.
It is hoped that a number of critical issues can be resolved, such as the need for a common GSM card for Africa and the removal of regulatory obstacles in order to facilitate content provision using different technological platforms and media.
Accra will also play host to a number of pre-conference discussions and workshops - set to take place between 28 January and 1 February - and will include participants from governments, civil society, the private sector, academia, local authorities, regional institutions and international organisations.
The first phase of WSIS took place in December 2003 in Geneva and dealt with over-arching concepts, while the second phase, to be held in Tunisia from 16 to 18 November 2005, aims to address worldwide implementation.
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