Much ado about nothing

By Siyabonga Africa, ITWeb junior journalist

Johannesburg, 10 Nov 2008

The e-Africa Commission, which falls under the New Partnership for Africa`s Development (Nepad), met at OR Tambo last week to discuss ICT infrastructure and development projects on the African continent.

The meeting discussed, among other things, accelerating continental connectivity, continental growth through ICT, e-schools, e-health and e-governance initiatives, a progress report on undersea cables, and financing of the Nepad e-Africa Commission.

The commission did not make any significant resolutions with regards to any of the issues addressed. One of the most pertinent resolutions was that the CEO of the Nepad secretariat, Dr Gengezi Mgidlana, will serve as the chairman of the executive committee and be deputised by the executive deputy chairman.

The e-Africa Commission also said it will continue to serve as the primary advisory body on ICT matters to the heads of state and Nepad Government Implementation Committee.

Rwanda hosts Eassy

Last year, the ministers responsible for ICT in Eastern and Southern Africa endorsed a $2 billion (more than R19 billion) submarine cable project to connect Africa. The cable, Uhurunet, would be 50 000km long and have a capacity of 3.84Tbps. When completed, it will provide telecommunications connectivity to Africa and connect the continent to the Americas, India and Europe.

It was also resolved that Rwanda would be the incumbent state for Uhurunet`s special purpose vehicle (SPV), which will build, operate and maintain the submarine portion of the undersea cable. The ministerial committee chose Rwanda for this purpose because of its government`s commitment to develop the ICT sector and use ICT for socio-economic development.

Dr Edmund Katiti, Nepad e-Africa Commission`s policy and regulatory advisor on ICT infrastructure, adds Rwanda also expressed with appreciation its readiness to accept the responsibility and contribute to the establishment of the headquarters of the SPV in that country.

Countries should connect

Africa Analysis analyst Dobek Pater says the undersea cables will bring a lot of necessary bandwidth, but adds that bandwidth is useless if it can`t be routed to the landlocked countries on the continent.

"What you find is that neighbouring countries pay large sums of money to have signals directed around the world to communicate with each other," he explains.

Pater adds landlocked countries depend on satellite connectivity, which is considerably more expensive than undersea cables. He is adamant Nepad should focus on funding inter-country connections in order to bring down Internet costs.

He warns that ambitious undersea cable projects, such as Eassy and Uhurunet, are in danger of being mangled in bureaucracy and politics. "In cases like these, you have a number of countries working together with different political systems and they tend to clash."