Continent Risks Not Meeting MDGs Deadline, Say Leaders

from All Africa

The East African (Nairobi)

By David Musoke-Kezio
Nairobi

African leaders attending the "Connect Africa" summit in Kigali have recommended that the deadline for achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) should be brought forward by three years to 2012. This, they said will speed up the process of achieving the objectives.

The Kigali summit's objective was to mobilise the human, financial and technical resources required to expand the development of Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure and ensure it is used effectively in pursuit of the UN development goals for Africa.

Led by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and his counterparts Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti, Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi and the Swazi Deputy Prime Minister Constance Simelane, they said the continent risked not meeting the MDGs by 2015 because of the slow pace at which countries were working towards achieving the goals.

President Nkurunziza, for example, said there were only 50,000 computers connected to the Internet in Burundi and appealed for more investment in ICT.

The "Connect Africa" summit organised by UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a multi-stakeholder initiative to accelerate the implementation of MDGs. Participants were drawn from governments, industry, development banks and international organisations. Dr Hamadoun Touré, the secretary-general of ITU, said that Africa should seek more investment than aid, if the MDGs dream is to be achieved. He said the summit projected about $300 billion invested in ICT projects in Africa by 2012.

In a special session, ministers in charge of ICTs in sub-Saharan Africa were invited to renew their commitment to the recently endorsed Nepad $2 billion submarine cable project to connect Africa to the rest of the world.

The 50,000km long cable with a capacity of 3.84 terrabits/sec - the newest of series of submarine cables that are still underway - is designed to provide telecommunications connectivity within Africa and connect the continent to the US, Europe and Africa.

The cable is expected to be in place before 2010 according to Albert Butare, a minister from Rwanda.

The cable has been dubbed UHURUNET and UMOJANET for its terrestrial segment. The summit recommended the holding company of the submarine cable be named Baharicom. Under the arrangement, Nepad Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) will be the largest single shareholder.

South Africa's Minister for Communications, Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, said experiences in South Africa and Mauritius show that private sector-led undersea cable projects, where "private clubs" decide the cost of telecommunications are not beneficial to countries in urgent need of affordable broadband connectivity.

The eight MDGs - which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV and Aids and providing universal primary education by 2015 - form a blueprint agreed upon by all UN's 192 members and all the world's leading development institutions.

Dr Touré said that since 33 per cent of Africans are employed in the ICT sector, the summit wanted to push sub-Saharan Africa to interconnect all African capitals with ICT broadband infrastructure and strengthen connectivity to the rest of the world by 2012 as well as interconnect major African cities by 2015.

"The summit adopted key regulatory measures to have e-strategies including cyber security using accessible technologies in each country in Africa by 2012," he said.

This prompted the ITU to sign a memorandum of understanding with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to collaborate on the interconnection of all African capitals with broadband Internet.

The World Bank Group in a parallel event announced that it will double its investment in ICTs in Africa from $1 billion injected over the past five years to $2 billion by 2012.