NEPAD broadband initiative accelerated
The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) says there is a commitment by stakeholders to accelerate progress of the NEPAD African regional broadband initiative.
A workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, to begin harmonising the policy, legislative and regulatory aspects of the NEPAD African regional broadband initiative has ended with a commitment by stakeholders to accelerate progress towards the early completion of the project.
Participants underscored the importance of intra-regional multi-entity cooperation, and noted that while some countries had already taken steps to modify their policies, laws and regulations to support ICT convergence and open access principles, others may need some help to do so.
The e-Africa Commission’s Regional Harmonisation workshop for the NEPAD Broadband Regional Backbone Infrastructure (RBI) Project was facilitated by a team of consultants from the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) led by the CEO of CTO, Dr Ekwow Spio Garbrah.
Over the last 18 months the CTO has been offering technical advice to the 22 countries of the Eastern and Southern African regions, through consultancy assignments with the e-Africa Commission of NEPAD.
The latest assignment, which was the focus of the just-concluded workshop, was to assist countries of the region in understanding what is required to harmonise their respective national ICT policies, legal and regulatory frameworks, to make them consistent with the provisions of the Kigali Protocol, which has now been signed by 12 countries from the Eastern and Southern Africa region.
With a deadline of 31st March 2008 for the harmonisation process to be completed by each member country, policy-makers, regulators and representatives of key regional organisations, also discussed varying processes for signing and ratifying the Protocol and for implementing the required changes.
Presentations and discussions included the state of ICT policy, legal and regulatory reform and convergence in countries represented at the workshop; the significance and implications of the co-ownership and licensing of a Special Purpose Vehicle that will operate on Open Access Network principles in their country; and what changes need to be made to existing policies, laws and regulations to enable countries to bring their operating environments in line with each other and for the successful operation of the infrastructure provider.
CTO’s involvement in the NEPAD Regional Backbone project is well established. In January 2006, the CTO was contracted by the World Bank to carry out a study on the Legal, Policy and Regulatory aspects of the terrestrial broadband section of the RBI project.
As part of that contract, the CTO provided e-Africa with a package of advisory services which included the development of the Kigali Protocol in line with NEPAD e-Africa’s established principles.
In remarks at the beginning of the workshop, Dr Spio-Garbrah confirmed the CTO’s pleasure at being invited to help countries work toward harmonising their regulatory frameworks in line with the Protocol.
He noted that 12 out of the 18 countries involved in this project, were CTO member countries and “the workshop had enabled the CTO to join hands with other sister international organisations, such as the ITU, the AU and NEPAD, in promoting an ICT infrastructure project that could become a critical component of Africa’s developmental aspirations”.
A former Minister of Communications of Ghana, Dr Spio-Garbrah emphasised the importance of establishing new and proper arrangements for a multi-country broadband project such as that proposed for Eastern and Southern African countries.
He recalled that the West African region had continued to suffer from high costs of bandwidth because the consortium that owns the existing SAT-3 Cable had constructed that project without any policy or regulatory oversight from governments and regulators in the region.
He advised countries and ICT consumers in the Eastern and Southern African region not to assume that the mere presence of fibre-optical cables on their shores or land would mean lower communications costs. “It depends very much on the policy and regulatory framework that will govern such ICT infrastructure”, Dr Spio-Garbrah opined.
A lot depends how the NEPAD Broadband Infrastructure project cable is owned financed, managed, operated, priced, and regulated or not regulated,” he added. The CEO urged governments, regulators and operating companies in the region to recognise that its role was merely advisory. As such, its clients may choose to either accept or reject its advice. The CTO, he said, does not share the view, for example, that each shareholder in the Network should have exactly equal shareholding in the SPV.
The workshop also received presentations from the International Telecommunications Union on Africa’s experiences with ICT harmonisation, as well as challenges that need to be overcome if Africa is to achieve greater success in this area. Also present at the workshop were representatives of the Communications Regulatory Association of Southern Africa (CRASA), the African Telecommunications Union, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
In remarks at the conclusion of the workshop, Dr Spio-Garbrah thanked the NEPAD e-Africa Commission for making it possible for the CTO to continue to play a positive role in promoting Africa's economic integration through ICTs.
He said the road to harmonisation may prove to be an arduous one and the CTO, as always, was on hand to provide any needed technical advice or assistance to interested countries, to enable them meet the March 2008 deadline.
In emphasising that the CTO’s consultancy and advisory services were available to all delegations, he told participants that the professionalism CTO had shown during its provision of advisory services to the NEPAD e-Africa Commission underpinned all CTO activities.
Dr. Henry Chasia, Deputy Executive Chairperson, NEPAD e-Africa Commission, thanked all delegations and the sub-regional organisations for their participation, as well as the Department of Communications of South Africa for its financial support.
Ms. Lyndall Shope-Mafula, Director General of the Department of Communications of South Africa, underlined the priority the South African government gives to projects that help to promote faster economic integration of Africa.
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