EASSy stakeholders agree on project structure
Governments, Nepad e-Africa Commission, telecommunications operators and the Development Financial Institutions Represented at the Nairobi meetings by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Agence Française de Développement (AfD), Société de Promotion et de Participation pour la Coopération Economique (PROPARCO), the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), KfW Entwicklungsbank (KFW), the World Bank (WB) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have all agreed to the project.
Technical assistance was also being provided by the Department for International Development (DFID), the European Union (EU), the Information for Development Program ( infoDev), the Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) and the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (SIDA).
The consensus was reached during an all-stakeholders meeting on July 4-6 2006 hosted by the government of Kenya in Nairobi. A joint task force with representatives from each of these groups was also created to maintain continuous dialogue and channel governments’ policy objectives into the construction and maintenance agreement and the shareholders’ agreement.
EASSy was an initiative to connect over twenty coastal and land-locked countries in East and Southern Africa. The countries are: Burundi, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The aim of the EASSy project is to increase accessibility to information and communication technologies by significantly reducing the current prohibitive cost of telephony and internet connectivity. Consequently, this would boost regional competitiveness and enable Africa to participate more actively in the global economy.
Negotiations have been lengthy to make sure that the project remained lucrative to investors while ensuring that it would enable a cheaper telecoms environment.
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