.

Lyndall Shope-Mafole, Director General of South Africa’s Department of Communications, spoke to CIPESA on August 29 2006 about what her government is doing to increase affordability of telecom services, the East African Submarine System (EASSy) and the future of the SAT 3 cable. Excerpts:

 

Q. What is the South African (SA) government doing to enhance affordability of telecommunications services?

 

A. One of the objectives of our government is to make SA competitive and broaden participation of the poorest citizens in our economy. To increase competitiveness in the economy the cost of communication has to be much lower, so we want reliable communication that is affordable. From experience, the cost of communication is cheaper where there is infrastructure and where governments have taken a specific role to see that infrastructure is built and is affordable. Governments can do this using public funds, or tax exemptions.

For SA the challenge is that we are big geographically; we are not small like Singapore where you can put up fibre overnight and cover the whole country. Yet the state has to make infrastructure available. So we have licenced a Second National Operator (SNO), but even then unless you take a deliberate policy to ensure that the network goes beyond big towns, you will not cover all the country.

 

Q. How does EASSy fit into this picture, and how will you reconcile with private sector players that accuse governments and the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) of sidelining them in the EASSy project?

 

A. It is difficult to argue with people who have invested their own money but our role as governments is to set the policy framework under which the cable will be built. The telecom companies are not terribly thrilled with governments because the governments are saying this cable is not only for profits but has developmental objectives too. Besides, governments will assist to get funding for EASSy under the NEPAD framework. Even the smallest African telecom company can have equity to put in the network. That will promote competition and affordability of EASSy bandwidth.

 

Q. What benefits will the SNO bring to SA?

 

 

Per the thread exchanged here with Lillian – where we were stirring the pot on leveraging ICT to support rural enterprise (and all SSA humanity of course) via early disaster warning systems – I figured I’d go ahead and take on African regional trade and what could be tweaked to spur ICT uptake or adoption as well as ICT skill acquisition -- the whole slew of elements that could be considered in boosting SSA regional trade.

According to a recent World Bank report, What Can Be Expected from African Regional Trade Arrangements, trade within African sub regions usually draws the following kinds of questions:

Do these countries even grow enough to eat or manufacture enough for their internal use talk less of moving it outside their borders?

What kind of commodities are they trading in – raw or manufactured goods? "Petroleum alone accounts for more than 30 per cent of this exchange, while Cotton, live animals, maize and cocoa add a further 18 per cent. To a lesser extent, fresh fish, vegetables, tea and sugar are also traded. Manufactured goods account for only about 15 per cent of such activity. These include yarn, medicines, iron and steel, chemicals and industrial machines and equipment."

Nature/stature of logistics and other enabling service -- air, sea, road transportation, regional bank networks? On regional banking service -- Stanbic bank of South Africa has since been present in most SSA countries, and following the 2004 reforms of the Central Bank of Nigeria, a lot of Nigerian commercial banks are aggressively spreading their tentacles in the West African sub-region. On the retail front, there’s Shoprite -- retail giant of South Africa, which has footprints all over SSA and recently invaded India! There’s MTN -- South African Telecom Company with extensive regional presence. On the transportation front -- Nigerian-owned SLOK airline is now the national carrier for Gambia, and for road transportation – there’s the Baz bus service of South Africa that provides tours across the entire Southern Africa sub region. And on the manufacturing front – there are too many – Timbuktu would be a good place to start tracking them. And then there’s a myriad of Enonchong-type, small but nimble, specialized service outfits operating across national borders in SSA. So it appears there are tons of indigenous regional players in the inter and intra regional manufacturing and service category that don’t seem to be accounted for in the above World Bank report. Another point to note is that the recent upsurge in inter-regional commercial activity coincides with, among other things, the telecom upsurge/ICT adoption in SSA.

As far as things that could be done to improve/encourage organic growth and progress of regional trade – I see ICT once again written all over the place!

 

 

 

African policy makers who attended a training course on Internet Governance at the United Nations Conference Center (UNCC) in Addis Ababa in July 2006 welcomed a proposal from African Networks Operators Group (AfNOG) to consider building a dotAfrica. Brenda Zulu reports from Ethiopia on why the continent needs its own continental top level domain (TLD) name.

The AfNOG Convener, Nii Quaynor, said it was important to have a dotAfrica to help Africa get its recognition as an entity with a high stake in Internet Governance. He said that dotAfrica would target 100,000 organisations under the name.Africa or nom.Africa (for Francophone Africa). He proposed that the board of dotAfrica would be elected by members who would include AfNOG, AfriNIC (the Regional Internet Registry for Africa), Pan African ICT associations, and the African Union.

He pointed out that dotAfrica would be registered under a not-for-profit company under the name dotAfrica Limited, www.dotAfrica.org, and would be a sponsored TLD for African interests.

Patrick Mwesigwa, Technical Manager of the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), said dotAfrica was a good idea that Africans should support, but there was need to improve the proposal in order to market it to authorities like the African Union. He noted that since other regions like Asia and the European Union have adopted the idea of having dotAsia and dotEU, it would also be good for Africa to adopt the dotAfrica.

This was a position supported by Dr Raphael Mmasi, director of the Rwanda Information Technology Authority (RITA). He said dotAfrica would help Africa to market itself in the area of innovation.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Policy Analyst Anne-Rachel Inne said that dotEU and dotAsia were started by governments. She explained that it was up to the policy makers to find a way of setting up dotAfrica for Africa. She said it could also be the African Union (AU) or governments who could support the realisation of dotAfrica.

She said that there would be a charter developed by a body such as the AU or governments, which would cover issues such as how much will be charged to organisations who would like to have a dotAfrica domain name, who provides the resources.

 

Dowload Newsletter PDF

..

..