AFRICA is on the wrong side of a ”digital divide” which cuts off millions from the rest of the world, IT and computer experts at an African development meeting in Dakar said, calling for urgent measures to step up Internet connectivity.
Delegates at a conference on funding the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), which aims at dragging the continent out of endemic poverty, said many solutions to a better future lay with the Net.
The conference, which opened on Monday, was due to wind up Tuesday.
Microsoft corporate vice-president Umberto Paolucci underlined the pressing need to narrow the ”digital divide” between Africa and the rest of the world.
”Only half a million Africans have access to the Net,” he said. ”This means that only one in about 1,500 people throughout most of Africa can log on.
”This is unacceptable … Africa cannot afford to miss the chance,” he said, adding that if the sector was developed ”hundreds of thousands of new jobs can be created.”
Paolucci said the ”name of the game is to make things happen in Africa,” adding: ”One solution is partnering with NGOs,” or non-governmental organisations.
He said Microsoft had tied up with the South African government to provide free software to a ”potential 32 000 schools.”
Thorsten Freitag from Cisco Systems, a South Africa-based firm, said Africa had to realise that good Internet penetration was ”critical for education, health and for attracting foreign investment.”
He cited the example of Nigeria, Black Africa’s most populous nation with some 120 million people.
”Every year 600 000 high school students graduate. The problem is that universities only cater for 60 000. But with university online there are no limitations in terms of the size of a campus.
”Villagers, especially in areas where the nearest doctor is 160 kilometres away, can seek information on the Net.”
G.D. Adadja, the managing director of Rascom, a pan-African initiative which aims at launching a telecommunications satellite, said Africa was the ”most backward continent in terms of telecommunications.
”Today at least 700 million people live without telephone links in rural areas,” he said adding that telephone costs were exorbitant on the continent.
Robert Tibbs from the South Africa-based Internet Service Provider (ISP) Africa Venture Partners said telephone penetration in Africa was between ”one to four percent of the world.
”It has less than two percent of the world’s Internet hosts,” he added.
Hewlett Packard’s Janine Firpo said cybercafés were emerging in Africa but soon closing shop.
”They are struggling to survive,” she said.
Some African countries have launched IT schemes such as Senegal, which has launched the so-called ‘Joko clubs’ to bring Internet to villages. The government has roped in popular Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour to popularise the scheme.
This is exactly what African governments should do, according to Renato Soru, CEO of Tiscali, one of Europe’s leading Internet service providers.
”It is you who have to connect Africa with the rest of the world. If you don’t do that, nobody else will do it for you.” – Sapa-AFP