Session 6 – A continental framework to promote an equitable information society

Luis Martin Oar, Head of the EU secretariat of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy gave a presentation on the experience of the European Parliaments in the development of a continental legislative framework to regulate and promote an equitable Information Society. The framework adopted to achieve the goal of developing an equitable information society in Europe, was the Lisbon Agenda, adopted in 2000, which aimed to make Europe the most competitive knowledge based economy in the world by 2010. Part of the Lisbon strategy is i2020, a broad policy framework to bring together all European policies and initiatives in the ICT sector. i2020 was adopted in 2005, when parliament felt that the Lisbon Agenda could not be fully implemented without further investment in ICT, and the overcoming of the digital divide.

The tools of implementation include the National Reform Strategies adopted by member states in 2006 and a set of non-binding guidelines collectively agreed upon by Member States in 2008. The achievements are to be measured in terms of public and private investments in research and development and the employment rate of Europe’s working age population. The Lisbon Strategy is not legislatively binding on governments; rather the responsibility lies mainly in the hands of member governments.

Although Europe is very different to Africa, the European experience presents a lot of lessons for Africa. Pertinent is the issue of ICT policy formulation. Oar also pointed out that successful ICT policies are not only a function of wealth. He used Portugal as an example, which has been very successful despite being one of the poorer member states. 

Session 7 – The Rwandan experience

This focused on the experience of Rwanda’s experience with its efforts to develop an equitable information society. Rwanda has been hailed by many as an African ICT success story. Presentations were given by Patrick Nyirishema of the Rwanda Information Technology Agency; Senator Wellars Gasamagera, a member of the ICT steering committee of the Parliament of Rwanda; and Professor Roman Murenzi, Minister in the Office of the President in Charge of Science and Technology

Rwanda’s future vision, Vision 2020, aims to move Rwanda from an agricultural based economy towards a knowledge economy by 2020 – science and technology and ICTs are key enablers of this vision. Two key strategies to support this are: the National Policy on Science, Technology and Innovation, adopted in 2005 and the National Information and Communications Infrastructure plan, a 20 year plan now in its second phase.

Major initiatives contributing towards information access include: the National Backbone Network (which aims to create a transmission network connecting all districts and border points at a transmission rate of 1Gigabit per second from node to node by 2009); the construction of the Kigali Metropolitan Network, which is currently underway; a National Data Centre, rural and community access (through telecaster projects and public information kiosks and ICT buses); the One Laptop Per Child Project, which rolled out 5110 laptops to primary school children in 2008 and aims to roll out over 100 000 by the end of 2009; and e-Agriculture, e-Government and e-Education initiatives.  Challenges to these initiatives include, high costs, high illiteracy rates and human capacity, a young ICT sector, inadequate support infrastructure such as electricity and inadequate regulatory frameworks. The opportunities include, the ability to leapfrog the need for old technologies, the opportunity to invest in youth.

“ICT is no longer a privilege, but a right for Rwandan citizens” stated Patrick Nyirishema.

Senator Gasamagera gave an overview of the strategies adopted to bridge the information gap between parliament and citizens, as well as the efforts to bring ICT access to parliament through a parliament intranet, operating over both fibre and Wi-Fi, as well as efforts to ensure that parliamentarians are equipped with both laptops and desktops.

Session 8  - Frameworks and institutional architectures for integration and harmonisation: Opportunities and Challenges: Panel presentations

While the Rwanda presentation provided an insight into a national ICT strategy, the point of departure for this session was the opportunities and challenges posed by the borderless nature of ICTs.

Abi Jagun gave a presentation on cross-border and undersea communications infrastructure on sub-Saharan Africa. Jagun's point of departure was that “pervasive and affordable communications infrastructures” are essential for the goals of economic and social development. However, she argued that regional communications infrastructure is neither pervasive, nor affordable. Despite advancements in the deployment of mobile cellular networks, the development of some national backbone infrastructure and the anticipated improvements in undersea fibre-optic infrastructure there still remains a huge gap between the existing infrastructure and what is needed for the goals of social and economic development.

Jagun sees the roles of parliaments as making interventions at the level of international, regional and national infrastructures. International infrastructure monopolies need to be broken, and the cost lowered, there needs to be more regional backbones, evenly distributed, not just in a few countries. At the national level, backbones need to focus on rural as well as urban areas, and monopolistic behaviour needs to be broken with players other than the incumbents participating.

International bandwidth is set to increase with the new undersea cables landing on the continent, but despite the 10 terabytes per second capacity, which will be available to Africa, it will still leave Africa behind the rest of the world. “We are still playing catch-up”, rather than meeting current and future needs.

Jagun saw the role of parliaments as: promoting liberalisation and competition, encouraging investment, reducing the barriers that exist for new entrants, supporting the deployment of regional infrastructure. In addition to supporting infrastructure, parliaments need to promote competition in the last mile, which connects the infrastructures to the local level, address bottlenecks in access and increase the utilisation of infrastructure through promotion of the availability of end-user devices to access the infrastructure and through the generation of content.

Kenyan based Muriuki Mureithi of Summit Strategies gave a presentation on the development of the Celtel/Zain One Network, which has seen an end to roaming charges  in East Africa. Roaming charges within the network effectively do not exist, as charges when roaming are the same as in the host country. In addition to providing huge social benefits especially with regards to regional integration, this allowed Celtel to consolidate their market share. This stimulated Vodacom, Safaricom and MTN to initiate similar initiatives in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda respectively. The result was a rise in subscribers across all networks and a reduction in roaming charges.

One Network launched in September 2006 in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania and now operates in 15 African countries. Incoming calls are free, outgoing calls are at local prices and prepaid users may top up with local cards. One Network has enabled cross-border communications and has been a key enabler of economic growth. The lessons learned are that “enabling regulations open the door for innovation” – the network was enabled by the liberalisation of international gateways in Tanzania and Uganda. Liberalisation has resulted in real competition and the One Network can be seen as a competitive response to the entrance of new players into the market. Another lesson learnt is that market forces are good for consumers and thus social and economic development.

Recommendations following from the example includes: that regulations are reviewed for the purpose of enhancing liberalisation for innovation, the removal or easing of tax regimes on regional calls. The Pan African Parliament needs to link this and other such initiatives to blocs were regional trade is the highest. And there should be a general effort to move towards cost-based pricing, he argued.

A further case of market innovation was provided by Alex Comminos, a researcher for Research ICT Africa gave a presentation on the possible use of mobile phones for the provision of banking services to the unbanked. As more people in Africa possess mobile phones then bank accounts, this represents a strategic opportunity to integrate the “unbanked” into the financial sector. The M-PESA service, offered by Safaricom in Kenya represents a flagship mobile banking project. M-PESA users can make payments, transfers or remittances with a mobile phone. Leapfrogging the need for a bank account. Services like M-PESA being offered in the rest of the continent would make great inroads towards integrating the unbanked into the formal sector. Comninos hopes that these services could be deepened and credit could eventually be offered on mobile phones. Such solutions however pose great regulatory and legislative challenges that parliamentarians need to engage with.

Kigali based Albert Nsengiyumva, of Research ICT Africa, provide some comments on the role of regional regulatory associations such as CRASA, EARPTO, ARICEA, WATRA in regional harmonisation, highlighting the link between model legislation developed by several associations and the role of parliament in drawing on ‘best practice’ and supporting harmonisation efforts.

Session 9 - Applying ICTs in support of Parliamentary initiatives to support Africa integration and harmonisation agenda and build national capacity

A presentation was given by Flavio Zeni of UNDESA and the African i-Parliaments Action Plan and Cecilia Matanga, ICT Officer for the SADC Parliamentary Forum. The presentation focused on the African Parliamentary Knowledge Network.

Zeni identified a strategic gap between the needs on the one hand of global and continental integration and the need for locally focused solutions for delivering media to parliaments and their constituencies on the other hand. Another strategic gap between technological opportunities and a practical approach was identified It was in this context of these gaps that the African Parliamentary Knowledge Network (APKN) arose.

Zeni explained Akoma Ntoso (a set of common standards to produce, organise and share parliamentary documents) and Bungeni (a suite of software applications that automates access to parliamentary documents), the architecture behind the information sharing of the APKN.

Strategic choices were made for these projects which involve: open and common standards, which are the best way to deliver quality and sustainable information that encourages collaboration.

Sean Kealy, head of the Boston University law school's legislative studies program, spoke about the evidence based law approach he was using with his students and offered to work with African legislatures on drafting evidence based ICT policy that was appropriate to their circumstances and needs.

Thierry Amoussougbo of UNECA then also reminded those present of the projects completed and underway in different countries, arising from the African Information Society Initiatives described on the first day, and that this continued to be resources available from UNECA for African countries that sought technical assistance.

Session 10 – A common agenda for Parliaments of the Information Society

Kigali Declaration and Kigali Plan of Action

The conference concluded with the Kigali Declaration on the Development of an Equitable Information Society in Africa which called upon all African parliaments among other things to develop policies and initiate and enact laws that promote equitable access to information, communication and knowledge and provide for favourable institutional arrangements for the ICT sector; that would encourage private investment and participation in the ICT Sector, while ensuring that strategies are developed to ensure equitable access for all, increase the capacity and effectiveness of the parliaments in African states as oversight bodes to ensure the benefits of enhanced communications services are share by al and that the ICT sector contributes to growth and development of national and regional economies, create Parliamentary ICT Committees; encourage the undertaking of research on the ICT sector in order to develop policy based on the analysis of practical experiences in relation universal access to information and communication services for all; formalise mechanisms to share and disseminate information and  knowledge among Parliaments, ensure the freedom of expression and equitable access to information upon which the citizenry can base their decision and create a conducive environment for the institutions of civil society including media, trade unions and NGOs to promote and practice equitable access to information and communication; develop a comprehensive master plan for ICTs and for the dissemination and sharing of electronic information. (See isa.apkn.org)

In the spirit of the Kigali Declaration on the Development of an Equitable Information Society and the Role of African Parliaments, the representatives of the African Parliaments present agreed to implement a Plan of Action. This would include establishing a repository of policy, legislation and regulation of each country; developing a training programme for parliamentarians to familiarise them with the dynamic ICT field and to update their knowledge in order to enhance their representative, legislative and oversight functions; identifying common research needs in the area of ICT and seek support to have it conducted; support and utilise local and international indicator studies and analysis in order to move towards a more rigorous, evidence based policy development, legislative practice and to monitor progress towards the achievement of an equitable information society for all; to actively contribute to the online monthly thematic discussion that will be led by identified specialists on relevant topics or legislation being debated/passed in a particular jurisdiction in the context of the APKN Information Society Initiative. (See isa.apkn.org))