Time to Close Africa’s digital gap
Africa needs huge investment in digital infrastructure to close the gap with the developed world, says Boutheina Guermazi of the World Bank at a summit on African Digital Transformation for Economic Growth. She believes investing in broadband technology and developing internet value chains will help Africa leapfrog several stages of its development.
Africa, she notes, can achieve this if it replicates the success of the mobile connectivity revolution. Africa’s broadband connectivity is still low and about one percent of investment goes to ICT and “it sends the wrong signal that information is a luxury,” she reiterates.
For Rwandan Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Special Advisor, Smart Africa, the digital gap should also be viewed from the context of its exclusion of a large chunk of Africans from economic, social and political activities. There is a market failure for the provision of digital infrastructure as too much responsibilities are given to the private sector, he asserts and wonders why access to information is not seen as vital to human existence as electricity and water have become.
He calls on governments to lead by example by building digital infrastructure for its own use and partner with the private sector to scale up. Digital adoption, he says, will be easy when better products are built and government invests in digital literacy.
Yousry Atlm, Vice President, Marketing, Huawei Technologies, Egypt says the future of technology is here and it is about applications, big data and cloud computing. There is so much government can benefit from by deploying technological products and platforms such as plugging revenue leakages. Just by getting governments to deploy intranet, it could save a lot of time in processing information. Government must work with the private sector to close the information gap in service delivery, he advised.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.