• Telecentres & kiosks

Telecentres and kiosks

This report describes the activities conducted in the first stage of the World Economic Forum - NEPAD E-Readiness Policy Programme, an initiative aimed at helping African countries develop e-readiness policies and remove or reduce the policy obstacles that limit the use of information and communications technology (ICT) throughout the region.

The report describes some of the key activities undertaken in the pursuit of these objectives:

• establishing collaboration with the e-Africa Commission
• identifying key actors and mechanisms to engage them
• collecting information on basic e-readiness in African countries
• creating a framework for examining the issues, and proposing country groupings according to e-readiness levels: the framework template can help policy-makers and stakeholders examine issues that apply to groups of countries at comparative levels, so they can learn from relevant experience and best practice

Key findings about e-readiness in Africa presented in the report include:

• policy environment:
  • there is unanimous agreement among Africa's leaders and pan-African structures on the benefits that ICT can bring and the impact it can have on a wide range of development issues
  • the ICT policy reform process has begun in almost all of the countries in Africa, but there is no uniform level of progress across the continent
• infrastructure development:
  • the state of infrastructure development across the continent varies widely from country to country
  • there remains an imbalance in the level of infrastructure roll-out between urban and rural Africa, with rural locations suffering at the expense of urban development
• ground-level projects:
  • there is an extensive and diverse range of ground level initiatives underway in Africa to promote and facilitate the use of ICT, funded by the public and private sectors
  • projects to establish telecentres and ICT access points are underway in most countries
  • there also projects in many countries related to education and training
• economic:
  • there is evidence of growth in the e-commerce sector, notably in South Africa
  • the cost of basic telephony and Internet connections remains disproportionately high across the continent
  • at present it is impossible for the vast majority of Africa's population to pay even basic access costs

  [adapted from author]

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