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16 April 2008

Theme: "Building blocks for Africa's service delivery through information and communication technology (ICT)"

Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa, Ms Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Honourable Minister of Education of the Republic of South Africa, Ms Naledi Pandor
Honourable Minister of Education of the Republic of Gabon, Mr Michel Menga
Executive Deputy Chairperson of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) e-Africa Commission, Dr Henry Chasia
Honourable Ambassadors and High Commissioners from our African countries
Distinguished observers from our partner countries
Members and representatives of governments and states participating in the Nepad e-schools projects
Partners, patrons and members of the private sector and civil society present
Principals, teachers and learners
Ladies and gentlemen

When our Heads of State and government agreed to Nepad and articulated the need for Africans to take responsibility for Africa's socio-economic development, set its own development agenda and provide its own leadership to implementation, the information and communication technology (ICT) sector was a logical area to start because our telecoms sector was in dire straits; our ICT usage and uptake was in poor state.

Today, the mobile telephone growth in Africa is the highest in the world; the potential for growth of ICT's is high given the market stagnation in the north and west.

We wish to thank the e-Africa Commission for rising to the African challenge and embarking on one of the biggest projects in the world for which it received well deserving accolades – The Nepad e-Schools.

The road was long. But from the beginning – from the conceptualisation to implementation, it was clear that partnership would be needed – partnership between governments and between their policy makers and business sectors, - partnership between government and business within and between countries and partnership between competing members of the ICT sector, nationally and internationally.

To have achieved consensus and agreement among these many stakeholders could not have been easy, but the implementation of the demo model did take off. The experiences in the different countries provided lessons for the next phase of the implementation.

The focus on schools emphasises the importance of the role of future generations in the usage and uptake of ICT's throughout the continent. The need to demonstrate the importance of ICT for socio-economic development can be best achieved through education at schools and at community level.

The continent has embarked on joint efforts to reduce costs to communicate by jointly working on building undersea and terrestrial cables known as Uhurunet and Umojanet. First it was to connect Eastern and Southern Africa which is now extended to include West Africa and proceed to Europe and the United States of America. It is unfortunate that I note from one of the newspapers that at a recent Satcom conference, a Minister from a land locked country has accused the South African government of interfering in things that should be left to the private sector. I must draw attention to the fact that the said Minister's colleague was a signatory to the Nepad Protocol. That it was precisely because of the fact that the cost of communication and use of internet in South Africa is not cheap in spite of the fact that we privatised Telkom; that we sought other ways to bring in competition and allow for non discriminatory access to cables.

It was unfortunate that our Minister of Science and Technology was ambushed on this matter, when he did not have enough knowledge of the details. The landing rights of cables in a country cannot be matter left to the private sector as they involve the security of a nation. Everywhere in the world this is the operative framework. I guess the Minister from this land locked country may not be familiar with such matter but his colleague who signed our protocol knows this. The building and licensing of Infraco as a state owned supplier of broadband arose out of the need to meet South Africa's development needs for example research and scientific needs of Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and delivery on 2010 communications infrastructure guarantees to FIFA.

This infrastructure is accessible on a non discriminatory basis and will increase the undersea cables, thus reducing costs to communicate. But the other cables to which Infraco can be linked are co-owned and managed by African Telcos and Investors, not by governments. Governments merely ensured that the necessary policy and regulatory harmonisation was put in place and that certain principles of costs minimisation for accessibility of all, are agreed and adhered to. Full liberalisation in many developing countries has not always had the effect of reducing costs as has been proved in many African countries.

But with this massive infrastructure investment, access by landlocked countries will not only be ensured, but the costs of access will also be reduced across the African continent which will become terrestrially linked thus enhancing inter Africa trade, scientific endeavours and education and health interaction.

The expansion of the e schools project will enhance not only internet connectivity for the schools but will improve access to education, health, culture etc, content within and between countries. This will improve the sharing of unmediated information and best practices among Africans.

We hope that with this sharing of information among stakeholders, we will learn of what works and what doesn't and what processes will lead to best practices and assist in the roll out of e schools in different countries based on the different challenges each faces. As Ministers of Communication and of Education, we need to take collective responsibility for ensuring that the necessary infrastructure, hardware and software and human capacity is made available for successful delivery in our countries.

We thank you all.

Issued by: Department of Communications
16 April 2008
Source: Department of Communications (http://www.doc.gov.za/)