Pledging to make Africa a digital continent

The mobile telephone industry is the main driver to bring rural Africa online. Judith Crosbie reports.

A major conference, entitled ‘Connect Africa’, held on 29-30 October in Kigali, Rwanda, saw $55 billion (€37.5bn) investment pledged and goals set out for bringing technology to the African continent. The plan is to connect all African capitals and major cities with high-speed internet access by 2012 and to extend this to all African villages by 2015. "Investment and trade - as opposed to aid and charity - must drive the transformation of our economies," Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, told the conference.

Much of the investment was pledged by the GSM Association, whose members in the mobile telephone industry plan over the next five years to provide more than 90% of the sub-Saharan population with mobile coverage.

"The investment will be used to extend the reach of GSM mobile networks, enhanced with GPRS, EDGE and HSPA technologies, to provide a rich suite of mobile multimedia services, including internet access," said a statement from the association following the conference.

The drive behind the conference and other initiatives such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-inspired $100 dollar computers, is to bridge the digital divide between the western world and the developing world. The European Commission is also focusing on the lack of technological infrastructure in Africa with funds and loans to be made available for African cross-border projects or national projects which would have a regional and continental impact.

The World Bank and the African Development Bank are also making loans available to help boast technology infrastructure.

Much of what happens now depends on the policies of governments and the accessibility of those funds to turn pledges and goals into reality. "This is not a technology problem - the technology is waiting to be deployed," said Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel Corporation, who attended the conference. "We now need the government priorities, decisions and policies to drive the implementation of a pan-African infrastructure."

The mobile telephone industry is the main driver to bring rural Africa online. Judith Crosbie reports.