News from Africa

Rwanda cited as an ICT success story in East Africa

Rwanda has been named East Africa’s number one ICT nation by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The country has benefited from ICT-based investments by lucrative international players such as Microsoft, Nokia, and Terracom. According to the UNCTAD, the country's current ICT sector budget is at par with nations of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of 30 rich nations, at 1.6 percent, far above the African average. Donor governments are getting on the ICT bandwagon as well. Just last month, the British Department for International Development (DFID) announced it would launch a 700,000 pound sterling (1.4 million dollar) project in conjunction with the Rwandan government and World Bank to explore innovation in science and technology and economic growth in the country.

The Rwanda Development Gateway, a government-run portal for Rwanda’s development sector, sees ICTs as a window of opportunity to leap-frog the industrialization stage and transform the economy into information and knowledge-based economies in order to effectively combat development challenges in the country while ushering in new economic and social opportunities. Twenty-five recently demobilized soldiers, for example, were awarded one-year hardware maintenance and software development certificates in 2006 by the Washington DC-based Development Gateway Foundation. The aim of the training was to help demobilized soldiers get jobs as technical consultants in ICTs. Some have started partnering with computer hardware and maintenance companies, Jerome Gasana, project manager of the Regional ICT Training Centre (RITC) in Kigali told IPS.

The approach has apparently worked. The Economist magazine recently reported that Rwanda is well on its way to achieving its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a result of its ICT-based poverty reduction strategies. Ensuring access by all citizens has been a mainstay of Rwanda’s ICT policy, although there is still a substantial rural-urban gap, with the majority of mobile phones, landlines and internet access concentrated in Rwanda's capital Kigali and surrounding areas.

One billion dollars was committed in 2006 to build nation wide tele-centres with Internet and telephone access points, allowing for increased connectivity and mobility in rural areas. A related village phone endeavour undertaken by Nokia and the Grameen Foundation USA in 2006 sought to bring affordable mobile communications access to rural villages in Rwanda, as well as the creation of over 3,000 related small businesses throughout the country in the next three years. The number of village phones (as of July) deployed amounted to 167. The target is to reach 1,000 by the end of 2007. Nokia’s Middle East and Africa Director of Communications, Yolanda Pineda, told IPS.

Rwanda also boasts an Internet Exchange Point, ICT Park, National Computing Centre, and Telemedicine Network, which connects Rwandan hospitals and universities in an attempt to transform and expand health services to underserved areas.

By: David Muwanga
Source: http://hana.ru.ac.za/index.cfm