African Information Society Initiative (AISI)

Introduction

Three major development goals that have been articulated by African leaders in recent times include:

• Improvement of the quality of life for every African;
• Economic integration of the region;
• Improved trade and other linkages with the global community.
• Utilisation of information technology can help Africa reach all these goals.

The emerging global information infrastructure, the process of making connectivity available to everyone on the planet, is making the following possible:

• Students study and research using computers, multimedia and networks;
• Doctors diagnose, aided by information accessed through global networks;
• Decision support systems for debt management help cut external debt by up to 50 per cent; drought and famine warnings arrive in time to change planting times;
• Businesses compete more effectively with timely and accurate market information;
• Transport costs are reduced, also resulting in less pollution;
• Cultural heritage is captured electronically, documented and globally disseminated.

The global movement to an information age and the world-wide technological innovations of recent years, along with other structural and economic developments, have led to rapidly falling costs for information and communication technologies. These have combined with changes facing global and national telecommunication regimes to present a clear window of opportunity for appropriate "leapfrog" strategies to accelerate the development of the continent. The creation of African information infrastructure is both a necessity and an opportunity to accelerate development in all spheres of African economic and social activity.

The development of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI) will enable African leaders, decision makers and planners to position Africa in the world's rapidly expanding global economic system and accelerate the pursuit of Africa's development goals. The new technologies offer the potential to create jobs at much lower levels of capital investment and exploit Africa's information resources without the need for corresponding financial wealth. The cost of entry into global markets is becoming virtually insignificant and exploiting the information economy consumes minimal resources other than the effort and ingenuity of its members.

Africa has great potential to "leapfrog" development stages. The current investment in older communications equipment in Africa is relatively small and the vested interests in existing infrastructure in the information area much lower than in the developed world. With the will and the vision to build upon the accumulated lessons both inside and outside Africa, there is an excellent opportunity for a real jump-start. A high-level commitment from leaders of African nations is a starting point. A strategy to share this vision by the people of Africa, including its politicians, engineers, business community and youth, is essential to bring about the desired change. Africa's young population is an asset in adapting to new ideas and ways of working with new information and communication tools.

The development of the African information infrastructure will provide the seedbed for numerous benefits. Aside from the clearly apparent advantages for economic integration and for all forms of commerce and education, global information infrastructure will provide African countries with many new low-cost opportunities to disseminate alternative cultural, news and entertainment programming and help counter the flood of information from the industrialised countries. With minimal communications costs, there is also the opportunity to develop information technology products for markets in the developed countries.

Information and communication technologies also offers the potential to reduce the need for migration to the cities. The information age can break the link between jobs and urbanisation - some 70-80 per cent of the African population live in rural areas. The challenge is to create the conditions that enable them to make a living where they are.

Information and communication technologies can no longer be seen as a luxury for the elite but as an absolute necessity for the masses. Even though non-literate and rural populations may not be able to make direct use of the African information infrastructure in the near future, the positive spin-offs to the country as a whole will still result in benefits for all sectors of society. And while the immediate returns of investment in information and communication technologies may not be readily apparent to hard pressed administrations concerned with squeezing the most from limited resources, the long-term positive impacts of a proactive strategy cannot be ignored.

While the press has recently highlighted some of the potential negative impacts of the Internet through, for example, its capacity to distribute pornography and undermine data security, these problems are generally recognised as transitory. Addressing these issues requires society to develop a better under-standing of the new means of interaction offered by the global information infrastructure. Nevertheless, the disadvantages are far outweighed by the potential benefits of a pervasive information infrastructure. While effective controls must of course be put in place, some have likened these concerns to those over the ability of high-speed transport systems to carry criminals quickly away from the scene of a crime.

Success in all these areas depends on decision makers taking quick action to eliminate the barriers and create the enabling environment which will allow the development of Africa's information society - a term used to refer to the pervasive benefits to all Africans of proactive policies on information and communication technologies.



This document outlines a vision and an action plan for an African Information Society Initiative (AISI) which proposes a framework for societal transformation to be used by decision makers in African Governments responsible for socio-economic planning. It is also complementary to the telecommunications policy guidelines developed for African Ministers of Transport and Communications, known as the "African Green Paper".

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