On the 1 March 2012, the African Union Commission (AUC), NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA) and NEPAD Business Foundation hosted a 1-day workshop on the implementation of regional and continental ICT programmes and projects. The objective of the meeting was to facilitate an initial dialogue to explore potential partnerships by inter-acting the private sector, ICT programme experts from the African Union Commission (AUC), NPCA Regional Economic Communities (RECs), Specialised Agencies of the African Union, and international organisations involved in ICT programmes in Africa. The workshop meeting was attended by 98 participants from these different sectors.
An initial 2-day working session between the AUC and NPCA was held to review the current status of ICT programmes on the continent and to propose recommendations on how best to harmonise and coordinate regional and continental ICT policies to enhance the delivery of such programmes.
Following this, a 1-day private sector engagement workshop was coordinated by the NBF together with the AUC and NPCA, to provide a platform for private sector to become appraised of the continental ICT strategy and to provide feedback and input on ICT issues, programmes and projects.
The AUC/NPCA advised that four focus areas in ICT had been identified :
Figure 1: ICT working groups
Two private sector presentations were delivered by :
1. Dr. Rosalind Thomas on the South Atlantic Exchange (SaEX,) which is a state-of-the-art private submarine fibre optic network that via Southern Africa extends to N America via Brazil, connecting East to the West and establishing RSA as a network hub. The cable, which is supported by BRICS, provides lowest latency access from RSA to the Americas.
2. Ken Willett of HP on how ICT is used as an enabler at the local community levels with examples of some of the ICT projects HP has implemented in various African countries to address health, education and SMME challenges
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