African Countries Asked to Share ICT Know-How

Learning and sharing best ICT practices among Commonwealth countries could help them close digital divides, an expert has said. The Executive officer for Commonwealth Telecommunication Organisation (CTO), Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah said this could, however, only be achieved by having points of contact which will help member countries take stock of each country's needs, what is available and what needs to be done to improve the situation.

He said countries could only overcome their handicaps by sharing with their counterparts who are better placed and have initiated successful projects. The point of contact can be nominated by the government although there is need to incorporate the private sector in the programmes, he said. He said CTO helped to identify individual members needs through research and capacity building and by providing technical assistance. " We are encouraging the spirit of sharing knowledge and experiences and not necessarily funding. Some of the most advanced nations among our membership have some projects that can be replicate," he said.

The CTO, in its rural connectivity initiative, has set up pillars that will help it execute the programme. One of the pillars revolves around legislation that will allow for an environment conducive for the projects. It also collaborates with civil organisations to scale up the projects and provide seed money . CTO started projects in India and Sri-Lanka after the Tsunami to help the country deal with such crisis in future, he said. In Cameroon it has set up a project to help the locals gain entrepreneurship skills. It has is also started projects in India that will be replicated in other Commonwealth countries, starting with Uganda.

The programme dubbed: A "hole in the wall" provides Internet and internet connectivity for young people in marginalised areas such as slums . CTO is also trying to address the issues of rural communication challenge by carrying out a gap analysis and coming up with solutions." Our approach is bottom up. The contact persons will provide what is missing in their countries and what they would like to be done to alleviate these problems after which we will come up with projects to address them," he said.

This article can be found here: http://allafrica.com/stories/200708201682.html