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Development Cooperation (SDC), e-PolNET, Finland, and Partnership for Measuring ICTs for Development. 9.2 Partnership for ICTs in Africa (PICTA) During the “Donor and Executing Agency Meeting on Information Technology for Development in Africa” held in Rabat (Morocco) from 16-18 April 1997, representatives of 17 UN and other development agencies, involved in ICT development in Africa, agreed to establish a forum called PICTA for donor/executing agencies collaboration within the framework of AISI and to set up common information resources on the Internet for ICT related development activities. PICTA builds on the work of the African Networking Initiative (ANI) and the African Internet Forum (AIF). PICTA was set up to assist in the development, follow-up and coordination of the implementation of the AISI. Members of this regional coordinating committee are ECA’s institutional partners from the United Nations system, bilateral and non-governmental organizations and representatives from the private sector involved in implementing AISI projects and programmes in Africa. During the Rabat inaugural meeting it was agreed that PICTA members should be organisations, which have a strong interest in improving the use of ICT as a tool to improve economic and social development. This interest should be manifested by past and ongoing expenditures or project execution and commitments made for future activities in this field. Thos would also include: • Appropriate transparency in programming, management and reporting about the activities; • Interest in collaborative/co-operative arrangements aiming at complementing and strengthening the initiatives of the group’s partners rather than to finance overlapping or competing initiatives; and • Commitment to physically or electronically attending meetings of the group A proposed initial list of themes corresponding to the following sub-programme areas of the AISI framework was adopted for cooperation among PICTA members: • Policy awareness; • Connectivity; • National information and communications infrastructure plans; • Telecentres and democratisation of access; • Sectoral Programmes (could be sub-lists for each sector as well); • Training; and • Development and information. PICTA publishes a database, a website and a newsletter and maintains an on-line discussion list for information exchange. 100 Its recent activities were based on the PICTA Action Plan that focuses on areas such as • Creating awareness of ICTs in Africa; • Supporting knowledge sharing communities; • Scoping ICT needs and priorities in Africa;
• Achieving better co-ordination; • Bandwidth for Higher Education in Africa; and • Local Government capacity building in ICT use. 9.3 ACACIA Acacia represents Canada’s contribution to the AISI. At the time of the launch of AISI in 1996, considerable scepticism prevailed about the development potential of ICTs. Few donor and development agencies were investing in ICTs for development and even private-sector interest was limited. Few African countries were connected to the Internet and new policies on ICTs and liberalisation of the telecommunications sector had only begun to surface in a few countries. That was the context in which the International Development Research Council launched the Acacia I program in 1997 as the “Canadian contribution towards helping sub-Saharan Africa meet the objectives of AISI” 3030 . It had three goals: • Demonstrate that the benefits of ICTs can reach disadvantaged sub-Saharan communities and the women and youth within these communities, and can amplify their inherent innovativeness and enterprise to help these communities solve their development problems; • Learn from Acacia’s community-based research and experimentation and to disseminate this knowledge widely; and • Build international momentum and buy-in in order to continue expansion of access to ICTs by rural and disadvantaged groups. The Acacia Program included social investments in pilot multi-purpose community telecentres, school networking activities and accelerated ICT policy development initiatives in each Acacia country, as well as considerable investments in evaluation and related research. Following a successful evaluation of the ACACIA I project, a second phase was launched with a focus on the Knowledge Economy and the following objectives: • Enhance understanding and knowledge of the innovative, transformative or dysfunctional effects of ICTs in poverty reduction and human development in Africa; • Improve African countries’ capacities to formulate and implement national ICT policies that promote equitable access to ICTs and information for socio-economic development; • Contribute to research in appropriate ICTs that support development and adoption of affordable and functionally relevant technical solutions for Africa; • Support research that increases African content on ICTs through software development for effective application of ICTs for development; and • Learn from Acacia’s community-based research and experimentation and to disseminate this knowledge widely. 9.4 UNSIA The United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa (UNSIA) was designed to rationalize United Nations assistance to Africa, including that of the Bretton Woods institutions, through more effective coordination, synergistic actions, capacity building and facilitating genuine partnerships. The UNSIA was therefore launched firstly, to help Africa help itself and secondly, to ensure that the United 30 www.idrc.ca/acacia/ 101
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Economic Commission for Africa The
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Table of Contents Acronyms and Abbr
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Acronyms and Abbreviations AAU Addi
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SAMTRAN Southern African Media Trai
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initiative (which included social i
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cialists to develop similar databas
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• The world’s lowest resource a
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Box 2: Resolution 812 (XXXI): Imple
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1.4 The AISI Vision The AISI propos
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1.6 The African Development Forum,
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A I S I Chapter 2 AISI and National
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On the action lines, the Plan of Ac
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Fig. 4: Status of NICI Policy Devel
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2.4 Links to national, regional and
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The NICI policy was therefore set w
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Whilst governments have a leading r
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A I S I Chapter 3 Indicators for Be
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• Individual numbers of staff usi
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Even though mobile costs were comin
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The chart below (Fig. 12) shows the
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Scan-ICT II countries are expected
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The model classifies ICT4D indicato
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These include: • Public sector ma
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knowledge environment, increase dia
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countries organised sub-regionally
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Given this background, it is eviden
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• Marginalisation of Africa in th
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• Definition of offences in relat
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