Activity File
Building Africa's Regional ICT Infrastructure
Support for the NEPAD e-Africa Commission
Summary
infoDev is providing grant support to the NEPAD e-Africa Commission to assist it in its coordination and consensus-building role in the multi-stakeholder effort to develop a robust and rationalized broadband information and communication network in Eastern and Southern Africa. infoDev's support helps the NEPAD e-Africa Commission to convene meetings of key stakeholders and experts, secure the help of expert consultants, support its Secretariat, and undertake other efforts to build effective multi-stakeholder consensus on strategies and solutions for building out broadband ICT infrastructure in the sub-region.
Background
In the past few years, a wide range of stakeholders -- governments, the private sector, international organizations, NGOs and others -- have worked to identify and implement realistic multi-stakeholder solutions for vastly increasing broadband backbone communications infrastructure in Eastern and Southern Africa, focusing both on the "wet" submarine cable component and the "dry" land-based backbone networks. As a crucial party to these efforts, and based upon its mandate from African Heads of State and Government to help address the ICT challenges facing the entire African continent, the NEPAD e-Africa Commission has played a key role in convening experts and government officials, analyzing options, identifying optimal policy and regulatory frameworks to encourage infrastructure investment, and promoting dialogue and cooperation around concrete strategies and initiatives.
A substantial grant from infoDev provides support to the e-Africa Commission to assist it in these efforts.