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NEPAD ICT project feasible-Chenge
2007-04-30 09:45:45
By Correspondent Semu Mwakyanjala
The Planned cost effective, efficient and reliable multi-billion shilling NEPAD ICT Broadband infrastructure Network East African Sub-Marine Cable System (EASSy) Project may come to reality in the near future, under concerned parties’ new drive to speed up its implementation.
The Chairman to the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) Ministers Conference, which ended in Dar es Salaam over the weekend, Andrew Chenge, has said participants to the just ended meeting had agreed to convene another conference in Malawi in the near future.
Chenge, the Minister for Infrastructure Development, said the `snail` pace at which the EASSy Project was being executed was anti-developmental and contravened the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) aimed at upgrading economies of nations.
He said although rapid deployment and proliferation of the new and emerging information and communication technologies had brought about new opportunities for fast growth of economies and development, there was also adverse impact of huge digital divide gap, which contributed to uneven economic progress and development.
``This is particularly true in developing countries like ours, where adoption and access to ICT are slower to appear, and the EASSy Project seeks to narrow and lessen the impact of the rapidly widening digital divide, thus avoid long-term unwanted consequences,`` Chenge said.
Presenting a paper on ``The need for Sub-marine and Backhaul Terrestrial Cables and Tanzania`s ICT Landscape`` during the conference, the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) head Prof. John Nkoma cautioned against continued dependency on the costly Satellites Communication system.
Prof. Nkoma said presence and use of cost effective Sub-Marine Cables ICT infrastructure had been a key factor towards the realisation of swift economic growth and development in most countries of the world.
He raised concern that it was only Eastern Africa that was unfortunately not linked to the cheap communication facility, which had linked all continents of the world for decades.
Prof Nkoma also underscored the need to have a tripartite-form of conference, comprising governments, regulatory authorities with technical experts and private operators.
The TCRA chief said there was a need to take extra care when implementing the EASSy cable project so as to avoid reoccurrence of mistakes involved in building the expensive SAT 3 Cable in West Africa.
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