Minister of Information and Communications Alpha Kanu has appealed to information communication experts and other colleague ministers in Mano River Union countries “to consider the deployment of fibre optic cables overhead instead of underground”.
According to newsfeed from the information ministry, Kanu said this would “reduce cost and also facilitate faster deployment of the fibre cable for use by the citizens”.
Speaking in Monrovia the minister said that “Africa in general and indeed the Mano River Union in particular stands at the cross roads of a paradigm shift. The advent of the information technology revolution provides an opportunity for Africa to make up for lost time during the industrial revolution and leap frog development by several centuries, if we give the right emphasis to the new opportunities.” He said that information provided the opportunity to move step by step with the developed countries.
He said the best opportunities within the reach of African countries was not in the “judicious exploitation of the well-known natural resources” but rather in the “judicious exploitation of another lesser known scarce natural resource; the electromagnetic spectrum”.
He said that if this was to be accessed and utilised for the well-being of the people there must first be the recognition that telecommunications and information technology were both a business and a social delivery service.
The newsfeed says that MRU ministers, technical experts and ambassadors were surprised to know that in Sierra Leone the contribution of telecommunications to the national budget was more than double that of mining activities.
It says that in 2012 one telecoms company paid US$ 67million in taxes and royalties to Government, compared to US$ 55 million from mining of all minerals.
The three-day MRU workshop was to enable member states identify and adopt a unified ICT development program for the union.
Sierra Leone proposed a US$ 50 million project, Liberia US$ 172 Million, Guinea US$ 54.75 million and Cote D’Ivoire USD 126Million to the MRU for funding by the African Development Bank. These projects will facilitate the construction of ICT Infrastructure that will scale up connectivity and the provision of services across member countries.
(C) Politico 05/09/13
