Connect Africa Summit Opens

Kigali City Centre from the Genocide Memorial
Originally uploaded by Brayo

The ‘Connect Africa’ Summit opens today in Kigali, Rwanda and runs for a couple of days, under the auspices of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID).

Among the key concerns of Connect Africa are that Internet services needed for business, government and consumer applications continue to be either very expensive or not available due to limited broadband network infrastructure; and that rural connectivity and access remain inadequate as does the availability of locally relevant content, applications and services.

This paper, by Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), outlines some of the issues that need to be addressed for the vision of boosting connectivity in Africa to be realised.