13.06.2003 Africa Economic Summit 2003 Two interlinking questions need asking, said Louis N. Diakit窠Chief Executive Officer, Afripa Telecom, Cd Ivoire and Global Leader for Tomorrow 2002, as he introduced the session.
How is technology affecting development in Africa? and; How is African innovation affecting the way technology itself is used?
One way of answering is by citing examples, said Teresa Peters. Executive Director, Bridges.com, South Africa. Her company had recently examined a Cape Town programme for using SMS technology to help in the treatment of tuberculosis (TB). TB treatments often falter because patients either forget to take their medicine or terminate treatment before completion. This can lead to the evolution of drug resistant strains of the TB bacillus, But by reminding patients by means of periodic SMS s, the treatment success rate was lifted to 97%.
In a Ugandan programme, doctors in rural areas were equipped with hand held computers enabling them to collect and start the processing of malaria statistics. Downloading to a central computer allowed a survey that might normally be expected to take months to be completed in seven days and placed on the minister s desk. Simple instances, but effective, Peters said.
Pete da Silva, Chief Executive Officer of Siemens Telecommunications, South Africa, took a different approach to the questions. Africa is not always on the catch up trail, he said, citing the rapid growth in penetration of cellphones, and Internet usage in South Africa. "The bad news is that we have done all this and just kept up with the rest of the world," da Silva said. "The digital divide may not have narrowed, but it has not grown." As it is, da Silva continued, Africa has learned from the dotcom bubble which affected the developed world. In South Africa licence fees (which badly affected service providers elsewhere) were kept at realistic levels. And South Africa gave birth to the concept of prepaid SIM cards.
Stephen Mncube, Chairman of Sentech, a South African broadcast infrastructure services company, cited South African examples such as a programme which linked 15 rural hospitals to 15 teaching hospitals allowing better and more rapid diagnosis.
The focus is on e government, learning from the mistakes of other countries.
Godfrey Ntoele, Managing Executive, Business and Government Markets, Telkom South Africa, enumerated the three pillars of any successful ICT initiative: Accessibility Affordability Sustainability Telkom, the state owned telecommunications company, is focusing on leveraging fixed line and mobile telephony synergies. This is necessary as fixed line growth is averaging 3% a year against 23% for cellular. One participant then stated that he has the sense of emerging complexity. Who will disaggregate information? Will there be changes to make the back end of the process more understandable to front end users? Not necessarily, replied da Silva. Service and equipment providers have to ensure that devices are truly "plug and play". There is no need for users to understand the technologies or systems underlying particular ICT services.
Peters added that another back end process is the human process. Before new services can be introduced and sustained, change management may be necessary to ensure that service providers employees understand and can deliver on services that are offered.
Another participant asked what intellectual property benefits might accrue to local populations linked to e government services. Mncube quoted an example from Pakistan where government makes tender application forms available on the Internet. Previously their distribution was in the hands of corrupt officials, and making them freely available has sharply reduced corruption in this sector.
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