This initiative is conceived as a key enabler of the four priority areas of the Global Alliance, namely education, health, entrepreneurship, and e-governance. Africa has a critically important need to develop its communication infrastructure and increase broadband access. ICT infrastructure is the foundation on which ICT services for commerce, government and society can flow. Moreover, this infrastructure is essential for African countries to achieve regional integration and to enable poor people to participate in markets. Economic growth in Africa will depend upon widespread access to ICT services which in turn provide access to local, national, regional, and global markets. Therefore, national and regional backbones, cross-border links, and rural connectivity need to be vastly expanded, in parallel with the deployment of applications to take advantage of connectivity for productive use.
Many different approaches can be considered to address this development challenge of how best to accelerate communications infrastructure in Africa, ranging from reliance on government investment, to public-private partnerships, to reliance on private investment, market forces, and the optimization of regulatory frameworks. The Global Alliance is well positioned to play a key role in convening major stakeholders, including operators, potential investors, government agencies, donors, and user associations, with the objective of helping to forge a common understanding of the merits of different investment and management models, the different roles that each stakeholder can play in achieving the goal of accelerated connectivity, as well as the financial, economic, fiscal, transparency, and governance implications of the wide range of investment and management models identified.
The proposed program of work would consist of analytical work, consensus-building and dissemination activities aimed at reviewing and sharing the results of the work in seminars, conferences, and other public fora. The analytical work would provide a systematic framework to assess different models, taking account of the wide variety of different market and institutional contexts in different parts of Africa. It would also develop recommendations on transition paths to new policies and programs, raise awareness within governments and the investment community, and liaise with development partners on timely funding, advice and/or technical assistance for implementation of new initiatives as requested by Governments and/or private sector stakeholders.
The work program under the Global Alliance would be coordinated by the World Bank and would aim at working with and leveraging existing work and initiatives by governments, other international organizations including the African Development Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, NEPAD, as well as bilateral and multilateral donor organizations, telecommunications operators associations, and representatives of users and civil society.