Although the Internet adoption rate, experts say, has witnessed a 135 per cent annual growth since its introduction in Africa in the early nineties, governments in Africa have made slow progress in providing online services to their citizens. There still remains a perceptible telephony and Internet access divide between urban and rural people, men and women and the young and old. For e-governance to be enhanced, Dr. Ekwow recognised the need for focusing on empowering people and investing in infrastructure. “Citizens expect a lot from government. ICTs can cost a lot but promise a lot,” he said, adding that donors were more than ever interested in supporting ICT access and content development in underserved countries.
On his part, the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Jean Pierre Biyiti bi Essam, representing the Prime Minister and Head of Government, said the Cameroonian government was sparing no effort to give access to telecommunication services to all citizens. He named several ongoing e-governance projects to facilitate electronic transactions, online applications, digitalisation of public contracts, computerisation of management of government staff and salaries, among others, illustrating government’s ambition to use ICTs to improve access to all public services. While acknowledging the existence of obstacles in the process of building and strengthening the information society, he expressed government’s fervent wish that the experts at the forum will exchange and come up with resolutions that will stimulate ICT structures and the development of various African countries.
Organised by the CTO, the forum that ends tomorrow is serving as a platform for the exchange of strategies, experience and trade practices in ICT. Experts and delegates from participating countries and businesses are discussing e-government policy and regulation, building infrastructure, content generation, capacity building, e-government income generation and the deployment cost-effective technologies and solutions.
