East Africa: Rwanda is Number One in ICTs

The New Times (Kigali)
April 25, 2007

Magnus K Mazimpaka
Kigali

Rwanda has grabbed the first position in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the East African region. According to a report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in New York and Geneva, Rwanda has steadily risen its rating to pitch at the top of the league in East Africa only to catch up with Kenya.

While speaking to The New Times just a few hours after receiving the release, State minister for Energy and Telecommunications, Eng. Albert Butare, said: "This shows that something is going on in Rwanda."

In its latest report, entitled "The Digital Divide Report: ICT Diffusion Index 2005', an UNCTAD global study on ICT diffusion awarded both Rwanda and Kenya 0.231 points in the global ICTDI (ICT Diffusion Index), placing the two ahead of all the other partners in the EAC region.
According to the report again, Kenya and Rwanda, in the global ranking, have tied at positions 136. Eng. Butare said: "We are ahead of the other EAC partner states."

In the report, Tanzania is globally at number 146, Uganda at 147 and Burundi at 161. However, there are three African countries among the best
in the world. The leading overall African countries on the list are Seychelles at number 51, Mauritius at 62 and South Africa at 84. Globally, the top three countries are Luxembourg, USA and Iceland is the third, respectively.

The other countries in the Top 10 league include, in ascending order: Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, Bermuda, Australia and the United Kingdom. "The ICTDI is a function of the level of connectivity in a country and the people's ability to access and use it," the report says.
Connectivity is taken to be the number of Internet hosts per capita, number of personal computers (PCs) per capita; the number of telephone mainlines per capita, and the number of mobile phone subscribers per capita.

As such, the report says, "Connectivity gives a measure of the infrastructure development" Eng. Butare said Rwanda has rapidly grown in ICT because of the government's commitment to develop the sector as its core business in the region: "We are having more and more coming, this is just a beginning." He said Rwanda is planning to develop re-broadcasting programmes, Internet Development, Video Compressing and many others.

In eight years to come, according to the minister, Rwanda is going to become the ICT focal point in Africa. In a country where there is only one Internet Service Provider (ISP) and only two telecommunication companies, whereas other regional countries have more than five companies, "this is a great achievement," Butare said. However, the report, which covered a total of 180 countries, has identified 10 distinct regions and economic groupings. The Western Europe, OECD, European Union, CEE and CIS, Latin America, East Asia, Arab States, North Africa, South Asia and lastly Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where all the five East African Country Partner States fall.

Coincidentally, it says, "The order of advances are as per the list above, with Western Europe consistently posting best results over the past' nearly ten years, and SSA the least impressive results."

Within the Western European, grouping, Luxembourg seems to have topped Norway which in 1997 marked in the number one slot. In SSA, Seychelles also seems to have steadily held top slot since 1997, the reports says.

Surprisingly, the Democratic republic of Congo, which is Rwanda's neighbor, is second last. The report has also indicated that some countries performed worse in that period for each of the regions.

Particularly in Africa, North Africa improved somewhat, despite the fall in Libya's ranking (112) during the period of the study.

Mobile phones

It has emerged also that despite the rapid growth of the developing countries, especially African countries, mobile phones are still 29 times more prevalent in high-income countries than low and mid-income countries. But mainline penetration remains over 21 times that of low-income countries. It is on the other hand hopeful that the difference between high lower-middle-income countries is notably smaller though it is still very large in magnitude as about 2.3 billion people live in low-income countries. Rwanda is rapidly growing but and today has about ten million people. The government’s commitment to making sure ICT is essential to all citizens has become an impressive effort and this has attracted donors to support the country in the sector. The UN report comes just following the last week's Swedish government's (number four on the global list) grant of Frw2 billon to Rwanda, to boost the ICT sector.
The Digital Divide Report 2005 was prepared by Larry Press and Marie-Elise Dumans under the direction and supervision of Mongi Hamdi, Chief of Science and Technology Section of UNCTAD's Division on Investment, Technology and Enterprise development.
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200704250581.html