NAN-F-38
Investment
By Isaac Aregbesola
Kigali, May 11, 2017 (NAN) Dr Hamadoun Toure, the Executive Secretary, Smart Africa Alliance, says the alliance is keen on attracting investments worth 300 billion dollars to the African Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector by 2020.
Toure said this at the board meeting of the alliance on the sideline of a three-day Transform Africa Summit 2017 organised by the Smart Secretariat in Kigali, Rwanda.
Toure said that among the areas it sought involvement of the private sector were infrastructure development in sectors such as fibre networks and data centres satellite connectivity.
“We will also like to have the private sector and other partners come in for content development and capacity building,” he said.
The scribe said that Alliance was considering a sustainable financing mechanism for its operations and the programmes it supported.
The alliance, which was set up in 2013 following the inaugural Transform Africa Summit, has in previous years depended on contributions by members.
While stating that the issue of financing mechanism would feature prominently, he said however that countries did not have stipulated contributions.
Toure said that among the sources of funding was a newly-introduced membership fee of 50,000 dollars while the alliance also collects membership fees from the private sector.
He said that they were looking at creating additional revenue streams from services that could see it operate on a business model.
“Presently, all operational costs have been met but we are also looking into ways to get revenue from services that could see us be self-sustained.
“We are looking at ways of collecting revenue from services that we might be offering to members.
“This could reduce the vulnerability of the organisation in the event that membership contributions are not forthcoming due to tough economic conditions.
“Some of the revenue sources include attendance fees for summits,” he said.
Toure said that as of December last year, the organisation had collected about 1.8 million dollars which was allocated to expenditure such as scholarship funds.
He said that in a report presented to the Smart Africa board in January, Rwanda had contributed about 0.8 million dollars and the private sector 779,873 dollars.
The Alliance scribe said that the scholarship fund raised 1.1 million dollars in contributions from Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mali, Rwanda, South Sudan and the International Telecommunications Union.
African entrepreneur Strive Masiyiwa, the founder of Econet, said at the summit that public partnership with the private sector would require both parties to listen to each other to build practical ecosystem.
Masiyiwa said that Africa’s demographics made the continent ideal and attractive for investment with promising returns.
Mr Nikolay Nikiforov, the Russian Minister of Telecoms and Mass Communications, said from his country’s experience, increase of private sector players would present healthy competition.
Nikiforov added that it would also improve services and alternatives for governments.
Transform Africa Summit is the annual leading African forum bringing together global and regional leaders from government, business and international organisations.
The forum is to collaborate on new ways of shaping, accelerating and sustaining Africa’s ongoing digital revolution. (NAN)
IAA/COF/GY
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Edited by Oluyinka Fadare/Grace Yussuf