IST-Africa 2013 Roundtable on the Implementation of the Information Society in Africa

Paul Cunningham, IST-Africa Coordinator welcomed the panelists and participants to the High Level Roundtable on the Implementation of the Information Society in Africa on 29 May 2013 as part of IST-Africa 2013 Conference & Exhibition.

Paul introduced the distinguished panel and provided an overview of the format that would be followed. As in previous years the Roundtable focused on a number of strategic topics, each of the panellists had an opportunity to respond to those issues that they feel they would like to make a contribution to and to add any clarifications to the dialogue. The panellists included Dr Katherine Getao, ICT Secretary, eGovernment Directorate, Kenya; Mr Moctar Yedaly, Head of Information Society Division, African Union Commission; Dr Koi Tirima, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Inoorero University/LIWA, Kenya; Prof. Meoli Kashorda, Executive Director, KENET, Kenya; Mr Jerome Morrissey, CEO, GESCI, Kenya; Mr Daniel Obam, Ministry of ICT, Kenya and Mr. Christopher Kemei, Assistant Director, Licensing - Compliance and Standards, Communications Commission of Kenya.

The topics discussed by the panel included:

- Progress in Implementing the Information Society and Knowledge Economy in Africa and the Role of ICT Research and Innovation

- How does improved eInfrastructure in Africa (and concrete developments such as AfricaConnect, African Internet Exchange System (AXIS), Progress on developing African national and regional research & education networks (NRENs) and their interconnection to European GÉANT2 network) support the transformation of education and research cooperation?

- How can Innovation be better supported to ensure faster take up of the results of co-created products and services, in both the public and private sector, and what implications does this have in terms of potential policy changes?

- In the context of ICT-enabled services with cross border potential and the need to continue supporting both national and regional Innovation, how can the demands on the Regulatory Environment be best addressed?

- Skills Gaps - What concrete actions can be taken to better align third level curricula to accelerate the development of the Information Society and Knowledge Economy in Africa?

- How can Public Private Partnerships [PPP] and shared services models be better leveraged to support Public Service Delivery, and better exploit the potential of Open Data?

It was a very rich discussion with a lot of insight provided by the panellists. In general it was agreed that Africa is making good progress towards the implementation of the Information Society. ICT Research and Innovation are critical components and there needs to be a greater emphasis on action research and collaborative research that addresses socio-economic challenges. Living Lab methodologies can provide a framework to increase participation of necessary stakeholders in the design and implementation phases.

The IST-Africa 2013 Conference Report provides a full report on the discussions during the Roundtable.